How To

Short, plain answers to the things people actually ask. Pick a topic, or just read straight down — the whole page takes about five minutes.

Getting started

  1. On the home page, tap Create Account and sign in with Google. That's the whole signup — there's no password to invent.
  2. Tick Keep me signed in if this is your own phone or computer. Leave it unticked on a shared one and you'll be signed out when you close the browser.
  3. You land on your Dashboard. Everything you save lives there.
  4. Open Profile once to add your name, a photo and the food you like. It takes a minute and it's what other people in your communities see.

Adding a recipe by hand

  1. Dashboard → + Add New Recipe.
  2. Type the Recipe Name. This one is required — nothing saves without it.
  3. Fill the Ingredients rows. Each row is three parts: the amount (2), the unit (cup), and the ingredient itself (All-purpose flour).
  4. Not in the dropdown? Choose Other… at the bottom of the list and type it in. Same for the unit.
  5. + Add ingredient adds another row. The × on the right removes one.
  6. Write the Instructions in the big box — one step per line reads best.
  7. Set Servings. That's what the calorie estimate divides by, so getting it right makes the numbers useful.
  8. Tap Save Recipe.

The nutrition panel fills itself in as you type. It's an estimate worked out from your ingredients, not a lab result — treat it as a guide.

Pasting a recipe you found

The Paste a recipe box at the top of the Add Recipe page takes a block of copied text and sorts it into the form for you — name, ingredients, steps.

  1. Copy the recipe text wherever you found it (the sections below show how, network by network).
  2. Dashboard → + Add New Recipe.
  3. Tap inside the Paste a recipe box and paste. It fills the form the moment you paste — you don't have to press anything.
  4. Scroll down and check it. It's a best guess, so an ingredient sometimes lands in the wrong row.
  5. Fix anything that's off, then Save Recipe.
Paste the words, not just the link. A link on its own doesn't work — Stirring Stories doesn't go and read the page for you. You need the actual recipe text on your clipboard. Paste the link as well if you like; it gets filed under Where it came from as credit.

Pasting only the ingredients is fine too — type the name and steps yourself and paste just the list. Nothing gets lost either way.

…from Facebook

On a phone

  1. Open the post and tap See more so the whole recipe is showing.
  2. Press and hold on the text until the selection handles appear.
  3. Drag the handles over the whole recipe, then tap Copy.
  4. Paste it into the Paste a recipe box.

On a computer

  1. Click See more to expand the post.
  2. Click and drag over the recipe to select it, then Ctrl+C (+C on a Mac).
  3. Paste into the box with Ctrl+V.

If the recipe is only in a comment, copy the comment. If it's only in a video with nothing written down, there's nothing to paste — you'll have to type it in by hand.

…from TikTok

On TikTok the recipe is nearly always in the caption under the video, or in a pinned comment from the person who made it.

  1. Tap the caption to expand it fully.
  2. Press and hold on the caption text, then Select allCopy.
  3. If the caption is short and the recipe is in a comment instead, press and hold that comment and copy it.
  4. Paste it into the Paste a recipe box.

To keep credit for the creator, also tap ShareCopy link and paste that link into Where it came from.

TikTok captions come with emoji bullets, hashtags and "comment RECIPE for the full video" — paste the whole thing. All of that is stripped out automatically, and 👉 or 🔸 in front of a line is understood as a bullet.

If a TikTok recipe is only spoken in the video, there's no text to copy. Type it in by hand, or check the comments — someone has usually written it out.

…from Instagram

  1. Tap more on the caption to open it out.
  2. Press and hold the caption text → Copy. On a computer, drag to select it and press Ctrl+C.
  3. Paste it into the Paste a recipe box.
  4. For credit: the menu on the post has Copy link. Put that in Where it came from.

Instagram Reels behave like TikTok — the recipe is in the caption or a pinned comment, not the video.

…from Pinterest

A Pin is usually just a picture pointing somewhere else. There are two cases:

  1. The recipe is written in the Pin description — press and hold it, copy, and paste it in.
  2. The Pin links out to a blog — tap the Pin to open the site, then follow …from a blog or website below. That's where the real recipe lives.

…from a blog or website

  1. Most recipe blogs have a Jump to Recipe button at the top. Tap it to skip the life story.
  2. Select from the word Ingredients all the way down through the last instruction.
  3. Copy, then paste into the Paste a recipe box.

Don't worry about grabbing the extras — ratings, prep times, "Print Recipe", ads and the newsletter box are all recognised and thrown away. Headings like Ingredients and Instructions are what the importer uses to split things up, so it's better to include them.

Adding or changing the picture

The photo control lives on the recipe form, not on the recipe page. That trips people up.

