https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z Sorrel https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/sorrel-on-iphone 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Sorrel is now in the App Store: the same calm recipe app, built natively for iPhone, with a widget, Live Activity timers and sync with Android.

<p>Sorrel started on Android. Since October it has been in the App Store too: a native iPhone app, not a web page in a wrapper, and the same calm home for your recipes that Android cooks have been using all year.</p> <h2>What’s in it</h2> <p>Everything you’d expect from Sorrel is there on day one:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Your recipe library</strong>, with no cap on recipes, collections, tags and search.</li> <li><strong>Import from any website</strong> by sharing the link to Sorrel from Safari or any other app — the share sheet has a Sorrel button.</li> <li><strong>Cook mode</strong>, one step at a time in big type, with timers you start by tapping the time in a step. On iPhone a running timer sits on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island as a Live Activity, so you can see the countdown without unlocking the phone.</li> <li><strong>A home-screen widget</strong> with tonight’s dinner on it.</li> <li><strong>The weekly planner</strong>, including auto-fill, and an aisle-sorted <strong>grocery list</strong>.</li> <li><strong>The Kitchen and Tonight</strong>: keep track of what’s on your shelves, and see what you can cook with it right now.</li> <li><strong>Backup and export</strong>, so your recipes are never stuck inside the app.</li> </ul> <p>The things that need Sorrel’s servers to do the work — importing from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook videos, scanning recipe cards and cookbook pages, letting Sorrel arrange your week, writing a new recipe from what’s in your kitchen, sync and household sharing — are part of <a href="/pro">Sorrel Pro</a>, exactly as on Android. On iPhone, Pro is an App Store subscription, with a 7-day free trial on the annual plan.</p> <h2>Android and iPhone, together</h2> <p>Plenty of households have one of each. Sorrel’s sync doesn’t care: sign in on both and your library, your plan and your grocery list are the same on every phone. On iPhone you can sign in with Apple or Google; Android signs in with Google, or with a link code from the iPhone if you used Apple.</p> <p>Households work across both, too. One person starts a household, sends the invite, and everyone shares one cookbook and one live grocery list — whichever phone they carry. Only the person who started the household needs Pro; joining is free.</p> <p class="post-note">One thing to know: a subscription belongs to the store you bought it from. Pro bought on Google Play unlocks Sorrel on Android, and Pro bought in the App Store unlocks it on iPhone. A household is the way to share across the two.</p> <h2>What’s new since launch</h2> <p>The 1.2 update added scanning recipe cards and cookbook pages, your own photos for any recipe, importing recipes from Facebook posts and videos, a smarter “Something new” that knows what a normal kitchen keeps, and a list of the links that didn’t come through so you can retry them. The next update, being tested now, brings importing from X, translation of recipes written in another language, a Library filter by creator, and flow-chart export.</p> <h2>Not there yet</h2> <p>A few Android features haven’t reached iPhone yet — the biggest is saving a photo of your plate when you finish cooking. It’s on the list.</p> https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/import-recipes-from-anywhere 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Sorrel now reads recipes from X videos, Facebook posts and reels, and pages in Korean, Japanese, Chinese and more — and translates them for you.

<p>The whole point of Sorrel is that a recipe you found anywhere ends up as a clean recipe you can cook from: a title, a photo, an ingredient list and steps. Lately, that “anywhere” has got a lot bigger.</p> <h2>Videos on X</h2> <p>Share a post from X to Sorrel and it pulls the recipe out of the post and its video, the same way it does for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. If the video is a repost, Sorrel credits the person who made it, not the account that passed it along. Like the other video sources, importing from X is part of <a href="/pro">Sorrel Pro</a>.</p> <h2>Facebook, posts and reels</h2> <p>Facebook recipes come in two kinds, and Sorrel treats them differently:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Posts</strong> — a recipe written out in a post or on a page — are read like any website, and they’re free.</li> <li><strong>Reels and videos</strong> are imported like any other video, through Sorrel Pro.</li> </ul> <p>Facebook doesn’t make this easy, so Sorrel tries several ways in. It reads the caption even when Facebook shows a sign-in wall instead of the page. When the caption only links to the recipe, Sorrel follows the link. And when the caption has no recipe at all, it listens to what’s said in the video instead — those recipes are always marked for a quick look before you cook.</p> <p class="post-note">Some Facebook recipes can’t be read by anyone who isn’t signed in to Facebook: videos shown only to logged-in viewers, and “comment ‘recipe’ and I’ll send it to you” posts where the recipe never appears on the page. Sorrel tells you when that’s what it found, rather than saving half a recipe.</p> <h2>Recipes in other languages</h2> <p>Sorrel now reads recipe pages in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, as well as Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese — the ingredient lists and steps, not just the title. And if a recipe is written in a different language from the one you use Sorrel in, Sorrel translates it for you.</p> <p>Translated recipes say so at the top, and <strong>Show original</strong> puts the original text back whenever you want to check a word. Translation is free and on by default; you can turn it off in Settings under <strong>Translate recipes</strong>. It happens on Sorrel’s server, not on your phone, so it needs a connection.