Help

Profile and account

Editing your profile, household size, language, exporting your recipes, joining the feedback panel, and managing your subscription or account.

Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 15 min read

Editing your name, username, and photo

Profile is its own tab in the bottom bar. Tap 'Edit Profile' to update your first name, last name, and username, or tap the avatar to upload a photo or take a new one. If you'd rather not use a photo, you can pick a colour gradient instead.

The cropper lets you pinch and pan to position the image inside a circular frame before saving.

Getting set up: sharing and import guides

The Get started card at the top of Profile has two buttons. Set up sharing shows, in pictures for your phone, how to put A La Carte at the front of your share sheet. Import guides shows, in pictures for your phone, how to send a recipe from Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, a website, your photos or the Files app.

The ✕ on the card hides it on that phone straight away, with no confirmation, and it doesn't come back. Both buttons are always in Profile → Help too.

When you first set up the app you're asked 'Where do you find most of your recipes?' — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Websites and blogs, Cookbooks and recipe cards, or Somewhere else. The next screen, 'Here’s how to save a recipe', shows the same picture steps as Import guides for each of your picks (tap a pick to switch); Cookbooks shows the photo steps. Import guides has all of them if you want to see one again.

Right after 'How did you hear about A La Carte?', setup asks for a code. While A La Carte is invite-only in beta, that screen reads 'Enter your invite code', and you need the code from your invite to carry on. Otherwise it reads 'Have a referral code?': if a friend or creator gave you one, type it in; if not, just tap Continue — it's optional, and nothing is checked.

Until your Cookbook holds its first recipe, a bubble above the capybara button suggests a first step based on those answers, or on your goals if you picked no source — for example 'Tap here to save your first TikTok recipe' or 'Tap here to scan a cookbook recipe'. Tapping it opens that app's steps, the website steps, the photo options or the import menu. If your free imports for the week are used up, it opens the upgrade screen instead. The bubble goes away once your first recipe is in.

If you allowed notifications and still have no recipe saved about a day after setup, you get one reminder, timed for between 9am and 8pm on your phone's clock. Its wording follows where you said you find recipes — for example 'Save your TikTok finds' or 'Snap your favorite recipes'. Tapping it opens the Cookbook. Saving any recipe first cancels it — though a recipe saved through the iPhone share sheet only cancels it once you next open the app. It is a one-off: it never repeats, and if the app is open when it comes due, it isn't shown.

Using A La Carte without an account

When you first set up the app, the screen after the plans asks you to create an account with Apple, Google or email. You can tap "Skip for now" and use A La Carte as a guest: everything works, on the free plan or on A La Carte Plus if you subscribed. A guest's recipes live in an account tied to this phone only, so deleting the app or signing out loses them. Profile shows a "Create your account" card until you make one; creating it keeps everything you already have. If the Apple ID, Google account or email you pick already has an A La Carte account, the app offers to sign you in to it instead, and moves your guest recipes, plans and lists into it. A subscription bought as a guest comes back with Restore Purchase on a new phone.

Household size

Profile → My Kitchen → Household sets how many people you usually cook for. When you cook for more than one, Chef writes new recipes for that many servings and a recipe you type in yourself starts there. Cooking just for yourself, both start at 4. Recipes you save from elsewhere keep their own serving count; you can change servings whenever you plan, shop or cook.

Changing units and temperatures

Profile → My Kitchen → Units changes how recipes show amounts and temperatures.

A line under each choice shows what it does, such as 1 cup milk becoming 240 ml milk. The change applies to recipe pages, their steps and Cook Mode, and it's saved to your profile. It only changes what you see: your saved recipes are never edited, and As written shows them exactly as saved. Amounts convert within the same kind of measure (cups to milliliters, pounds to grams), never volume to weight, and counts like '3 cloves' stay as they are. The recipe editor and your grocery and pantry lists keep their own units.

Changing the language

Profile → Language switches the app between the supported languages. The interface changes immediately, and the assistant answers you in that language too.

Your current language sits at the top under Your language, and every other language is listed below under All languages, each by its own name with its name in the app's language underneath. Tap one and it applies straight away: it moves up to the top and the text switches, then the screen closes itself about half a second later, so you do not have to close it yourself. Tapping the language you are already on closes it the same way. To leave without changing anything, use the X at the top left, swipe the screen down, or press Back on Android.

Before you sign in there is a second way in: the pill showing a flag and a language code in the top-right corner of the welcome screen opens the same Select Language list, and it closes itself after a pick in the same way.

Recipes are saved in English and shown to you in your chosen language. Keeping the saved copy in English is what lets the app match your ingredients to real grocery items, so recipe text is translated for display rather than rewritten.

