Mela - Recipe Manager

Ok I’ve never done this before so I don’t know how long it’ll take before this feedback reachers developers. But great app. 10/10. I could get into the details, but the sample photos and other reviews do all that. I just have two suggestions that I really want to see added in the near future One, get a better sorting system. All, want to cook and Favorites is just ridiculous considering how file management is handled these days. Allow us to create folders and that fixes this completely. I want to have all my bakery stuff in one place, breakfast stuff in one place, chicken stuff in one place, you get the point. It’s honestly more impressive that this isn’t already included by default but enough complaining you get the point. Two, something I think would be cool is to have the ingredients for each step automatically highlighted instead of having to do it manually. I find myself deselecting everything, and then manually highlighting the step ingredients when I get to each step. When I saw one of the sample photos showcasing this feature I got excited because I thought it was an automatic thing but guess not.

I love this app so much. It’s clean, simple, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. It feels like this app pulls all the features I’ve loved from different apps all in one place. Seem less recipe import, measurements and amounts are bolded and highlighted in different colors, you can switch between ingredients and instructions in cook mode, see the previous/next steps (as opposed to only being able to view one step at a time), you can add timers, tag recipes, sync your grocery list with Reminders…and probably more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. However, there are some suggestions I have for minor tweaks that would make the user experience (or at least mine) more seamless. 1. It would be useful if I could select several recipes, click “edit,” and tag them appropriately without having to go through each recipe one by one. Also, when I’m viewing a recipe and click the three dots to edit it, I’m not sure why I can only add one tag or do one thing before the window disappears and I have to click on it again. This is a minor issue but gets rather tedious when you add a bunch of new recipes from a website and have to then organize them all 2. Provide a way to create a meal plan without syncing to iCal. I don’t like to clutter my calendar, and usually when I meal plan I don’t always know what day I’m going to cook what. Literally other than that, this app is 10/10 and I use it so often. It’s definitely made meal planning be less daunting now that I don’t have to check 5+ websites or sources for inspiration, it all just lives in one place

All you need to know is that this app removes all the personal backstory blather from recipe sites (“Want to make a corn muffin? First, here’s 4,000 words about my experience on 9/11…”) and leaves you with a clean copy of what you were looking for in the first place. From there, you have all manner of customization and sync options if you want, but the basic task of scraping and delivering a usable recipe from your basic, awful, SEO-tilted-template recipe site is incredibly accurate, quick, and consistent. I do not miss the newsletter interstitial popups. I celebrate their absence. It’s been a long time since an app was so good I actually looked forward to rooting through all my old notes and bookmarks to populate it. Mela is that app, and it’s actually been fun to see all the insanely different stuff I saved over the years come together in a single, sensible presentation. Nice touches abound (keep-awake on iPad is great). There is of course room for refinement (“select all” and “select none” buttons when adding groceries would be nice), and the app doesn’t save your place when you switch to another app, but these are nice-to-haves. The dev is great, so I expect these kinds of rough edges will get dealt with. On that note, if you’re into RSS news feeds, check out Reeder by the same dev, also best in category, imo.