I find Mela to be a an outstanding recipe keeper with a simple, elegant design and impressive power and ease of use. Web import allows one to edit a recipe before saving. Importing from scans is stunningly well done: the mac app prompts you to use a nearby phone to take the scan, you then select regions of the scan for ingredients, etc., and it all works quickly and smoothly. The iPad app can keep the screen awake (it is a setting). Sync uses iCloud so I don’t have to worry about a developer-specific cloud going away, and it’s very fast (at least with my small number of recipes so far). It is surprisingly affordable and with generous terms: a one-time in-app purchase covers all family members. You can even sync your collection of recipes with other iCloud users (though it is all recipes or none, which is fine with me because it avoids the need to deal with multiple libraries of recipes). Tagging is quick and easy (just start typing to see tags that match, and if the tag doesn’t exist it is created). It also has a grocery list, feeds tab and calendar integration, none of which I have tried yet.

I do really like the interface and syncing options. I've been using the other spice keeper app for a few years now. I tried importing 2 recipes from the web and Mela failed pretty hard. This alone has me at least waiting since that is an important function for me. I really liked the import scanning feature, but the couple hand written recipes I tried it on needed some work to fix. I felt like it needs some improvement in both of these areas. I did notice it said scan a recipe from a book, so that may work better, but I didn't try that yet. I also liked the Cook mode, although I use an iPad for that and both viewing modes looked great. I want to like this app, but there's a few improvements needed before I can justify converting. The star rating would also be a great improvement as I have used that in the past.Update: Mela uses tags instead of categories, which are doable, but unfortunately there’s no nesting which was a really nice feature of the other app. For instance there could be a top tag of Deserts, but then sub tags of cookies, pies, cheesecakes, etc.Update 2: After doing some imports, I’ve found a major drawback is no way to edit the recipe before importing. You must import and save the recipe and then go into the app and open the recipe to edit it. Another app I use also imports, but allows you to edit the recipe to make corrections, choose categories, etc before saving it.

This app is so good that I paid for both the Mac and iOS versions because I wanted to be able to access it on all devices. The design of this app is fantastic and feels thoroughly thought out. I'm especially impressed by the recipe import and how accurate it is. I tried the import feature on my phone on a site that had 2 separate recipes to be made together; I expected to have to fix a few things but it detected both recipes and created separate sections of ingredients/steps for each one in the app. iCloud integration works perfectly for sharing recipes with others and I really like the ability to send ingredients to a grocery list in the reminders app (which can also be shared with others). Two features I would love to see in the future:1) reading out ingredients/instructions while in cook mode since sometimes you can't look at the phone while performing certain steps or your hands are dirty.2) linking other mela recipes in a recipe such as having a homemade mayo recipe and using that in other recipes for salad dressings, aiolis, etc.

I have tried several recipe apps througout the years, and this is the one I feel like works the best for my needs. The thing that tips the scales for me is the "want to cook" option vs a calendar. All the other apps I've used you have to assign it to a calendar. Our life doesn't work that way. I will shop for about 3-4 recipeis worth of food at a time but I may not know exactly what day I'll cook them. The calendars became a hassle when plans changed. I just wanted to flag a few recipes at a time. I love the "add ingredient to the shopping list" and that you can easily mark what you already have on hand. I also love the way the IOS and the MAC versions sync seamlessly. I use AI to menu plan for 3 months at a time and having the recipies easily available on my computer makes that part easy, and having the recipeis on my phone/ipad helps when I'm cooking! I love the multiple timers. This one just checks all the right boxes for my needs.

We've tried a lot of recipe managers, but Mela is by far the easiest, simplist, and most enjoyable to use. The development is superb. Rizzi has put great work into doing the little things right, which leads to the app feeling excellent no matter what you're doing. There's lots of recipe managers out there, but Mela is exclusively a recipe manager and it does it well.A couple of features my wife and I love:- No subscription plan. Pay once, feel safe knowing that we can store recipes into perpetuity.- Great cloud sharing. Because of the magic of iCloud, my wife and I immediately see what recipes we've both added to the app. - Powerful recipe grabbers. Works with almost everything, including online and from a PDF, though manually adding a recipe (for the ones you've got in your head) isn't a pain either.Other than that the app has just about everything else you'd want in a recipe app, including a perfunctory cook mode, automatic formatting, shopping list integration (with iOS Reminders), sharing recipes externally, recipe browsing, and meal planning.--High Level Wishes--No app is perfect, and there are a couple of features that could improve Mela. That being said, Mela is far and away the best recipe manager we've used.- Shopping list integration outside of Reminders. - Ability to create groups to share with outside of just a family- Pipe dream: I've always wanted a recipe app where when I click on an ingredient in a step the amount I'm supposed to be using pops up. That way I don't have to scroll over and lose my spot to see how much salt I was supposed to add.