  1. Open the recipe and tap Edit Recipe. (Making a new one? It's on the same form.)
  2. Scroll to Photo, under the nutrition panel.
  3. Tap Choose File and pick a picture from your phone or computer.
  4. A preview appears. Picking another picture replaces it; Remove photo takes it off.
  5. Tap Save Recipe — the picture isn't stored until you save.
No Photo section on the form? Photo uploads come with Pro and Premium. On the Free plan the box is replaced by a note telling you which plan you're on. If you've already paid and it still says Free, see Plans & upgrading.

Big photos are shrunk automatically before they're saved, so you can use a picture straight off your camera roll. Recipes with no picture simply show no picture — nothing is filled in on your behalf.

Joining & creating communities

A community is a private group — a family, a few friends, a church group — that shares recipes with each other.

Joining one

  1. Get the 6-character code from whoever runs it (something like K7QM2X).
  2. Go to Community in the menu.
  3. Type the code under Join a Community and tap Join. Capitals don't matter.
  4. It appears under My Communities and you can see everything shared there.

Starting one

  1. CommunityCreate a Community.
  2. Give it a name and a line about what it's for.
  3. A join code is generated for you. Send that code to the people you want in it — that's the only way in.

Putting a recipe in one

  1. On the recipe form, use the Share to Community dropdown near the bottom.
  2. Leave it on None (Private) and only you can see the recipe.
  3. You can change this later — open the recipe, tap Edit Recipe, pick a different one, save.

Free includes 1 community, Pro 5, Premium as many as you like. That's communities you own; joining other people's is unlimited on every plan.

Sharing a recipe out

Open any recipe and use the share buttons — WhatsApp, Email, Pinterest, Facebook and X.

Your recipes are readable only by you and your communities, so a bare link would be useless to anyone else. Every share carries the recipe text instead — the name, the full ingredient list with amounts, the steps, and a credit line back to the original if you filled one in.

Making a printable cookbook

  1. Go to Recipe Book from your Dashboard.
  2. Give it a title, a subtitle and an author name.
  3. Tick the recipes you want in it.
  4. Generate the PDF, then print it or send it to a print shop.

The recipe book is a Premium feature.

Plans & upgrading

What you getFreeProPremium
Recipes510Unlimited
Communities you own15Unlimited
Photo uploadsYesYes
Private communitiesYes
Printable recipe bookYes
Paste importer, search, allergens, comments, likesYesYesYes

To upgrade

  1. Go to Profile and tap Upgrade.
  2. Pick Pro or Premium, then choose the same plan from the dropdown on the PayPal button.
  3. Pay with PayPal or a card.
Upgrades are switched on by hand, usually within a day. Right after you pay, your account still reads Free and photo uploads stay locked — that's expected, not a fault. If it's been longer than a day, email stirringstories2@gmail.com with your PayPal receipt and the email you sign in with, and we'll sort it out.

Your plan is shown as a badge at the top of your Profile. That badge is the real answer to "did my upgrade go through?".

Changing the language

The language picker is in the top bar on every page, and under the banner on the home page. Twelve languages: English, Español, Português, Français, Italiano, Ελληνικά, Kreyòl, 中文, 한국어, עברית, العربية and Tagalog. Hebrew and Arabic flip the whole layout right-to-left.

That changes the app's own buttons and labels. Recipes stay in the language they were written in — open one and use the 🌐 Translate button to read it in yours.

Something went wrong

My recipe saved with nothing in it.

This used to happen when text was left sitting in the Paste a recipe box and Save was pressed without importing it first. It's fixed: pasting now fills the form straight away, and Save picks up anything still in the box. A recipe with no ingredients and no steps is refused outright rather than saved empty.

My ingredients didn't show up but my instructions did.

Same cause, same fix. Ingredients have to end up in the numbered rows — if the rows are empty when you save, there are no ingredients. Paste into the box and watch the rows fill in below.

The importer put things in the wrong places.

It's reading a best guess out of plain text, so it won't be perfect. The copied text stays in the box on purpose so you can check it against the form. Fix the rows by hand and save — nothing is locked.

There's a picture on my recipe that isn't mine.

An older version of the app filled in a stock photo when a recipe had none of its own — that's where the loaf of bread on a chicken recipe came from. It's gone. Recipes without a picture now show no picture, and yours will show a note pointing you to where you can add one.

I paid but I'm still on the Free plan.

Upgrades are applied by hand, usually within a day. See Plans & upgrading.

I've hit my recipe limit.

Free holds 5 recipes and Pro holds 10. Delete one you don't need, or upgrade from your Profile. Nothing you've already saved is ever removed when a limit is reached.

Something else.

Email stirringstories2@gmail.com. Tell us what you tapped and what happened — it's the fastest way to get it fixed.