LockPot Help

Getting started

LockPot connects to a Mealie server you already run. It does not host recipes on its own and does not work without a server.

Welcome

The first time you open LockPot, a short welcome walks through what the app is: it needs a Mealie server, you sign in with an API token, and your library stays available offline. You see this once per install.

Sign in

Enter your server's web address and paste an API token. You generate the token in Mealie under your profile. LockPot signs in with a token, not a username and password.

Servers on your home network

If your server's address is on your local network (for example 192.168.1.20, 10.0.0.5, or a name ending in .local), LockPot first explains that your device is about to ask for local network access, then connects. Choose Allow so LockPot can reach the server. If you chose Don't Allow, turn it back on in Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network (on a Mac, System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network). A server on a public web address doesn't need this.

Heads up on a new server

The first time you sign into a given server, LockPot notes that it writes a local copy of your data on the device. If you are an admin, a Back Up Now button runs a server backup right there before you continue. If you are not an admin, ask your admin to back up first. You see this once per server.

Get started

Before the first sync, a setup page lets you turn on-device AI features on or off and enable notifications for cook-timer alerts. You see this once per install.

Settings sync

A card offers to sync your preferences (sort order, display mode, and other options) across your Apple devices through iCloud. It is off by default. If LockPot finds settings from another device already in iCloud, it turns this on for you and says so. If the device is not signed into iCloud, the switch is disabled and a note explains that you need to sign in to iCloud in Settings first. You can change this anytime in Settings.

First sync

After setup, LockPot pulls your recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists into a local copy on the device while a short animation plays. When it finishes, tap Get Started to open the app. After that it keeps itself in step in the background.

Getting around

Mac, iPad, and iPhone share one sidebar with three sections. Recipes holds Recipes, Favorites, Recently Cooked, and Recipe Finder. Cooking holds Meal Plan, Shopping, and Timeline. Manage holds Categories, Tags, Foods, Cookbooks, Tools, Units, Labels, and Recipe Actions. To hide, show, or reorder rows, tap the slider button at the top of the sidebar on iPhone and iPad (or long-press a section header), or choose View > Customize Sidebar on a Mac. On iPad the sidebar sits next to the screen you picked; in portrait you can hide it with the sidebar button. On iPhone the app opens on your Default Activity screen, and Back returns to the sidebar. To open on the sidebar instead, turn on Start on Sidebar in Settings > Recipes. Tapping the row you're on takes that screen back to its list on iPad. With a keyboard, Command-1 through Command-7 switch screens and Command-R refreshes the one you're on, on Mac and iPad.

Settings

On iPhone and iPad, open Settings with the gear at the top of the sidebar, or tap the sync status at the bottom of it. On a Mac, choose LockPot > Settings. The catalogs that used to live under Settings > Library Data are rows in the sidebar's Manage section.

More than one server

LockPot remembers the servers you have signed into and can switch between them. Your token and server address are stored on the device, in the Keychain.

Recipes

Recipes is where you browse, search, and edit. Favorites and Recently Cooked are the same view narrowed to your favorites or to recipes you have cooked, and Recipe Finder suggests recipes from what you have on hand. Pick the layout that suits you and narrow the list with filters.

Display modes

Five layouts: Gallery, Cards, Tiles, List, and Compact. Switch from the View menu to move between a photo-first grid and a dense text list.

Search, filter & sort

Search by name, and filter by category, tag, or source site. Sort by name, rating, date added, and more. Cookbooks you define in Mealie show up as filters too.

Rating & ingredient-label filters

Cookbooks, Meal Plan Rules, and Recipe Finder can filter on a recipe's star rating (at least, at most, or not yet rated) and on the label attached to an ingredient's food, so you can ask for things like "four stars and up" or "anything using produce". Not rated is its own choice, separate from rated poorly. Needs Mealie 3.25 or later for cookbooks and rules; Recipe Finder works on any version because it filters on the device.

Total time filter

Cookbooks, Meal Plan Rules, and Recipe Finder can filter on a recipe's total time: at most or at least a number of minutes, no time set, or has a time. Pick a preset (15 minutes up to 2 hours) or step to any value in 5-minute steps. A recipe without a total time never matches "at most" or "at least". Cookbooks and rules need Mealie 3.29 or later and the option is hidden on older servers; Recipe Finder works on any version.

Editing

A tabbed editor covers the photo, details, ingredients, instructions, organize, nutrition, and notes. Changes save on the device right away and push to your server in the background.