Mela has been the best recipe manager I've used of a few. The interface is clean, without a bunch of multi-step fatigue when choosing recipes. The real shine for Mela is the cooking view. On Mac and iPad you have a persistent pane with your ingredients, and a clear view of directions. You can also add multiple timers on the same screen! Other recipe managers I've used aren't any better than viewing a site, so I appreciate Mela being innovative.If I could change anything about Mela, it would be to allow support for Safari extensions. I don't know whether this is possible, but cooking websites have an aggravating amount of ads and other intrusive data tracking practices. Mela doesn't collect any information, and it would be wonderful if the browser followed the same privacy rules. If I want to support a cooking site I buy their cookbook, online ads are a cancer.

I had only been using Mela on my laptop and the printing the recipes I wanted to use, but I decided to sync them all to the cloud so I could use my old laptop to cook in the kitchen. I turned on sync and then futzed around doing some other stuff and when I came back to my laptop to edit a recipe there were only 49 recipes left in Mela! Hundreds of recipes had disappeared. (559 to be precise. I almost cried.) I came to the reviews to see if it had happened to anyone else and saw where someone mentioned that all of Mela’s files (even stuff you don’t want) are taking up space on the hard drive so I went digging and found my recipes! So I used the import feature in Mela and found them there, and then put them back. Apart from that small heart attack, I really like this app. It’s extremely easy to use.

As someone who has been using another app which I won't mention, this app came along and just stole my heart. I love the design, the user experience is fantastic. And importing recipes from my ex-recipe app was super easy. The only thing I would like to ask for is that the screen not go to sleep on an iPad or iPhone while the app is open. Makes it a little frustrating when your hands are covered in olive oil or whatever to have to wake up the iPad to see what comes next in the recipe. This is, by far, a very minor issue for and does not deduct a star. Thank you so much for an amazing app, good design, good UX, good job!UPDATE: The dev still hasn't added the ability to prevent the iPad/iPhone from going asleep while the app is open. Deducted a star. It's not a good thing when a developer doesn't listen to feedback.

Mela is a very solid app. I’ve tried several alternatives, but I find Mela’s interface by far the most intuitive and pleasant to use.There is, however, one small improvement that would make a big difference for users with large recipe collections: an alphabetical index on the side, similar to the A–Z scroll found in Contacts. For example, tapping “S” would jump directly to Soups or any recipe starting with “S.”I currently have close to 500 recipes, and scrolling to find a specific one can be time-consuming. Categories help to some extent, but they don’t fully solve the navigation issue when the library grows this large. An alphabetical quick-jump would significantly improve usability for power users. Thank you

Importing from the we has worked flawlessly for us so far. Also, I like the clean interface and layout. However, I’ve been unable to get a response from the support email address for a question I’ve asked twice (it’s been nearly 1 1/2 months since my first attempt). The problem has to do with accessing a Mela library shared by another user. I’ve received the invitation and accepted it, but the shared recipes aren’t visible on the receiving end. Also, I’m attempting to write a Python script to convert old MacGourmet recipes (an elderly app that hasn’t been supported for years) and I keep getting encoding errors when trying to read a Mela recipe to get a look at the json schema).

This app is such a joy to use, but there are just a few features that would tip it over the edge for me:Star ratings: I'd love to be able to use a rating scale similar to Paprika's app rather than the current 'liked' recipes system.Export format compatibility: the only format currently supported is Mela's own format, so there's no way to batch migrate recipes out of Mela and into other formats (HTML, PDF, etc.) or other recipe managers.Fetch updated recipe metadata: after migrating all of my recipes from Paprika, some of them look less polished than others (older images, missing nutritional info, etc.). Most are coming from sources like NYT Cooking & Bon Appetit that the Mela importer has no trouble parsing, so it would be nice to have an option to 're-fetch' metadata (images, notes, etc.) for existing recipes. My current work-around is just deleting the old recipe & re-downloading each one-by-one through Mela's browser, which is kind of a pain.Recipe folders: the tags list can get a little out of hand, so it would be nice to have the option of sorting them into some sort of folder system.

I am a fan of this developer and have used his RSS app for many years, which is the only reason I even tried to switch my recipe library away from Paprika in the first place. However he was not repsonsive to my email questions when I was first setting up Mela, but I was successful in importing my 1200+ recipes from Paprika into Mela. In the months since, I have been trying very hard to love this app, but for me the prettier interface isn’t enough to make up for the Paprika features that I really love and rely on and that Mela is missing: 1. Nested categories!! Mela’s category management is VERY poor compared Paprika, and the lack of a nested category structure is a major nuisance for the way I have come to use Paprika. 2. Edit a recipe’s title and assign categories during import (from the iPhone “Share” pane). Again, two critical Paprika features that I use nearly every time I import a recipe, both of which are lacking in Mela. 3. Make the Search field fixed/persistent at the top of the screen, so you don’t have keep scrolling all the way back to the top of the recipes list to change your search. Again, this is how Paprika works, and it’s very clearly a better interface than always having the search field disappearing when you scroll.4. This is not a missing Paprika feature (because that app doesn’t have this feature either), but it would be super handy to be able to select/copy text when looking at a recipe, without having to go into Edit mode first to do it.I continue to try to love this app and to make it my sole recipe manager, but these missing features end up annoying me every single time I use the app, and I’m getting close to giving up on it. I’m REALLY hoping the developer will give it a little more love and add these key missing features.