Turning animations off

When you add things, Capy shows you where they went: a new recipe is carried into its spot in your Cookbook, and items from a pantry photo or a grocery list are placed straight into their rows in Pantry or Groceries. On the free plan, the free-imports pill at the top of your tabs also opens with its stickers popping in when you open the app. If you'd rather skip that, go to Profile → Settings → Animations and pick Off.

With it off, everything lands quietly in place: new recipes still get their Add to Collection tag, and new pantry and grocery items appear in their rows with a brief highlight and their New tag. The free-imports pill simply appears. If Reduce Motion is on in your phone's settings, these stay quiet either way. To bring them back, pick On on the same page. The choice is saved to your account, so it follows you to any phone.

Exporting your recipes

Profile → Export Recipes produces a file containing your saved recipes that you can keep or move elsewhere. Your recipes are yours; you're not locked in.

To send a single recipe to someone instead, use the share icon on the recipe itself.

Recovering a deleted recipe

Profile → Recently Deleted (under Data, next to Export Recipes) lists every recipe you have deleted in the last 30 days, each with a countdown — '12 days left', then 'Deletes today'.

Tap Restore to put a recipe back exactly where it was: in its collections and on any meal-plan days it was on, with its share link working again. Tap Delete now to remove it immediately — that asks you to confirm and really cannot be undone.

While a recipe is in Recently Deleted it is out of your cookbook, collections, meal plan and search, and its share link stops working. After 30 days it is deleted for good, photos included. Deleting your whole account skips this waiting period — see 'Your plan, and what A La Carte Plus adds'.

Helping shape the app — joining the feedback panel

Profile → Help Shape A La Carte lets you opt in to short video calls with the team about the app. It is the way to give feedback that does not fit in a form — how you actually cook, what gets in your way, what you wish the app did.

Turn on 'Contact me about feedback sessions' and we may email you to set one up. You can add a different contact email and your contact preferences — good days or times, or what you would like to talk about — then tap Save. Tap Edit to change them later.

Calls take about 30 minutes. It is optional, there is no obligation, and you can opt out on the same screen at any time. Opting out also removes the contact email and preferences you entered. Nothing you enter there is shared or used for marketing.

For a specific bug or a single feature idea, Profile → Request a Feature is the faster route.

Your plan, and what A La Carte Plus adds

A La Carte is free to use. On the free plan you can import five recipes a week — from a link, a social post, a photo, a document, or by asking for a new one — and the recipes are yours to keep. The count resets every Monday, and you can see how many you have left in the pill at the top of the Cookbook, Pantry, Meal Plan and Groceries tabs, and in the import menu: how many you have left, with a produce sticker for each free import: in colour while it's still free, an outline once it's used. Tap it to see what A La Carte Plus adds. Once the week's imports are gone, every sticker is an outline and a small gold 'Upgrade' button with the golden apple sits at the end of the pill. While the orange Resume chip for a cook you've minimized sits beside it, the pill drops the number and keeps just the stickers. When you open the app, the pill opens from its right end and pops its stickers in one by one; with none left, the gold Upgrade button pops in last and glows twice. When your last free import of the week lands, that import's sticker pops away and the gold Upgrade button springs in.

The pill moves once the recipe's card has completely finished, cover photo included, so a recipe you generate in Create counts when its AI photo appears. If two imports are running at once, the pill moves once, when the last one finishes. When a share brings in more recipes than you have left, the ones that fit are saved and a short banner at the top of the screen says how many were left out ('2 more needed A La Carte Plus'), with a produce sticker for each of the week's free imports, 'Resets Monday' and a gold Upgrade button. Tap it, tap its X or swipe it up to close it.

Typing a recipe in yourself never counts, and neither does saving a recipe somebody shared with you.

A post, document or set of photos holding several recipes spends one import per recipe. If a shared post holds more than you have left, the ones that fit are saved and the rest are left out, with a message saying how many — see 'Roundup posts with several recipes' under Recipe Imports. A document or a set of photos gives you a checklist instead (see 'Importing a PDF or a file from another app').

A La Carte Plus lifts the import limit and adds Cook Mode, Ask Capy, AI recipe edits, the pantry photo scan and recipe photo generation. Those are marked with a small golden apple while you are on the free plan. There is a free trial on the yearly plan.

When you are out of imports for the week, anything that would spend one takes you to the upgrade screen instead of failing with an error. In the import menu that happens on the tile itself: Social, Photo, URL and Document close the menu and open the upgrade screen, so no picker, camera or link box ever opens and nothing is uploaded. The same goes for generating a recipe with AI, the shutter and the photo-library button on the scan screen, 'Use Photo Import' on a failed import, sharing a link, a photo or a file into A La Carte, Edit with AI and the pantry photo scan. The upgrade screen says at the top which limit you reached, and nothing is imported or changed in the meantime.

