Frequently Asked Questions

FlavorShelf is an offline-first recipe manager for your phone. It's a personal recipe box where you can save the dishes you love, organize them into categories, plan your meals for the week, and import recipes from websites and social media with a single tap. Everything you save lives on your device, so it's fast and private.

No. FlavorShelf works without any account, email, or login. You can install the app and start adding recipes right away. Because there's no account, your recipes aren't tied to your identity — they simply stay on your device.

The app is free to download and use for its core features. There's an optional premium tier that unlocks additional features, which you can purchase through Google Play if you'd like to support the app and get more out of it. See the Premium & purchases section below for details.

FlavorShelf is available for Android phones and tablets through the Google Play Store. It's designed to be lightweight and to run smoothly even on older devices.

Tap the add (+) button and fill in the details: a title, the list of ingredients, the step-by-step instructions, and optionally a category, your own notes, and a photo. Save it, and the recipe is instantly stored in your collection. You can edit any of these fields later at any time.

Yes. You can sort recipes into categories (for example: breakfast, mains, desserts, or anything you like) so your collection stays tidy. As your recipe box grows, categories make it easy to jump straight to what you're looking for.

Use search to look up a recipe by name, and use filters to narrow your list down by category or the criteria you care about. This makes finding the right dish quick, even when you have hundreds of recipes saved.

Absolutely. Every recipe has a notes field where you can record your own adjustments — swapped ingredients, changed cook times, family tips, or reminders like "use less salt next time." Your notes are saved right alongside the recipe.

Yes. You can attach photos to any recipe so you always remember how a finished dish should look. Saved images are stored on your device together with the recipe.

Open the recipe and choose edit to change any of its details, or delete to remove it. Deletions are permanent, so make sure you really want to remove a recipe before confirming.

The import feature lets you bring a recipe into FlavorShelf without typing it out. You provide a link or some text, and the app reads the content and automatically fills in the recipe's title, ingredients, and instructions for you. You can then review and tidy it up before saving.

You can import a recipe from:

• A web link to a recipe page or blog.
• A social media link, such as an Instagram or TikTok post.
• Text you paste or share directly into the app.

Yes. When you're browsing a recipe or watching a cooking video in another app, use your phone's share menu and choose FlavorShelf. The link is handed to the app, which then extracts the recipe so you can save it to your collection.

Yes — importing is the one feature that needs a connection, because the content you provide is sent securely to our processing service to read and structure the recipe, then returned to your device. Everything else in the app works completely offline.

Automatic extraction does its best, but recipes on the web and social media come in every format imaginable, so occasionally a detail is missed or misread. After an import, you can review the recipe and edit any field before saving — fix an ingredient, adjust a step, or add anything that was left out. If a particular source consistently doesn't import well, let us know and we'll look into it.

Some import capacity may depend on whether you're on the free or premium tier. If you reach a limit, the app will let you know. Recipes you add manually are always unlimited.

The planner lets you assign recipes to days so you can map out what you'll cook. Add your chosen recipes to the planner, and you'll have a clear overview of your week's meals — no more staring into the fridge wondering what's for dinner.

Yes. You can update your plan at any time — swap a recipe for another, move it to a different day, or remove a planner entry entirely. Your plan is always yours to adjust.

Your recipes, meal plans, saved images, and app settings are stored locally on your device. They are not uploaded to our servers or tied to any account. The only time information leaves your device is when you actively use the import feature. For full details, read our Privacy Policy.

Only the content you choose to import — the link or text you provide — is sent, and only when you actually import something. Where it can, the app reads the recipe right on your phone and sends nothing at all; when it can't, the content is sent over a secure connection to our service, which uses trusted third-party services to read it and send back the recipe. A random code for your app is included so we can count your free imports and stop misuse — it's not linked to you personally and is never used for advertising. Imports aren't tied to any account, because the app doesn't have one. See the Privacy Policy for the full details.

No. FlavorShelf does not sell or rent your data, and it does not include third-party advertising or tracking SDKs. We don't collect your name, email, phone number, contacts, or location.

You can delete any individual recipe, meal plan, or image from within the app. To remove everything at once, clear the app's storage in your device settings or uninstall the app — that permanently removes all locally stored data.

Premium unlocks additional features on top of the free experience to help you get more out of FlavorShelf. The exact benefits are shown on the premium screen inside the app, where you can see what's included before purchasing.

All purchases and subscriptions are processed entirely through Google Play Billing. We never see or store your payment card details — that information is handled by Google under the Google Privacy Policy.

Subscriptions are managed through your Google Play account. Open the Google Play Store app, go to your subscriptions, and you can cancel or change your plan there. If you cancel, you'll keep premium access until the end of the current billing period.

Refunds are handled by Google Play according to their policies, since Google processes all payments. If you have an issue with a purchase, request the refund through Google Play, or contact us and we'll help point you in the right direction.

First, make sure you're signed in to the same Google account you used for the purchase, and that you have a connection so the app can verify the purchase. Look for a "restore purchases" option on the premium screen. If premium still doesn't appear, email us with your details and we'll sort it out.

Because your data is stored locally, uninstalling the app or clearing its data permanently removes your recipes, and we can't recover on-device data for you. We recommend backing up anything important. If you're switching phones, make sure you've preserved anything you don't want to lose before removing the app from your old device.

A few things to try:

• Check that you have a working internet connection (needed for imports).
• Make sure the link you're importing points to an actual recipe.
• Confirm you're on the latest version of the app from Google Play.
• Restart the app, or restart your device.

If the problem continues, email us and describe what happened — the more detail, the faster we can help.

We'd love to hear from you — FlavorShelf is shaped by feedback from people who cook with it. Send your ideas, requests, or bug reports to nsmobileapps.support@gmail.com.

For anything not covered here — questions, feedback, purchase issues, or privacy queries — email us at nsmobileapps.support@gmail.com and we'll get back to you.