Support
Welcome. This page covers the questions we hear most — how to get recipes into Heirloom, how to share them with family, how cookbooks and lineage work, and what to do when something feels off. If you don't find your answer here, the fastest way to reach us is at the bottom of the page.
Importing recipes
Heirloom is built around getting the recipes you already cook from into the book your family is writing. There are a few ways in, and they all land in the same place — your Recipes tab.
From a link
Paste any recipe URL — a blog post, a publisher site, a Substack — and Heirloom will pull out the title, ingredients, instructions, and a cover image. In 2.1 we improved the instruction splitter so paragraph-style recipes (the ones written as one long block of prose, common on food blogs and in 41 languages we support) get broken into proper numbered steps automatically.
If a site won't load — usually because it's paywalled, written entirely in JavaScript, or buried behind a cookie wall — try copying the text by hand and using a photo or voice import instead. Very long pages (10,000+ words of headnotes) sometimes need a moment longer to process; let it finish before retrying.
From a photo
Snap a photo of a printed page, a magazine clipping, or a handwritten card from your grandmother's recipe box. Heirloom reads the text, recognizes the structure, and turns it into an editable recipe. Handwriting works well for clear cursive and print; very faded ink or tightly overlapping notes may need a manual correction or two.
From a PDF
Drop in a single recipe PDF, or a whole cookbook PDF. For full cookbooks, Heirloom finds each recipe in the document, pulls them out as separate entries, and groups them into a new cookbook with the original book's name and author preserved as the source.
From a video (premium)
Paste a TikTok, Instagram Reel, or YouTube Short and Heirloom transcribes the cook-along and writes the recipe down. Good for the dish your friend keeps making in their stories. Video import requires a Premium subscription.
From a prompt with Spark
Describe the dish — "weeknight chicken with whatever's in the pantry," "my mom's lentil soup but vegan" — and Spark drafts a starting recipe you can edit, cook, and adjust.
From your voice
Tap the mic and read your recipe aloud — the way you'd dictate it to your kid. Heirloom transcribes on-device and writes it down. The audio isn't kept; the transcript is what gets saved.
Sharing recipes
When you open a recipe and tap Share, you'll see two tabs.
Friends tab
Send the recipe to anyone you've connected with in Heirloom. They get a notification and the recipe lands in their library, with you credited as the source.
Link tab
Generate a public link. Anyone can open it — on the web or in the app if they have it installed. Good for posting in a family group chat or texting to a friend who doesn't have Heirloom yet.
Sign in to share
Sharing requires a real account (with an email or sign-in method) so we know who the recipe is coming from. If you're using Heirloom anonymously, you'll be prompted to sign in or create an account the first time you try to share.
What happens when someone accepts
The recipe lands in their Recipes tab. Lineage credits you as the source — when they share it onward, you stay in the chain. They can rename it, restyle it for a cookbook of their own, or edit the ingredients without affecting your copy.
Revoking a share
Open the recipe, tap Share, and remove a recipient from the list. They'll keep any copy already saved to their library, but the link or invite won't accept new recipients.
Android note: the share experience was rebuilt in 2.1 to match iOS. If you were on an older Android build, the flow will look different — Friends and Link tabs are now consistent across platforms.
Cookbooks
A cookbook in Heirloom is a themed collection of recipes — your weeknight dinners, your Sunday baking, the dishes you cook every fall. Recipes can live in more than one cookbook.
Personal vs. shared family cookbooks
Personal cookbooks are private to you. Shared family cookbooks (Kitchen Tables) are co-edited — everyone you invite can add their own recipes, and the book grows together.
Themes and restyling
Each cookbook has a visual theme — gingham, vintage, modern, watercolor, and others. When you add a recipe to a cookbook, Heirloom restyles its cover to match the cookbook's theme. The original recipe in your Recipes tab keeps its own look; the cookbook version is a styled child.
Sharing a cookbook
Open the cookbook, tap Share, and invite people by name or email. They'll get an invite to join; once they accept, they can view (and, for shared family cookbooks, add to) the book.
Cover image generation
Heirloom can generate a cover for any cookbook based on its name and theme. If you don't love the first result, tap Try Another — the regen routes through our higher-quality model, so the second pass usually lands closer to what you wanted.
Lineage
Lineage is how Heirloom remembers where recipes came from and where they went.
Saved recipes trace back and forward
Every recipe carries a record of who shared it and who they shared it from, going back to whoever first added it to Heirloom. When you share onward, the chain extends.
"Passed down by"
On a recipe screen, you'll see "Passed down by" with the people in its lineage. Tap to see the chain.
Heritage recipes
A heritage recipe is one you've marked as a family heirloom — your grandmother's bread, the holiday dish that's been in the family for four generations. These get a different treatment in the cookbook and in lineage views; they're the recipes you most want the next person to know came from somewhere.
Lineage across translation
If you translate a recipe into another language, the lineage chain stays intact. The translated version still credits the original cook.