Everyday actions

Scale ingredients, mark favorites, set a star rating, duplicate a recipe, and record "I Made This" to build a timeline of when you cooked it.

Clicking and right-clicking on a Mac

Sidebar rows and recipe cards respond as soon as you press the mouse button, without waiting for you to let go. Right-clicking a recipe card outlines it while its menu is open, so you can see which recipe the menu acts on; the recipe you have open stays open.

Last made & undoing a cook

Recently Cooked and the Last Made date come from your household's cooking history. Deleting a cook from a recipe's timeline moves the date back to the cook before it. On Mealie 3.29 and later the server has no way to clear the date, so deleting a recipe's only cook leaves it in Recently Cooked, and LockPot tells you when that happens.

Substitutions

Record what an ingredient can be swapped for, either another food from your list or a free-text note like "any mild white fish". Set them per recipe in the ingredient editor, or on the food itself in Settings › Data › Foods, where they apply to every recipe using it. Both kinds show under the ingredient when you read the recipe. Needs Mealie 3.26 or later.

Tidying categories & tags

Settings › Data lists your categories and tags with a count of the recipes using each one. Right-click a row to rename it, or merge it into another one when you end up with near-duplicates. Clean Up Unused finds the ones no recipe uses and lets you review the list before deleting. Counts and the unused list come from your Mealie server, so they match what the web app shows.

Tidying foods, tools & labels

On Mealie 3.29 or later, the Foods and Tools screens get their recipe counts from your server, so the counts show up as soon as the list loads. Clean Up Unused on Foods, Tools and Labels uses your server's own list of unused items. Tools gained Clean Up Unused in this release: like the other screens, it lists every tool no recipe uses, all checked, so you can uncheck any to keep before deleting. A food or label that's still on a shopping list counts as used there, so it won't be offered for deletion. Tools and labels also gain Merge Into… in the long-press (or right-click) menu: pick the one to keep, and recipes (for tools) or foods and shopping list items (for labels) move over to it. Merging needs the "Can organize group data" permission. On older Mealie versions LockPot counts from the recipes it has synced, and merge isn't offered.

Cook Mode

Cook Mode is a focused, full-screen view for when you are at the stove. Ingredients sit on one side and steps on the other, with step photos and linked ingredients shown inline.

Follow along

Tap an ingredient to cross it off, and tap a step to mark where you are. The current step scrolls into view as you move through the recipe.

Text size

The AA button sets Cook Mode's text size. It works on top of your device's text size setting, so with Larger Text turned on in Settings › Accessibility the ingredients and steps are larger still.

Screen stays awake

The screen will not dim or sleep while Cook Mode is open, so you can keep your hands in the bowl.

Timer

If the recipe has a cook time, Cook Mode shows a countdown and sends a notification when it is up.

Meal planning

Meal Plan is a weekly calendar. Add recipes to days, choose a meal type, and see the week at a glance.

Add a meal

Drop a recipe onto a day, or use a random pick. The dice picks from your current list; the wand asks your Mealie server for a pick that respects your meal plan rules.

Send to a shopping list

Add a single meal, a whole day, or the week's recipes to a shopping list in a couple of taps.

Servings scale

On Mealie 3.29 and later, a planned recipe can be scaled for that meal. Touch and hold (or right-click) the meal, choose Edit..., and pick a scale from ×0.5 to ×4. Scaled meals show a badge such as ×2, and adding the day or week to a shopping list multiplies that recipe's amounts by the scale.

Calendar sync

Optionally mirror planned meals into your Calendar, with per-meal-type default times. This is off until you turn it on.

Shopping lists

Shopping lists are card-based, with a progress bar and the recipes each list is built from.

Check items off

Tap to check and uncheck items. This works even when your server is unreachable; the changes queue and sync once you reconnect.

Check all

Checking every item on a list unlinks its recipes; that's how Mealie marks a trip as done, and LockPot asks first. On Mealie 3.29 and later, unchecking an item links its recipe again. On earlier versions you'd need to add the recipe again.

Edit or delete an item

On iPhone, touch and hold an item to edit or delete it. On iPad and Mac, use the pencil and trash buttons on the row, or right-click it.

Adding a recipe

Pick a list, scale the recipe from half up to triple, and uncheck anything you do not need. Ingredients your household has on hand carry an "On hand" tag and start unchecked. Check one to add it anyway. On Mealie 3.27 and earlier the server always skips on-hand items, so those rows stay unchecked and can't be changed.

