A circle, not a crowd
Nothing on Forktales is public. Your recipes and plates go only to the friends you have accepted, in a feed that is newest first, with no ranking, no ads and no strangers.
Who sees Priya's tofu rice bowl
Priya shares the recipe with her friends. This is who can see it.
Priya. Her recipe. If she sets it to private, only she sees it.
Her friends, you among them. Her post in the feed and the recipe under Friends in the recipe box.
Friends of her friends. They may see Priya as a suggestion, not the recipe. Priya can turn suggestions off on her profile.
Everyone else. A signed-in member who opens her page sees her name, handle, avatar and the month she joined, with an Add friend button. They see none of her recipes or posts. Someone signed out sees nothing.
Either of you ends the friendship and access ends both ways.
Why private sharing means better recipe recommendations
A recipe site gives you ten thousand lasagnes and a star rating from people you will never meet. A friend gives you the one they made last Sunday, which you ate. Forktales is built on the second kind of recommendation, and that works only if the group is small and everyone in it is someone you chose.
Mutual recipe sharing with close friends
You send a request. Once they accept, you see each other's posts and recipes. Either of you can end it at any time, and the moment you do, access ends both ways. No one is following you.
Nothing is public
Nothing on Forktales is visible to anyone who is signed out. There are no public profiles and no public recipe pages. Friend suggestions come only from friends of your friends, and you can switch off being suggested at all.
A simple feed of friends, not algorithms
Your feed is your friends' posts in the order they were posted. There is no algorithm deciding what you should see, nothing ranked, nothing promoted and nothing to game.
No ads, no data sales
There are no ads and no ad networks, and we do not sell your data. The core of Forktales stays free, and the pricing page says what is not. Our privacy policy says what we keep and why.
Account deletion
Delete your account from your profile and your posts, recipes, ratings and friendships are removed. If a friend forked one of your recipes, their copy stays with them, credited to a deleted user.
Sharing recipes and plates with friends
Plates, asks and recipes: a recipe box that grows with every cook, recipes read off a card and cook mode for the night you make it.
Questions
Can people find me by name?
There are no public profiles and no directory. The only people who may see you as a suggestion are friends of your friends, and you can turn that off on your profile. Nobody outside Forktales can see anything.
Is there a public feed or an explore page?
No. Your feed is your friends' posts, newest first. There is nothing to browse beyond the people you have accepted.
What happens when I unfriend someone?
From that moment they lose access to your posts and recipes and you lose access to theirs, including anything either of you had saved from the other. A fork either of you made stays with its maker.
Also on Forktales
All features- Recipe boxYour recipes, your friends' and the ones you saved. All searchable, with a cook history.
- Scan a recipe cardPhotograph a card, a page or a screenshot. AI types it up for you to check.
- Import from a linkPaste a recipe's address, or send a page with the bookmarks-bar button on a computer or the share sheet on Android.
- Cook modeOne step at a time in big type, screen kept awake.
- Invite friendsBring the people you cook with. You both earn credits when they add their first recipe.
From the tales
- How to start a supper club with friends that lasts past the third dinnerHow to start a supper club with friends: who to invite, how the hosting rotates, who pays for what and the two habits that keep it going.
Stuck in a dinner rut? Borrow your friends' weeknight dinnersHow to get out of a dinner rut without a new cookbook: ask friends what they cook on a Tuesday, add one of their dishes a week and keep the ones that stick.
How to ask a friend for their recipe, and actually get itHow to ask a friend for their recipe and actually get it: the best time to ask, the follow-up messages that work and the etiquette of a recipe request.