Privacy Policy

Last updated October 23, 2026

Recto is a recipe library that keeps your recipes on your devices and in your own iCloud. There are no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. This page explains the few times anything leaves your phone, and why.

Your recipes stay yours

Every recipe, photo, note, favorite and grocery list is stored on your device and, when you're signed in to iCloud, in your own private iCloud (Apple's CloudKit), so your library is the same on your iPhone and iPad. Your Recto settings and how many recipes you've imported this week are kept in your iCloud too. Apple keeps this for you under your Apple Account; we don't have a copy, and we can't see your library.

Reading a new recipe

When you import a recipe (by sharing a link or pasting text), your iPhone first opens the page itself, as a browser would. To turn it into a clean recipe, the recipe's text is sent to Recto's own server (run on Cloudflare), which passes it to an AI service to read, and sends the result back to your phone.

Only the recipe itself is sent (its text, and a cooking video's own video): never your library, your name or anything else about you.
We don't store it. Our server keeps no record of what you import.
The AI service processes it only to answer the request. It may keep it for a limited time to detect abuse, and doesn't use it to train its models.

For a cooking video (Instagram, TikTok or YouTube), the video your phone has already loaded from the post (or, for YouTube, its link) is sent along with the caption, so the steps shown in it can be read too. It isn't stored either.

A recipe you scan or pick from Photos (a cookbook page, a screenshot, a handwritten card) goes the same way: the photos are sent to be read and aren't stored.

Translating a recipe into your language works the same way.

Photos

A recipe's photo is downloaded straight from the recipe's own page (or the post you shared) and kept on your phone.

Sharing a recipe

Only when you tap Share on a recipe, that recipe (its name, description, ingredients, steps, notes, source link and photo) is kept on our server so the link you send can show it. Anyone with the link can see it. Nothing about you goes with it. A shared recipe is removed a year after it was last shared, or sooner if you ask us at [email protected].

Keeping the reader safe

So that only the real Recto app can use our server, your iPhone proves it with Apple's App Attest. This uses a random key made on your device; it contains nothing about you. To keep the service fair, our server counts requests per device or connection for a minute at a time, and then forgets them.

Purchases

Recto Pro is bought through the App Store. Apple handles the payment; we never see your payment details or Apple Account.

Notifications

Notifications (a recipe being ready, a cooking timer) are made on your phone. No notification server of ours is involved; iCloud may quietly wake Recto to bring in changes from your other devices.

Children

Recto isn't directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. Questions: [email protected].