What's happening
Mealime has announced that it will shut down on October 21, 2026. Albertsons, which bought Mealime in 2021, is folding Mealime's recipes into the Meals Hub inside its grocery apps, and the Mealime app itself is going away.
According to Mealime's announcement:
- The app has no export feature, so there's no button that saves your recipes to a file
- Personal data, including saved recipes, meal plans and grocery lists, is deleted at shutdown
- Pro is free for everyone until the shutdown
- If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, you should confirm your subscription won't renew
Mealime says more than 4.5 million people used it. Plenty of them built a weekly routine around it, and losing a tool you rely on every Sunday is a real nuisance. It was a well-loved app. The part that can't wait is saving the recipes that only exist in your account.
What to do before October 21
Work through this in order. The first step is the one you can't do after the 21st.
- Screenshot your own recipes first. Recipes you created or edited yourself only exist in your account. Open each one and screenshot the ingredients, then scroll and screenshot the steps. A long recipe may need three or four shots.
- Screenshot the saved Mealime recipes you cook most. Mealime's recipes are moving to Albertsons' Meals Hub, but a screenshot in your camera roll is the copy you control.
- Note your settings. Write down or screenshot your diet, allergies, disliked ingredients and serving size. They took a while to set up, and you'll want them wherever you plan next.
- Check your subscription. On an iPhone, go to Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. On Android, open the Google Play Store, tap your profile icon, then Payments & subscriptions, then Subscriptions. Make sure Mealime isn't set to renew.
- Grab this week's grocery list if you're in the middle of one. A screenshot is fine.
If the 21st comes and goes before you get to everything, the screenshots you've already taken stay in your camera roll, and Recipe Rescue works on them just as well next month.
How Recipe Rescue works
Recipe Rescue is the tool on this page. It reads screenshots from Mealime, and also from anywhere else: a recipe website, another app, a page from a cookbook you own, a handwritten card.
- Upload up to six screenshots at a time.
- The AI transcribes what it can see into a recipe with a name, servings, ingredients and steps. It doesn't fill in parts it can't see. If a screenshot shows the ingredients but not the steps, the recipe is marked as partial so you know to add another shot.
- Review and edit everything. Transcription is good but not perfect, especially with fractions and small print, so check the quantities.
- Download your recipes as a file, or save them to a free account.
- Plan next week with them. Saved recipes can be worked into a plan alongside new dinners.
Screenshots are sent to our AI provider for transcription, and we don't store the images.
What's similar and what's different
A lot of it will feel familiar. You say who you're cooking for, how much time you have and what you won't eat, and you get a week of dinners with one grocery list organized by aisle.
Some things work differently:
- It starts from a budget. You set a weekly dinner budget, the week is planned to fit it, and each dinner shows a cost estimate at typical US supermarket prices.
- The dinners are drafted by AI for your household, which means every one can change on the spot. Each has one-tap swaps for cheaper, faster, vegetarian, kid-friendlier, more protein, or doubled for leftovers. It also means you should read a recipe through before you cook it.
- You can snap a photo of your fridge and plan around what you have, after you confirm what it found.
- You don't need an account to get a plan.
If you liked having the week handled for you, there's Autopilot, at $59 a year or $8.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. It remembers your household, learns from your thumbs-up and thumbs-down, doesn't repeat last week, works in your saved recipes, and emails a fresh plan and grocery list every week. If you'd rather not subscribe, a one-time $12 option covers four planned weeks. The free planner and Recipe Rescue don't require either one.
Your first week here
Start with the settings you noted down. Put allergies and dislikes in the avoid list, choose your diet preferences, and set your household size and budget. If you've rescued a few recipes, save them first so you can work them into the week. Then plan, swap anything that doesn't appeal, and shop from one list.
