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Digitize Handwritten Recipes | MyRecipe

Use MyRecipe's photo OCR to digitize handwritten recipe cards in seconds. Preserve grandma's recipes forever, edit them on any device, and share with the whole family.

Handwritten recipes are family heirlooms — and like any heirloom, they fade, stain, and eventually get lost in a move. Digitizing them is the single best thing you can do to preserve a family's cooking history, and MyRecipe makes it stupidly simple. Open the app, snap a photo of the card, and our handwriting-aware OCR converts the ingredients and steps into editable text in seconds. The original photo stays attached to the recipe so the sentiment isn't lost, but the searchable, scalable, shareable text is now yours forever.

We built the OCR specifically for the messy reality of family recipe cards: cursive, smudged butter stains, ingredient lists in two columns, sticky-note addendums in different handwriting. After scanning, you can fix anything the AI missed — change '½ cup oats' to '½ cup oats (or quick oats)' if you want — and the recipe is then a first-class citizen of your library: tagged, categorized, scaled, planned, shopped. The same OCR works on printed clippings from magazines and old cookbooks too. If it's on paper, MyRecipe can pull it into your phone.

What MyRecipe gives you

  • Save and organize unlimited recipes (50 free, unlimited on Family)
  • Photo OCR for handwritten recipe cards and old cookbooks
  • URL import from any food blog or recipe site
  • Drag-and-drop weekly meal planner
  • Auto-generated shopping list, sorted by aisle
  • Household sharing for up to 4 family members
  • Public, private, or link-only sharing for every recipe
  • Multi-device sync with offline cooking mode

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FAQ

Does the OCR work on cursive handwriting?

Yes. Our handwriting model is trained on cursive and print. Quality depends on legibility — well-lit, in-focus photos give the best results.

Can I keep the original photo of the recipe card?

Absolutely. The photo is attached to the saved recipe so you keep both the original artifact and the searchable digital version.

What if the OCR misses something?

You can edit any ingredient or instruction before saving. The OCR gets you 90% of the way there — you polish the rest.

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Grandma's recipes deserve more than a shoebox of yellowing index cards. MyRecipe's photo scanner and family cookbook tools preserve every one of them, forever.

Free Recipe App

MyRecipe is a free recipe app with no usage limits on sharing, search, OCR, or meal planning. Save up to 50 recipes free, share unlimited.

Scan Recipe Cards

Scan recipe cards with your phone camera and turn them into editable digital recipes in seconds. MyRecipe's OCR handles cursive, print, and old magazine clippings.

Digitize your first handwritten recipe — free

Free for the first 50 recipes. No credit card required to start.

Get Started Free

MyRecipe is a free recipe sharing app and family cookbook tool. Save handwritten recipes, plan weekly meals, generate shopping lists, and share with the whole household. The links above lead to topic pages, recipe browse, and our blog — all internal pages on myrecipe.app.