Tapping one of those tiles also re-reads the count from our side, and it is checked again after you have chosen your photos or file, or tapped Import on a link — so imports you spent on another phone, or while the picker was open, take you to the upgrade screen rather than starting an upload that would only be refused. It works the other way too: if the app was left open across the Monday reset, the count it is still showing is treated as out of date rather than as a wall, and the import goes ahead while the real count is fetched.

Tapped inside the app, the upgrade screen opens straight away. When the tap came from outside — sharing into A La Carte from another app, or an import refused while A La Carte is still starting up — it can arrive a moment later instead: it waits until you are back on one of the main tabs with nothing else open, so it doesn't appear on top of a sheet that is still closing. If it hasn't appeared after about twenty seconds it gives up quietly — the 'Upgrade' pill at the top of the tab still gets you there. Sharing several things in quick succession only raises it once.

Typing a recipe in yourself is free on every plan, so Plus → Import/Create → Create → Manual still opens normally with no imports left (see 'Typing in your own recipe').

Profile → Subscription shows your plan at the top: on the free plan, how many free imports you have left this week, with a produce sticker for each, and that they reset on Monday. Below it, a table compares the free plan with A La Carte Plus, row by row. A subscriber sees when the plan renews, or, after cancelling, the date it ends; during a free trial, the date billing starts. 'Modify Subscription' opens the store's subscription page, where you can change or cancel the plan, or turn renewal back on. Founding Testers see their thank-you plan and the date it runs until. Restore Purchase, Terms and Privacy are at the bottom. It asks the store again every time you open it, so coming back to it after a purchase or a restore shows the new plan straight away; if the store doesn't answer, it says so, with a Try again button. Billing is handled entirely by the App Store or Play Store — we never see your card details, and cancelling is done there.

If a purchase or a restore doesn't go through, the message says why in plain words. 'Subscriptions are not available yet' means Plus isn't on sale in the version you have, and the free plan carries on as normal. 'Purchase pending' means the store hasn't confirmed the payment yet; Plus unlocks by itself once it does. Otherwise it tells you to check your connection, that purchases are turned off on this device, or that the App Store or Google Play couldn't complete it. Closing the store's payment sheet without buying shows no message at all.

A restore that finds your subscription says 'Subscription restored'; one that finds nothing says 'Nothing to restore', and suggests signing in with the Apple ID or Google account you subscribed with if it was a different one. Both appear in A La Carte's own box rather than a system alert, and they read the same wherever you tapped Restore — the upgrade screen, the screen offering Plus when you first set up the app, or Profile → Subscription. Finding nothing leaves you where you were. Finding your subscription moves you on once you tap OK: during setup it finishes setting up on Plus and then offers to sign in to the account you subscribed with, rather than leaving you on the upgrade screen, and at any other time the upgrade screen closes.

Profile → Account Settings shows the account you're signed in to: its email, how you sign in, when you joined, your plan, and an account ID you can copy for support. Sign-in Methods, inside it, connects or disconnects Apple and Google sign-in, and changes the password of an email sign-in. Delete Account is at the bottom of Account Settings; Logout is at the bottom of Profile. It signs out only the phone you're holding, straight away and even with no connection, and that phone stops getting your notifications; any other phone or tablet signed in to the same account stays signed in until you log out there too. If you're using A La Carte as a guest, Logout warns you first: signing out of a guest account removes its recipes, plans and lists from the phone for good. Deleting is permanent: your recipes, pantry and groceries are removed and can't be recovered — the 30-day Recently Deleted safety net for single recipes does not apply. The confirmation names the email address of the account about to be deleted (a guest account has none, so it says 'Delete your guest account?'); check it, because it is possible to have more than one account without realising (see 'My recipes are missing after signing in' under Common issues).

When the Terms or Privacy Policy change

When something changes in the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy or the subscription terms, a notice appears over the app a couple of seconds after you open it — on whichever tab you land on, once you are signed in. It gives the change a title, the date it takes effect ('Effective October 1, 2026') and a few short paragraphs saying what is different.

The only way out is the 'Got it' button at the bottom. You can't swipe the notice away, and on Android the back button does nothing while it is up. If you force-close the app instead, it comes back the next time you open it, and every time after that until you tap 'Got it'. Tapping it is a confirmation that the notice was shown to you, not an extra agreement to anything.

When there is a document behind the notice, a second button above 'Got it' opens it — 'Read the full Terms', 'Read the Privacy Policy' or 'See your subscription'. Going back from there returns you to the notice rather than dismissing it.

The notice is written in your display language. If that is not English, a line at the bottom says an English version is kept on record.

You never have to wait for a notice to read the documents: Profile → Terms of Service and Profile → Privacy Policy are always there, and Profile → Subscription holds the subscription terms.