</p> <h2>When an import doesn’t work</h2> <p>Not every link works the first time, and a failed import shouldn’t leave a mess behind:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Cancel</strong> really cancels — nothing half-finished is left in your library.</li> <li><strong>Write it in</strong> opens the recipe editor so you can type or paste it yourself.</li> <li><strong>Send this link to Sorrel</strong> sends us the link that failed, so we can fix it. We get the link and nothing that identifies you.</li> </ul> <h2>Photos that stay put</h2> <p>Video thumbnails and recipe photos on the web often stop working after a while — TikTok’s covers expire, sites move their images. Sorrel now keeps its own copy of each recipe’s photo on your phone, so the picture you saved is the picture you keep. You can also swap in your own photo on any recipe.</p> <h2>Find recipes by who made them</h2> <p>The Library filter has a new <strong>Creators</strong> section: pick a TikTok or Instagram handle, a YouTube channel or a website, and see everything you’ve saved from them. Recipes imported before this update are filed under the site they came from, such as tiktok.com.</p> <p class="post-note">On iPhone: Facebook import, your own photos and the failed-imports list are in the current version. X import, translation and the Creators filter arrive in the next update, which is in testing now.</p> https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/cook-from-your-kitchen 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Sorrel’s Kitchen keeps track of your fridge, freezer and pantry, then shows which of your recipes you can make tonight — with swaps when you’re one thing short.

<p>Most recipe apps start from the recipe and send you to the shop. The Kitchen starts from the other end: what’s already in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboard, and which of the recipes you’ve saved you could make with it tonight.</p> <h2>Your shelves, without the bookkeeping</h2> <p>The Kitchen has four shelves — Fridge, Freezer, Pantry and Spice rack — and a list of staples you always want in the house. When a staple runs low it goes onto your grocery list by itself. Getting things in is quick:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Scan barcodes.</strong> <strong>Unload the bags</strong> keeps the camera open and beeps for each product, so you can put the shopping away and scan it in one go. Free.</li> <li><strong>Put things away from the grocery list</strong> as you tick them off.</li> <li><strong>Type them in</strong>, the old way.</li> <li><strong>Photograph a shelf or a receipt</strong>, and Sorrel reads what’s on it. That one uses Sorrel’s servers, so it’s part of <a href="/pro">Sorrel Pro</a> — and nothing is saved until you’ve checked the list.</li> </ul> <p>Sorrel never tries to work out how much of a jar is left. After you cook, it simply asks whether that was the last of anything.</p> <h2>What can I make tonight?</h2> <p>With your shelves filled in, every recipe in your library knows whether you can cook it. The <strong>Tonight</strong> screen gathers the ones you can make right now. Filter by meal and by time, put the things that need using up first, or <strong>Allow 1–2 missing</strong> to see what’s nearly there. Look at them as a list, by shelf, or <strong>One at a time</strong> — <strong>Next</strong>, <strong>Next</strong>, <strong>Cook this</strong>. If you are a couple of things short, one tap adds just the missing ones to your grocery list.</p> <h2>Close enough counts</h2> <p>A recipe that asks for scallions shouldn’t say you’re missing something when there are green onions in the fridge. Sorrel knows that scallions and green onions, courgettes and zucchini, and prawns and shrimp are the same thing — and that coconut milk is not milk, and brown sugar is not sugar.</p> <p>It goes one step further with swaps. If a recipe wants spaghetti and you have penne, Tonight still counts it: “Everything, with penne for spaghetti.” Only swaps that work wherever the ingredient is used count, and never one that breaks your diet or allergies.</p> <p>On any recipe you can also look up a swap for an ingredient yourself. Sorrel tells you how much to use, what you lose (butter for oil in a cake is not the same cake), and what to do differently — and applying it rewrites the steps for this cook without changing the saved recipe. All of this runs on your phone, for free. The explanations are in English for now.</p> <h2>Something new</h2> <p>Sometimes nothing in your library fits. <strong>Something new</strong> writes a recipe for your kitchen instead: from what’s on your shelves, what needs eating first, your diet and allergies, and how much time you have.</p> <p>The first time, it asks how stocked your kitchen usually is — bare, basic or well-stocked — and which cuisines you cook often, so it can assume the oil, salt and soy sauce you never think to write down. A recipe may call for up to three things you don’t have; those are listed up front under <strong>You may be short on</strong>, with stand-ins. Something new is part of Sorrel Pro. Seeing what you can already cook stays free.</p> <h2>A word of warning, where it matters</h2> <p>A few everyday ingredients are unsafe if they’re not prepared properly: dried kidney beans that aren’t boiled hard enough, raw cassava, bitter almonds and apricot kernels, rhubarb leaves, raw elderberries, ackee, fiddleheads and morels among them. When a recipe or your Kitchen includes one, Sorrel shows a small warning, and tapping it explains how to prepare it safely. The guidance follows food-safety agencies in the US, UK and Canada. It’s free and always on — and it’s guidance, not medical advice.</p> https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/cooking-with-sorrel 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Small things that make cooking from your phone easier — a photo of every plate, timers on the lock screen, a screen that stays on, and any recipe as a one-page flow chart.

