Cook Mode

Cook Mode is the recipe view tuned for the kitchen: large step text, ingredient highlighting, and a screen that won't go to sleep while your hands are covered in flour.

Open a recipe

Tap any recipe in your library. Cook Mode is the default view: hero photo at the top, prep and cook time, servings, ingredients, then the step-by-step instructions.

On iPhone, iPad, and Mac the screen stays awake automatically while a recipe is open. Lock it manually when you're done.

Scale the servings

The servings stepper near the top of the recipe scales every ingredient quantity up or down (whole numbers, 1 through 20). Per-serving nutrition stays accurate as you change it.

The base servings on the recipe itself is what was imported. Scaling in the recipe view is for the moment. For repeatable per-recipe scaling inside a Box, use the per-recipe stepper there.

Check off ingredients

Tap any ingredient to check it off as you measure or add it. Checks are local to your session; they reset the next time you open the recipe.

Highlighted ingredients in steps

Ingredient names that appear in a step's text are highlighted inline so you can spot them at a glance without scrolling back up to the ingredients list. Tap a step to mark the one you're on, which is handy for keeping your place in a long recipe.

The highlighting is fuzzy: it handles plurals, compound ingredients (olive oil or butter), and word boundaries, so it avoids over-matching common words like "salt" when "Kosher salt" is what's listed.

Timers

Tap any time mentioned in a step ("5 minutes", "1 hour") to start a timer. Multiple timers can run at once and each shows in the active-timers banner at the top of the recipe.

Timers fire as a lock-screen notification on iOS and Android so you can step away mid-cook. On iPhone running iOS 26 or later, timers use Apple AlarmKit: the countdown ticks down live in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen, and when it finishes a slide-to-stop alarm screen takes over and rings through silent mode and Focus. On web, an in-app countdown banner stands in for the OS notification.

The first time you start a timer, iOS will ask for alarm permission. If you decline, timers still work but fall back to a standard lock-screen notification instead of the AlarmKit alarm.

Notes

If a recipe has notes (substitutions, tips, headnotes), they show below the steps. Notes from the original source are preserved on import.

Need help?

Email support@magicmealkit.com and we'll get back to you.