Translation
Heirloom translates recipes into 41 languages.
Source language by default
A recipe stays in the language it was written in. If your phone is set to French and you save a recipe from an Italian site, the recipe stays in Italian — that's how it was passed down. Tap the translation toggle on the recipe to flip it to your UI language; tap again to flip back.
Report a bad translation
If something reads wrong, tap the Report Bad Translation button on the translated view. We use these reports to improve the model and to prioritize which languages get human review next.
Quality by language
Our supported languages fall into quality tiers. Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese-BR, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese are our most-reviewed and read closest to native. Other languages are well-supported for ingredients and steps but may handle idioms and culturally-specific terms less gracefully. We're working through them.
Account and subscription
Anonymous vs. real account
You can use Heirloom without signing in — your recipes save locally and sync to a cloud-anonymous identity. To share, to access a shared family cookbook, or to move your library to a new device, you'll need a real account (email, Apple, or Google sign-in).
Premium features
Premium unlocks video import and the higher-tier translation and image-generation models. Personal recipe saving, sharing, cookbooks, lineage, and Spark recipe generation are free.
Restoring purchases on a new device
Sign in with the same Apple ID (iOS) or Google account (Android) you used to subscribe, then open Settings → Subscription → Restore Purchases. Your Premium access will reattach.
Canceling
Canceling stops the next renewal. You keep Premium access through the end of the period you've already paid for. Cancel through your platform — Apple ID Subscriptions on iOS, Play Store Subscriptions on Android.
Troubleshooting
"I can't import this URL"
Some sites block automated readers — paywalled publishers, sites that load entirely in the browser, or sites with aggressive cookie walls. Try the photo import: open the recipe in your browser, screenshot it, and import the screenshot instead. The text-recognition path handles paywalled content fine because the rendered page is just an image.
"My share link doesn't work"
Confirm the recipient is opening the link on a device where they're signed in (or willing to sign up). Public links work in any browser; in-app shares require Heirloom installed. If a link genuinely won't open, revoke it from the recipe's Share screen and generate a new one.
"The translation looks wrong"
Tap Report Bad Translation on the recipe. Tell us in a sentence what was off — wrong unit, mistranslated ingredient, awkward step. These go straight to the team working on translation quality.
"The paywall keeps showing"
If you've subscribed and Heirloom keeps prompting you to upgrade, open Settings → Subscription → Restore Purchases. If that doesn't fix it, email us with the email address on your account and we'll sort it out.
"My recipes vanished"
First, check that you're signed in to the same account you used before. Anonymous-account recipes are tied to the install — if you reinstalled without first signing in to a real account, the cloud-anonymous identity may not have reattached. Email us with the email address you used and we can usually recover.
Imports are stuck or not completing
- Check your network connection.
- Restart the app.
- Try a different recipe URL to confirm it isn't source-specific.
Share Extension isn't showing in Safari
- Open the iOS Share Sheet → More → enable Heirloom.
- Restart Safari and try again.
Contact us
- Support: support@heirloomrecipebox.app (include the email on your account if it's an account question)
- Press: press@heirloomrecipebox.app
- General: hello@heirloomrecipebox.app
Discord community
Join the Heirloom Community Discord for faster help, bug reports, feature requests, and recipe talk with other members.
Join here: https://discord.gg/tfrMzefJFj
When you report something, the details that help us fix it fastest:
- What you were trying to do
- What happened instead
- A screenshot or short screen recording, if you can
- Device model and OS version
- Whether you were importing from link, video, PDF, photo, or voice
TestFlight (beta)
Open TestFlight → Heirloom → Send Beta Feedback and attach screenshots or logs if you have them.
How to delete your account
For anonymous users (no account created)
Delete the Heirloom app from your device. Your data is stored locally and will be permanently erased. Server-side anonymous data is automatically cleaned up within 35 days.
For users with an account
- Open Heirloom on your phone.
- Go to Settings (inside the app).
- Tap Privacy & Data → Delete Account.
- Follow the confirmation steps.
If you can't access the app, email support@heirloomrecipebox.app with the subject line "Account Deletion Request" and include the email address on your account.
For safety, we may ask you to confirm the request from the email address on the account. If you can't access that email, we may be unable to verify ownership and complete deletion.
Data export / access request
To request an export of your account data, email support@heirloomrecipebox.app with the subject "Data Export Request" and include the email address on your account.
How to cancel a subscription
iOS
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap your Apple ID (your name at the top).
- Tap Subscriptions.
- Select Heirloom Recipe Box.
- Tap Cancel Subscription.
Android
- Open the Play Store app.
- Tap your profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions.
- Select Heirloom Recipe Box.
- Tap Cancel subscription.
If you started a trial, canceling stops the subscription from renewing at the end of the trial period. You keep Premium access through the end of any period you've already paid for.
Refunds
Apple and Google handle refunds for App Store and Play Store purchases. You can request a refund through your platform's purchase history — the exact flow varies by region and OS version.