Import recipes from websites and shared links

Import recipes without copying by hand

Online recipes are easy to find and easy to lose. A recipe import app gives you a cleaner way to save the meals you want to cook, without manually typing every ingredient or step. Meal Planner can import from recipe websites and shared content, then turn the result into an editable recipe draft.

The importer looks for useful recipe structure such as title, ingredients, method, servings, image and nutrition. When a page provides structured recipe data, that can be used directly. When it does not, the importer can fall back to visible recipe sections and shared text patterns.

Designed for real-world shared recipes

Recipes are no longer only found on traditional websites. People share them through short links, captions, social posts and mixed text. Meal Planner is built to gather useful content before deciding what should become the recipe, so the import flow can support websites and modern sharing habits.

If the shared text already contains ingredients and instructions, Meal Planner can build a recipe from that content. If a high-quality website recipe is available, the URL import can provide the richer result. The aim is to choose the best source rather than blindly trusting the first link.

Keep control after importing

Imported recipes are drafts you can review. You can change the title, remove promotional text, edit ingredients, reorder instructions and fill in any missing fields. This keeps the importer useful even when a website has unusual formatting or incomplete metadata.

After saving, the recipe becomes part of your organiser. It can be planned for a meal slot, added to the shopping list, opened in Cook Mode or edited again later. Importing is the entry point, not a separate storage area.

What makes a good recipe import

A strong import has a clear recipe title, enough ingredients to cook the dish and a meaningful method. Servings, nutrition and images are helpful extras when the source provides them. Meal Planner favours practical recipe content over social metadata, comments or page furniture.

Some websites hide content behind scripts or block automated requests. When that happens, a shared caption, screenshot or manual edit can still help save the meal idea. The app is designed to keep the workflow moving rather than wasting a useful recipe discovery.

From imported recipe to family plan

Once a recipe is imported, it connects to the rest of Meal Planner. Add it to a weekly meal planner slot, adjust servings if needed and send ingredients to the shared shopping list. Families can keep favourite imports available to everyone in the household.

That makes recipe import useful beyond bookmarking. The recipe becomes something the household can plan, cook and shop from together.

This matters because a bookmark does not usually answer practical questions like what needs buying, how many servings the meal makes or which step comes next in the kitchen. An imported recipe in Meal Planner can answer those questions in the same place as the rest of the week.

The importer is designed as part of a wider recipe organiser rather than a one-off web clipper. A saved recipe can be edited, revisited, scaled and reused, which gives online recipes a longer life than a browser tab or a copied note.

A reusable importer for changing recipe sources

Recipe websites and social platforms change constantly. Meal Planner focuses on generic recipe signals such as headings, quantities, method steps, metadata and structured recipe fields rather than locking the workflow to one website style.

That makes the import flow easier to improve over time. New sources can benefit from the same content resolution and recipe detection work, while users still get a familiar review screen before anything is saved.