Recipes & quantities

See which recipes a list draws from, and step a recipe's quantity up or down. Items can be grouped by label, and you can reorder the labels.

Reminders sync

Optionally mirror a shopping list into Apple Reminders, which brings it to your Watch, CarPlay, and HomePod. This is off until you turn it on.

On-device AI

LockPot uses Apple Intelligence, running on your device, to speed up a few tasks.

What it does

Parses ingredient text into structured food, unit, and quantity; suggests tags and categories for a recipe; reads a nutrition label from text you paste; and proposes a crop for a recipe photo.

Where it stops

These features need a device that supports Apple Intelligence, with it turned on in system settings. They also create entries such as foods, units, tags, and categories on your Mealie server, so they need a connection and are turned off while you are offline. You can always parse and edit by hand instead.

Offline & sync

Your library is cached on the device, so LockPot keeps working when the server is not reachable.

Reading offline

Browse recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists from the local copy. When the server cannot be reached, LockPot switches to read-only and shows an Offline label. If your server is on your home network and local network access is turned off for LockPot, it says so and tells you where to turn it back on.

Editing offline

Edits you make save on the device and push when the connection returns. Checking shopping items off is the one change allowed while offline; it queues and syncs later.

How sync works

LockPot compares timestamps and pulls only what changed. If the same recipe changed both on the server and on your device, it asks which version to keep rather than overwriting your work.

Importing recipes

Where to start

Tap the + button at the top of the Recipes list and pick New Recipe, Import Recipe, or Import from Photo. On Mac, the same choices are also in the File menu (New Recipe is ⌘N, Import Recipe is ⌘I).

From a link

Paste a URL and LockPot asks your Mealie server to scrape it. If the scrape does not work, it can fetch the page itself and try again.

Links on your own network

Mealie 3.26 and later only fetches addresses on the public internet. If you import from a site running on your home network or a VPN, the import fails until a server admin adds that address to Mealie's HTTP_ALLOW_LIST setting. This is a server setting, not something LockPot can change.

Share sheet

From Safari on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, share a recipe page to LockPot to import it. On Mac, enable the extension once in System Settings.

From Mela

Open a Mela export (a .melarecipes file) to bring those recipes in.

Backup & move

Export your recipes to a file for a backup, and import that file to restore them or move them to another server.

On your devices

Widgets

Today's meal plan, a daily random recipe, and your active shopping list, on the home screen, lock screen, and Mac desktop.

Siri & Shortcuts

Open today's plan, start Cook Mode, or add a recipe to a shopping list by voice or in the Shortcuts app.

Spotlight

Your recipes are indexed for system search, so you can find one from Spotlight and open it in LockPot.

Privacy

LockPot talks to the Mealie server you configure, and to recipe websites you choose to import from. It does not collect analytics, and it does not send your library to the developer. Your server address and API token are stored on the device in the Keychain and are not synced to iCloud. Some app settings, such as sort order and display preferences, sync through your own iCloud account when you leave that on. On-device AI runs locally.

Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

FAQ

Do I need a Mealie server?

Yes. LockPot is a companion for a Mealie server you run. It does not store recipes on its own.

How do I sign in?

With a Mealie API token, which you generate under your profile in Mealie. Username/password and OIDC/SSO logins are not supported.

Can I use more than one server?

Yes. LockPot remembers servers you have signed into and can switch between them.

Does it work offline?

For browsing, yes. Edits save on the device and sync when the server is reachable again. Checking off shopping items also works offline.

Do I need Apple Intelligence?

Only for the on-device AI features (ingredient parsing, tag and category suggestions, nutrition reading, and photo crop). The rest of the app works without it.

Does LockPot work with Larger Text?

Yes. Text follows your device's text size. At the largest sizes some screens rearrange so nothing is cut off: rows of choices wrap instead of scrolling sideways, side-by-side buttons stack, and the plus and minus buttons get bigger.

My server updated to Mealie 3.29. Anything to do?

No. Mealie 3.29 stores recipe times in a new format and keeps "last made" dates per household. LockPot reads both, saves times in the new format, and downloads your recipes once more after the upgrade so the cached copies match the server. Meal plan serving scales and unit conversion settings made in Mealie's web app are kept when you edit those items in LockPot.

Which platforms?

macOS 26, iOS 26, and iPadOS 26, from one native app.