How Pantorio works
A closer look at how Pantorio organizes your recipes, suggests what to cook for every meal, plans the week, and builds your shopping list.
Recipe Collections & Repeat Spacing
On your Home screen, Pantorio groups your recipes by meal type and suggests what to cook next based on your ratings and how long it has been since you last made each dish.
- •Household ratings: Rate dishes from 1 to 10 stars so meals your family loves are suggested more often.
- •Repeat spacing: Set a repeat wait time (1 to 60 days, 15 days by default) on each dish so recently cooked meals take a break.
- •Rediscover old favorites: High-rated dishes you haven't cooked in weeks show up in your Rediscover collection.
- •Categories & tags: Browse Dinner, Lunch, Breakfast, and Dessert collections, or filter by your own tags and ingredients.
Weekly Meal Calendar
Plan every meal of the day alongside the times you eat out, have family over, or finish up leftovers.
- •Plan Week button: Fill open days in your week automatically with suggested meals from your library.
- •Non-cooking nights: Mark days as Dining Out, Leftovers, or Family Gathering so your grocery list stays accurate.
- •Drag to swap: Hold and drag any meal card to move it to another day when your plans change.
- •Custom start day: Start your calendar on Monday, Sunday, or today.
Grocery Lists & Online Supermarkets
Turn your planned meals for the week into a single shopping checklist, organized by aisle or preferred store.
- •Import from Meal Plan: Gathers all ingredients from your planned meals for the week and shows which recipe each item belongs to.
- •Pantry check: Marks items you already have in stock at home so you only buy what is missing.
- •Online & local stores: Shop online with built-in support for Instacart, Amazon Fresh, Walmart, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Kaufland, and Lidl, or add and edit your own local stores.
- •Share your list: Share a live collaborative shopping list link, send plain text via WhatsApp or SMS, or scan a QR code between phones.
Guided WebView online shopping
Step through unchecked items inside a built-in supermarket WebView with automatic item search and one-tap check-off.
Import from your meal plan
Pulls ingredients from your scheduled meals for the week and combines matching items.
Phone-to-phone QR sharing
Shows a QR code on your screen so someone else can scan your grocery list straight onto their phone.
Saving Recipes from the Web
Found a recipe you want to try on a food blog or cooking site? Save it directly into your library without the clutter.
- •Paste any link: Paste a recipe URL in Add Dish to pull in the title, ingredients, steps, and cooking time automatically.
- •Skips ads and popups: Leaves behind video ads, popups, and long blog posts so you only keep the recipe itself.
Local Storage & Backups
Your recipes, photos, and meal plans live on your phone first, with straightforward options for backing them up.
- •Works offline: Stored on your device so you can browse recipes, plan meals, and check off groceries without internet access.
- •Optional cloud snapshots: Save point-in-time cloud backup snapshots and restore them safely without overwriting newer local recipes.
- •Local file export: Export your library to standard JSON or ZIP files anytime to keep your own copy.
- •Private photo picker: Uses Android's built-in photo picker so the app only sees the specific dish photos you choose.
- •Multi-device account sync (In Development): Automatic multi-device sync for the same account is currently under development and will become available in future updates.
Color Themes & Starter Recipes
Pick a color theme that suits your eyes and start with a ready-made set of home recipes if you don't want to begin with an empty app.
- •Four color themes: Choose between Sage, Citrus, Berry, and Iced in both light and dark modes.
- •Starter recipe sets: Optional starter recipes available in 9 languages so you can try meal planning right away.
- •Simple 5-tab navigation: Switch quickly between Home, Meal Plan, Shopping, Pantry, and History.
Cooking Mode & Kitchen Timers
A dedicated cooking screen that keeps your display awake and makes instructions easy to follow from across the counter.
- •Large text toggle: Tap the text size button to make steps and ingredient amounts larger while you cook.
- •Built-in timers: Run multiple countdown timers at once with quick +/- 10-second adjustments and clear alerts.
- •Step-by-step view: Move forward and back with bottom thumb buttons and check off ingredients as you add them to the pot.
Cooking History & Kitchen Milestones
Keep a log of the meals you make at home and see which dishes show up most often at your table.