<p>Cook mode is where Sorrel earns its keep: one step at a time, in type big enough to read from across the counter. Here’s what has changed there lately — none of it dramatic, all of it the kind of thing you notice with flour on your hands.</p> <h2>Snap the plate</h2> <p>When you finish a recipe, cook mode now offers <strong>Snap the plate</strong>. Take a photo of what you made and it’s saved to that recipe, in a <strong>Your plates</strong> strip on the recipe page — so the next time you open it you can see how it turned out last time, and the time before. You can add photos from your camera roll later, delete them, or make one the recipe’s cover. If a recipe had no photo at all, your first plate becomes its cover.</p> <p>Photos are shrunk to a sensible size, and their location data is removed before they’re saved. Plate photos are on Android now, and coming to iPhone.</p> <h2>Timers you can see from anywhere</h2> <p>Tap the time in any step — “simmer for 20 minutes” — and a timer starts, named after the step. You can run several at once; each one has +1 minute and pause. While a timer runs you can leave cook mode, check the shopping list or lock the phone: on Android the countdown is on the lock screen, and on iPhone it’s a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. When it’s done, a full-screen alarm offers <strong>+1 min</strong>, <strong>Next step</strong> or <strong>Done</strong>.</p> <h2>A screen that stays on</h2> <p>Nothing is more annoying than a phone that dims halfway through a step. Sorrel now keeps the screen on while a recipe or cook mode is open — and only then. If you’d rather it didn’t, turn off <strong>Keep screen on while cooking</strong> in Settings.</p> <h2>Every ingredient a step uses</h2> <p>Each step in cook mode shows the ingredients it mentions, so you don’t have to scroll back to the list. It used to stop at three; now it shows up to eight and wraps them onto as many lines as they need. That applies to every recipe you’ve already saved, too.</p> <h2>Any recipe as a flow chart</h2> <p>Some recipes are easier to follow as a picture: what happens in parallel, what waits for what. From any recipe’s <strong>⋮</strong> menu, <strong>Export flow chart</strong> draws the recipe as a one-page chart and shares it as an image or a PDF — to print and stick on the fridge, or to send to whoever is cooking with you. It’s free, on Android now and on iPhone in the next update.</p> <h2>Undo, everywhere it counts</h2> <p>Deleted a recipe by mistake, cleared the grocery list, or took the wrong meal off the week? On Android there’s an <strong>Undo</strong> for each of them, at the bottom of the screen, for a few seconds after you do it.</p> https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/plan-the-week 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Meal reminders, an evening heads-up to thaw or marinate, your meals in your calendar, plans that respect diets and allergies, and a smarter grocery list.

