Opening a recipe someone sent you
A recipe sent from Gustari arrives as a file — something like Chilli.gustarirecipe. Tapping it once shows you a preview of the raw file, which isn’t much use. The step people miss is the share button.
- Tap the attachment to open it.
- Tap the share button — the square with an arrow coming out of the top.
- Choose Gustari. You may need to scroll the row of apps sideways, or look for Copy to Gustari.
- Gustari opens its import screen. Check it over and save.
Nothing happens when you tap it? That’s normal — Messages hands attachments to its own previewer, not to apps. It can’t open Gustari for you however many times you tap. The share button is the way in.
The same three steps work for a whole cookbook (.gustaricookbook) and for several recipes sent at once (.gustarirecipes). A cookbook is checked against what you already have, so recipes you own aren’t duplicated — the cookbook just points at your copies.
Sending a recipe or a cookbook
Open a recipe and tap the share button, then Send Recipe…. That makes a file you can pass on however you like — Messages, Mail, AirDrop, anything that carries an attachment.
To send several at once, go to the Recipes tab, tap Select, tick the ones you want, and choose Send… from the menu. They travel as one file.
The two Export as… options in the same menu are a different thing: Markdown and PDF are documents for reading, printing or keeping. Only Send Recipe… makes a file that opens back up as a recipe in someone else’s Gustari.
For a whole cookbook, open it, tap the … button and choose Send Cookbook and Recipes…. The name is literal: the file carries every recipe in the cookbook, because the person receiving it has no library of yours to look them up in.
Whoever you send it to needs Gustari installed before the file will open into anything. Without the app, it’s just an unreadable document.
Files are a one-time copy. Once it’s sent, their version and yours have nothing more to do with each other — edit yours and theirs won’t change. If you want the two to stay in step, share your library instead.
Sharing your whole library
This is the live kind of sharing. The other person sees your recipes as you add and change them, and if you give them permission, they can edit too.
- Go to Settings → Sharing and put your name in the box. It’s only used so people can tell whose library they’re looking at.
- Tap Share My Recipe Library and give the library a name.
- Invite whoever you like, and choose whether they can just view it or edit it as well.
- They accept the invitation on their phone. Your library then appears in their Settings → Shared with Me.
To read a library someone has shared with you, go to the Recipes tab and use the library filter to switch to theirs. If they gave you view-only access, their recipes open normally but can’t be edited.
Found something of theirs you want to keep? Open it and tap the download button at the top right. That puts your own copy in your library, which you can then edit freely — their copy is untouched.
Your cooking notes stay yours. The dates, ratings and notes you log against a recipe are never shared, whoever you share the library with.
If the same recipe turns up in your library and in a shared one, you’ll only see it once — yours. Turn off Hide Duplicates Across Libraries in Settings if you’d rather see every copy.
Which kind of sharing to use
Two things called sharing do quite different jobs. The difference is whether it keeps up with you afterwards.
Send a file
For handing someone a recipe or a cookbook. They get a copy of their own to keep and change. Nothing syncs afterwards, and they don’t see anything else in your library.
Share your library
For people you cook with regularly. They see everything, kept up to date, and can add to it if you let them. It’s all or nothing — there’s no way to share just part of a library.
Your shopping list on your watch
Turn on Sync with Reminders and Gustari mirrors your shopping list into a Reminders list called Gustari. That puts it on your watch, in CarPlay, and anywhere else Reminders reaches.
- Ticking works both ways — tick it off in Reminders and it’s ticked off in Gustari, and the other way round.
- Wording only travels outwards. Editing a reminder’s text won’t rename the item in your list.
- Items are added in aisle order. Anything you add in Reminders itself goes to the end.
- It’s a per-device setting, but you only need it on one device.
Where your recipes live
In your own iCloud account, and nowhere else. There is no Gustari server and no Gustari account — your recipes sync between your devices through Apple’s iCloud, the same way your photos do.
- Nothing is tracked
- No analytics, no advertising, no third-party code of any kind in the app.
- The internet is only used when you ask
- Gustari goes online to fetch a recipe page you’ve asked it to import, and for iCloud sync. Nothing else leaves the phone.
- Scanning and AI run on your phone
- Reading a recipe out of a photograph, and tidying it into steps on iPhones with Apple Intelligence, both happen on the device. Nothing is uploaded to be processed.
- Deleting keeps a safety net
- A deleted recipe sits in Deleted Items for 30 days, where you can restore it, before it goes for good.
The full privacy policy covers permissions, sharing, and what happens to your data in detail.
Something not working?
Worth trying first: make sure both phones are on the latest build from TestFlight. A surprising number of sharing problems are one side running something older.
If it’s still wrong, send a note about what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead — and say which iPhone and which iOS version, since some features need iOS 26.
Get in touch: [email protected]