- •Cooking timeline: Every time you mark a dish as cooked, Pantorio logs the date and starts its repeat wait window.
- •Repeat reminders: Highlights dishes you've made several times recently so you can mix in other favorites.
- •Monthly summaries: See your most-cooked dishes and how many meals you've prepared at home each month.
- •Forgotten favourites: Dishes rated 8 or higher that you haven’t cooked for two weeks are brought back to your attention.
Sharing by QR Code or Text
Pass a recipe or grocery list to a family member in seconds without needing user accounts.
- •Phone-to-phone QR codes: Show a QR code on your screen that another phone can scan with its camera to import the dish or list right away.
- •Plain-text sharing: Send clean, readable recipe text or shopping checklists through WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, or email.
- •Full library export: Export all your recipes into a standard JSON or ZIP file whenever you want to move to a new phone.
Scan with another phone to instantly import checklist. No account or internet required.
Adjustable in Settings • Calculated on your phone
Customizing Meal Suggestions
Choose a preset or adjust the sliders in Settings to match how your household likes to eat.
- •Favorites vs. variety: Decide whether 9–10 star favorites should appear most often or give lower-rated everyday meals an equal turn.
- •Freshly bought ingredients: Boosts recipes that use ingredients you recently bought or stocked in your pantry.
- •Strict repeat spacing: Keep dishes out of suggestions until their repeat wait window has passed.
Printing & PDF Cookbooks
Print recipes, weekly menus, and shopping checklists on paper, or save a formatted PDF cookbook to share with family.
- •Single recipe sheets: Print clean recipe pages with ingredients, step-by-step instructions, notes, and optional photos.
- •Full PDF cookbooks: Combine your recipes or weekly meal plan into a numbered PDF booklet with a clickable table of contents.
- •Printable grocery lists: Print a paper checklist with checkboxes and recipe labels for the fridge or market.
- •Page preview & ink saver: Preview pages before printing, choose A4 or US Letter paper, adjust text size, and switch on black-and-white ink-saver mode.
Chicken Tagine
- 800g Chicken
- 2 Onions, sliced
- 2 Carrots, sliced
- 1 tsp Cumin
- Brown chicken in oil
- Sauté onions & spices
- Simmer on low 40m
Fast Recipe & Ingredient Search
Find any dish in your collection by name, tag, category, or the ingredients sitting in your fridge.
- •Search by tag or ingredient: Type
#tagor@ingredientto narrow results right as you type. - •Sensible ranking: Exact title matches and higher-rated dishes appear at the top of the list.
- •Exclude ingredients: Add a minus sign (like
-peanuts) to hide dishes containing specific ingredients, and search without worrying about accents (spatzlefinds Spätzle).
Barcode Scanner & Nutrition Info
Scan food packages with your phone's camera to check nutrition facts, see Nutri-Score grades, and add items to your pantry or grocery list.
- •Quick camera scan: Point your camera at standard food barcodes (EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC) to look up the product.
- •Open Food Facts data: Shows Nutri-Score grades (A to E), calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, and listed allergens.
- •Portion calculator: Compare values per 100g/ml or scale to the package's serving size.
- •Saved on your phone: Previously scanned products are saved locally so you can look them up again offline.
Pantry & Allergen Tracking
Keep track of what is already in your cupboards and fridge so you don't buy duplicates at the store.
- •Grouped by department: Organize items across Produce, Dairy, Pantry, Spices, and Frozen sections.
- •Stock levels & expiration dates: Mark items as In Stock, Low, or Out of Stock, and track expiration dates.
- •Household allergen flags: Flag allergens on pantry items so recipes using those ingredients display a clear warning.
- •One-tap restock: Send low or out-of-stock staples straight to your grocery list.
Temporary 12-Hour Recipe Links
Share a clean web page of any recipe with friends or family so they can view ingredients, steps, and photos in their browser.
- •Expires after 12 hours: Shared links automatically expire after 12 hours and remove the temporary copy from the server.
- •Turn off anytime: Stop any active link immediately from Settings or when generating a new link with different photo options.
- •Easy to cook from: Guests can check off ingredients and preparation steps right in their mobile or desktop browser.
Keep your recipes and weekly meals in one place.
Read our step-by-step user guides to see how every part of Pantorio works.