<p>A meal plan is only useful if it’s still in your head at five o’clock on a Wednesday. The latest updates are about exactly that: Sorrel remembering the plan so you don’t have to.</p> <h2>Meal reminders</h2> <p>Turn on <strong>Meal reminders</strong> in Settings and choose how: one summary each morning (8:00 by default, or whenever you like), or a nudge one, two or three hours before each meal. They only come on days with something planned. If you keep your Kitchen up to date, the reminder also says what the meal is missing — with a button that adds those things to your grocery list without even opening the app.</p> <h2>A heads-up the evening before</h2> <p>The trouble with some recipes starts the night before. Turn on the evening heads-up and Sorrel sends one quiet notice — at 7 pm unless you pick another time — when tomorrow needs something from you today:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Thaw</strong> — something tomorrow’s meal needs is only in the freezer.</li> <li><strong>Prep</strong> — the recipe marinates overnight, or has to sit for four hours or more.</li> <li><strong>Use by</strong> — something on your shelves should be used tomorrow.</li> </ul> <p>If there’s nothing to say, it says nothing.</p> <h2>Your meals in your calendar</h2> <p>Pick a calendar on your phone and Sorrel adds the next two weeks of meals to it, so dinner sits next to everything else in your day. The events don’t ring and don’t mark you as busy, Sorrel only ever touches the events it wrote, and disconnecting removes them all. On iPhone the calendar catches up each time you open Sorrel. And the home-screen widget shows tonight’s dinner — on Android it updates the moment the plan changes.</p> <h2>Plans that know what you can’t eat</h2> <p>Tell Sorrel about diets and allergies in Settings under <strong>Your kitchen</strong>, and planning respects them. A recipe that breaks a diet or contains an allergen is left out of the week entirely — Sorrel checks the title, the ingredients and the steps — and it tells you how many it skipped and why, even if that means the week comes up a meal short. Two optional leans help too: <strong>Keep it thrifty</strong> and <strong>Cook what I have in</strong>.</p> <p>That applies both to auto-fill, which plans your week from your library on your phone and is free, and to letting Sorrel arrange the week for you with <a href="/pro">Sorrel Pro</a>. Your diets and allergies are never sent to our servers either way.</p> <h2>A grocery list that adds up</h2> <p>When you add a week of meals to the list, Sorrel now merges what belongs together: scallions and green onions become one line, and amounts add up across units — a tablespoon here and a teaspoon there become 1⅓ tablespoons. Volumes and weights are never mixed. Before anything is added you can choose what you actually need, and things already in your Kitchen start unticked, marked <strong>In your kitchen</strong>.</p> <p>Adding an item by hand is faster, too: as you type, Sorrel suggests things you’ve bought before and everyday groceries (that built-in list is in English for now), and a tap adds it. And you can tick everything, untick everything or clear the list in one go.</p> <h2>Search that finds it</h2> <p>Library search now looks through everything — titles, ingredients, steps, tags, notes and where a recipe came from — word by word, in any order, ignoring accents, with the best match first. “creme” finds crème brûlée. And when you filter the Library by tag, the matching tags appear as you type.</p> https://www.sorrelapp.io/blog/cook-together 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Share a cookbook and a live grocery list with your household, send any recipe as a link or a card, and ask ChatGPT or Claude to add to your plan.

<p>Cooking is rarely a one-person job. Somebody shops, somebody cooks, somebody asks what’s for dinner. Here’s how Sorrel handles everyone else.</p> <h2>One cookbook for the whole household</h2> <p>Start a household and the people you invite share one cookbook and one grocery list, updated live: tick off the milk in the shop and it’s gone from everyone’s list. It works across Android and iPhone. Only the person who starts the household needs <a href="/pro">Sorrel Pro</a> — joining is free.</p> <p>Inviting someone is a QR code to scan or a link to send, and invitations work once and stop after a day. On Android, the invitation now says which household it is and who started it before anyone taps Join — and if the person you invite installs Sorrel from the invitation, it’s waiting for them the first time they open the app.</p> <p>On your own, sync keeps your library, plan and list the same on every phone you use. Signing in with Google is the quickest way in; on iPhone you can use Apple too.</p> <h2>Send a recipe to anyone</h2> <p><strong>Share as Sorrel link</strong> gives you a link and a QR code for any recipe. The person you send it to sees the recipe on the web — title, photo, ingredients and steps — whether or not they have Sorrel, and can save it to their own library with a tap. Share links are free, both for you and for them, and they stop working after 30 days. Your ratings and notes stay on your phone.</p> <p>Prefer something prettier? Sorrel can also share a recipe as a card image, and two new styles have joined the set: <strong>Gingham notecard</strong> and <strong>Typewriter notecard</strong>, landscape cards that look like the ones in a recipe box. Every card carries a QR code, so whoever gets it can save the recipe too.</p> <h2>Ask your assistant</h2> <p>If you use ChatGPT or Claude, you can connect it to Sorrel and talk to your recipes: “what can I make with the chicken thighs?”, “put the lemon pasta on Thursday”, “add what I need for it to the list”. Your assistant can search and read your library, save recipes, add meals to your plan and things to your grocery list, and see what’s in your Kitchen. It asks before changing a recipe, and it can’t delete anything.</p> <p>Connecting is free; using it needs Sorrel Pro. You can disconnect any time in Settings under <strong>Connect an assistant</strong>. The <a href="/help/assistants">step-by-step guide</a> shows how to set it up.</p> <h2>Your recipes on a big screen</h2> <p>Two ways to use Sorrel from a laptop:</p> <ul> <li><strong>The <a href="/library">web recipe book</a></strong> shows your library in a browser: sign in with the link code from your phone and read any recipe on a bigger screen. It’s read-only for now, and part of Sorrel Pro.</li> <li><strong>The <a href="/extension">browser extension</a></strong> saves recipes from the page you’re on. Web recipes are free, with no account — signed out, it shows a QR code to open on your phone. With a linked Sorrel Pro account it saves straight to your library, and it can import TikTok, Instagram and YouTube videos too.</li> </ul>