Open-source recipe app that turns cookbook photos into recipes, plans your week and shares the shopping list.
openCook is an open-source Android app (with an optional server you host yourself). Take a picture of a cookbook page and it becomes a tidy, editable recipe. Plan meals for the week, build a shared shopping list everyone can tick off, and keep it all in sync at home — no sign-up, no tracking.
Note
For the latest development state, install the latest openCook dev build from the GitHub release page or build it yourself from source (see Building & Running below). Please be aware that the development version, may contain bugs, and will not receive automatic updates.
A recipe and meal-planning app that:
- works fully offline — your recipes, plans and shopping lists are always there, no server needed,
- needs no account — no sign-up, no cloud, no tracking,
- turns a photo of a recipe into a ready-to-edit recipe for you,
- helps you plan the week and shop once for it,
- lets the whole family share the same recipes, plan and list,
- is open source and free.
- Snap a recipe — photograph a cookbook page and openCook reads it for you: title, ingredients, amounts, steps, cooking time and servings. Several recipes on one page are split apart automatically, each with its own picture. (Nutrition is only kept when it's actually printed — never made up.)
- Plan your week — get sensible meal suggestions that avoid repeats, reuse ingredients across days, and turn big meals into leftover days — and you can always see why a dish was picked.
- One shared shopping list — a weekly list the whole household can tick off together. It knows what's already in your pantry, and everyday staples (salt, pepper, oil…) stay off the list.
- Find anything — recipes group into cookbooks and are fully searchable.
- Scan to add — add pantry or shopping items by scanning a barcode (with Open Food Facts lookup).
- Import from the web — browsing a recipe on your phone (Chefkoch, Lecker, …)? Just Share →
openCook and it's saved, no server needed. On the desktop a small browser extension does the
same. See
extension/. - Stay in sync — every family member's phone stays up to date, with or without a server: with phone-to-phone sync (one switch) devices on the same Wi-Fi sync directly with each other, even while the app is closed; a self-hosted server (if you run one) covers everything else. Changes merge automatically, even after someone's been offline.
openCook comes in two parts:
- The app does the whole job on its own — recipes, meal planning and shopping lists all work with no server at all. A family household can even be founded entirely on a phone: other phones join over the home Wi-Fi, and everyone's lists sync phone-to-phone (no pairing — the household invite code is the shared secret). The phone-to-phone switch keeps each phone reachable for the family even with the app closed, at the cost of a small silent notification.
- An optional server you host at home adds what phones can't do alone: reading recipes from photos (the AI runs only on your machine), browser import, server-side archives — and sync that also works while nobody has the app open. You can add it to a serverless household later in Settings, keeping the same invite code.
If the server is off or out of reach, the app keeps working: photo scans queue until it's back, and the family's lists keep syncing directly between phones on the same Wi-Fi.
Build it with Gradle. You'll need a JDK 17–21 on JAVA_HOME (for example the one bundled with
Android Studio).
./gradlew assembleDebug # build the debug APK
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest # run unit testsNeeded only for reading recipes from photos and family sync. Requires Python 3.12+ and
Ollama running on the same machine with the vision model pulled
(ollama pull qwen2.5vl:7b).
cd server
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
uvicorn app.main:app --reload # http://localhost:8000/docsOr run it with Docker (the app finds the server automatically on your home network):
cd server
docker compose up -d --buildImportant
The server is meant for your home network only and is mostly unauthenticated by design. Don't expose it to the internet.
A small add-on that sends a recipe from a web page to your server. Load it from
extension/.
Full guides live in docs/wiki/ — a user track (how to use the app) and a
developer track (architecture, server, sync engine, API reference, self-hosting).
openCook has no ads, no tracking, and asks for no unnecessary permissions. There's no account and nothing in the cloud. Any AI runs on your own server, the family sync stays on your home network, and family members join with a simple invite code. Without a server, the app never goes online at all.
If you would like to support this project's further development, the creator of this project or the continuous maintenance of this project, feel free to donate via 
Found a bug, have an idea, or a question? Please open an issue or comment on an existing one. To contribute code, fork the repository and send a pull request.
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openCook is licensed under the GPL v3 (see the LICENSE file for the full notice).
Copyright (C) 2026 olie.xdev <olie.xdeveloper@googlemail.com>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>