How to make a recipe app for iPhone with AI (2026)

By Sigsten Gustavii· 14 September 2026· Updated 27 October 2026· 8 min read

To make a recipe app, decide whose recipes it holds and who uses it, describe the screens to an AI app builder like Borel, add a few real recipes and cook from one in the simulator, then put it on your iPhone or publish it on the App Store.

A recipe app is one of the friendliest projects to start with. The data is familiar, every screen is useful on day one, and you'll know at once if something is wrong, because you'll be standing at the stove with it.

If planning the week is the main job, start from the meal planner page, which has a ready prompt for a weekly grid and a list made from it. This guide is about the recipe book itself.

What a recipe app needs

What Borel built from one sentence

When Borel was asked for "a recipe book with tabs: my recipes with ingredients and steps, favourites, and a shopping list I can fill from a recipe", it wrote this recipe app: 23 Swift files, built in 316 seconds for 5 credits. Recipes are grouped by category and the search finds ingredients as well as names. Ticked ingredients go on the shopping list under the recipe they came from, and items added by hand go under Extras. Everything stays on the iPhone.

It opened with five example recipes so every screen had something in it, ready to swap for your own before you publish.

The data underneath

The data model is the list of things the app keeps. For a recipe app it is short:

Store amounts as numbers with a unit, not as text like "2 cups". Then the app can scale a recipe from 4 servings to 6, add up the same ingredient from two recipes on the shopping list, and switch between grams and cups if you ask for it.

For a personal app, all of this lives on the phone, which keeps it private and works without signal in a cabin kitchen. See offline data.

Getting your recipes in

An empty recipe app is no use. Make adding recipes painless, in more than one way:

• Scan a cookbook page. Point the camera at the page; Apple's VisionKit reads the printed text.
• Paste and tidy. Paste a recipe from a note or a message, and Borel AI splits it into ingredients and steps for you to check.
• Snap a handwritten card. Borel AI can read what is in a photo, so a grandparent's card becomes text you correct.
• Speak it. Say an ingredient list out loud and the iPhone's speech recognition types it.
• Add a photo of the dish from your library with Apple's photo picker.

The AI parts run on Borel AI, with no API key to get or paste. Each use is paid from your credits.

A cooking mode worth using

Cooking mode is where a native app beats a recipe website full of adverts. Ask for:

1. One step at a time, in large type you can read from a metre away.
2. The screen kept awake while you cook, so it never locks with floury hands.
3. A timer on any step that mentions minutes, started with one tap.
4. Ingredients for this step shown above it, so you don't scroll back.
5. Read aloud. The iPhone's own voices can read each step, with no account or key.

Sharing with family

A family cookbook needs the recipes in the app's cloud instead of on one phone. Borel keeps shared data in a group people join with an invite code: you own it, family members join and add their own recipes, and anyone you invite only to look can be a viewer. Describe it plainly: "my family can join with a code, add recipes and tick the same shopping list".

Accounts use email and password, and every Borel app with accounts lets people delete theirs in the app. The other phones get the app through TestFlight or the App Store; our guide to a private family app explains the routes.

Publishing a recipe app

If you're a food creator, a recipe app can be a small product of its own. A few things to know:

Publish recipes you wrote or have the right to share. A creator's own recipes in the app's cloud can be updated any day without a new App Store version, and a premium collection can be sold with Apple's in-app purchase, which Borel sets up from a short form.

What a recipe app costs

A personal recipe book that keeps everything on the phone costs nothing to run. See pricing for every tier.

How to make a recipe app with Borel, step by step

Step 1: Gather five real recipes

Pick five recipes you actually cook, with amounts and steps. They are your test data and show you at once whether the screens fit real recipes.

Step 2: Describe the app

A recipe app for our family. Recipes have a photo, time, servings, ingredients with amounts and units, and numbered steps. Group them by category and let me search by name or ingredient. A heart keeps favourites. Changing servings scales the amounts. Tick ingredients to add them to a shopping list grouped by aisle. Let me add a recipe by scanning a cookbook page with the camera, or by pasting text that AI splits into ingredients and steps. A cooking mode shows one step at a time in big text, keeps the screen on, and starts a timer when a step mentions minutes.

Penny, Borel's planner, asks about anything unclear, then Rivet writes the app in Swift with SwiftUI and Xcode builds it on Borel's Mac. You don't need a Mac.

Step 3: Cook from it in the simulator

The app opens in the iOS Simulator in your browser, free. Add your five recipes, scale one, fill the shopping list and walk through cooking mode. Anything awkward, say so in plain words.

Step 4: Make it look like your kitchen

Ask for a look: "warm and calm, cream background, big food photos" or "clean and modern, one green accent". Attach a logo or a photo you like as a reference.

Step 5: Put it on your iPhone

Scanning needs a real camera. With Pro, Borel Companion installs the app on your iPhone with a free Apple ID, and renews it every 7 days while it runs. Cook a real dinner from it, with the phone propped against the fruit bowl.

Step 6: Share it or publish it

For family, add accounts and a shared group, then invite them through TestFlight. For everyone, Stamp checks the app against the reasons Apple most often turns apps down and Publish uploads it under your own Apple Developer account.

The Bottom Line

A recipe app is small, personal and used every day, which makes it a perfect thing to build yourself. Keep the data tidy, make adding recipes easy, and give cooking mode the most care. With Borel, a working recipe book takes one sentence and a few minutes, and everything after that is a conversation. Describe your kitchen on Borel and cook from your own app tonight.

I think a recipe app is the friendliest way to start with Borel, because you know at once if it works. Make yours, then cook something from it.

– Sigsten

Make your iPhone app in Borel

Describe the app you want and see its first screens before you pay anything.