Importing recipes

Three ways in

• Paste a link. Start a new recipe and paste the page's address into the scan panel. The ingredients, method, times and servings fill in for you to check before you save.
• Save to Forktales. On a computer, your profile page has a button you drag to your bookmarks bar. The button shows on your profile when Forktales is open in a wide browser window. Click it on a recipe page and Forktales opens with that page, as if you had pasted its link.
• Share from your phone. On Android, with Forktales installed, share a recipe page from your browser and pick Forktales. The iPhone doesn't let web apps appear in the share sheet, so paste the link instead.

Many recipe sites publish their recipes in a standard format called recipe data. Forktales reads it directly, at no cost, and fills in the recipe. When a page doesn't have it, Forktales can read the page's text with AI instead. That spends a credit, so the app asks first. Pricing says what credits are and how you get them.

When a site says no

Some sites block requests that don't come from a person's own browser. Forktales reads the page from its server, so those sites turn it away. When that happens the app names the site and says it won't let us read the page. The bookmark button and the share sheet send the same request, so they won't get around it either. What works:

1. Take screenshots. Capture the ingredients and the method, then add the screenshots as photos in the scan panel. Several photos of one recipe spend one credit.
2. Copy the text. Select the recipe on the page, copy it and paste it into the scan panel instead of the link. This spends a credit too.
3. Type it in. Skip the scan and fill in the recipe yourself. It's also the moment to put it in your own words.

Whichever you choose, write the site's name in the recipe's Source field so the recipe still credits where it came from.

Other pages that won't import

• Pages behind a sign-in or a paywall. Forktales sees what a signed-out visitor sees, which is usually not the recipe. Use screenshots or copy the text from your own signed-in browser.
• Videos. Forktales reads text, not video. If the recipe is written out in the caption or description, copy that.
• Pinterest. A pin is followed to the page it links to. A pin with no link gives only its title and description.
• PDFs and files. The link has to open a web page. For a PDF, take screenshots of the recipe.
• Pages with no recipe on them. If Forktales can't find one, it says so, and nothing is used up.

Sharing what you import

A recipe you import from a link is saved to your own box with a link back to the page it came from. The people who wrote it still own their words, so a few habits keep things fair:

• Forktales leaves out the introduction a site writes above its recipe. That writing is the author's. Read it on their page.
• Keep the source link. It credits the author and sends your friends to the original.
• Before you share an imported recipe with friends, put the method in your own words and add what you changed. The ingredient list can stay as it is.
• Don't use Forktales to pass around recipes from a paid site or a cookbook as a copy. Name the book or the site and let your friends find it.

The community guidelines say the same thing for every recipe you share.