Get the recipe out of a YouTube video

Paste the video link into Cookfolio: the AI watches the video itself, picture and sound, and turns it into a structured recipe, ingredients, quantities and steps, that you read over before saving. The recipe does not have to be written down anywhere. It works on public videos under 30 minutes, Shorts included. Allow one to two minutes.

Why the recipe never makes it into your notes

The problem with a cooking video is not the cooking, it is that there is nothing to copy. The recipe is spoken. The cook says “about 200 grams of flour” with both hands busy, and that sentence exists nowhere as text. No list to select, no block to paste.

Then there is what is never said at all. A hand tips a bowl of sugar into the pan, a glug of oil goes in, a knob of butter melts. You can see roughly how much, but not write it down as a number.

And spoken quantities go past in three seconds. “Two hundred flour, three eggs, eighty butter” comes out in one breath, so you pause, scrub back, pause again, eight times over for twelve ingredients.

The next day, the video sits in your history, but finding the amount of flour means opening it and hunting again. A recipe you have to re-watch is not a recipe you own.

Importing a video, step by step

Open Cookfolio, tap the ”+” button, choose “Import from a link”, paste the URL, wait, read it over, save.

Which links work: youtube.com/watch?v=…, youtu.be/…, youtube.com/shorts/… (Shorts import fine), youtube.com/embed/…, plus the m.youtube.com and music.youtube.com hosts. A timestamp (&t=125s) or a share parameter (?si=…) is fine too, since the app pulls out the video ID and ignores the rest. A playlist link (youtube.com/playlist?list=…) does not work: paste the link to the specific video instead.

On timing, the honest number: the app shows “Watching the video…” and tells you to allow one to two minutes. The video is genuinely being watched.

The thumbnail is downloaded automatically and offered as the recipe photo on the review screen. Keep it, crop it, or swap in your own picture.

Nothing is saved on its own. Every import lands on an editable review screen first, with title, servings, times, every ingredient line, every step and the tags open for correction. You confirm, then it goes into your collection, as with every other AI import in Cookfolio.

What the AI watches, and what it never reads

Worth being precise about, because it changes which videos are worth trying. The app does not go hunting for a written recipe elsewhere. It analyses the video itself, pictures and soundtrack together. That is what catches a quantity said out loud and never displayed, and an ingredient that only appears on the worktop. It also reads text burned into the picture: banners, subtitles, the ingredient list some channels show over the intro.

One limit, plainly: on YouTube, the description under the video is not sent to the AI. That differs from TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, where the post caption is read first. A channel that lists quantities only in its description, never saying them out loud, will come back thin. Two workarounds: import the description as text, or paste the blog link if the description points to one.

There is also no translation. An American video gives an English recipe, an Italian video an Italian one, whatever language your app is set to.

And the AI transcribes, it does not cook. When something is missing or unclear it leaves the field empty instead of filling in a plausible number. That is why you find blanks at the review stage. The blanks are the honest answer.

Which videos go through, and which get refused

Over 30 minutes: refused, with a clear message (“Videos over 30 minutes are not supported”). That rules out lives, replays and long masterclasses.

Private, unlisted, deleted or non-existent: refused before any analysis (“This video is private or unavailable”). Unlisted counts as private here.

Not a recipe: a vlog, a restaurant tour, a music video. The AI spots it and says so rather than inventing a recipe.

A refused import does not count against your 5 free imports. The counter only moves once a recipe has actually been extracted, so a failure is never deducted.

Two guardrails: wait a few seconds between imports, and the daily total is capped at 100. Normal use never comes near either.

One free plan trap: free means 5 recipes and 5 lifetime imports, two separate ceilings. If your collection already holds 5 recipes, the import is blocked even with credits left.

What to check before you save

The review screen is not a formality. Six things, in the order they tend to go wrong.

Quantities said fast. “Two hundred flour, three eggs, eighty butter” in two seconds is exactly where a digit slips. Check them one by one against the video.

Ingredients shown but never named. If the cook pours an amber liquid without saying what it is, the AI will not guess between honey and maple syrup. A missing ingredient is usually one that was never spoken.

Quantities with no number. When salt goes in without measuring, the quantity stays empty. Cookfolio treats “pinch”, “handful”, “clove”, “sprig” and “slice” as real units, but with no number in front they will not scale if you change the number of servings later.

Fahrenheit temperatures. American channels say “350 degrees”. The step text is kept as spoken and the app converts temperatures in neither direction, so rewriting 350°F as 180°C is your job.

Servings and times. They stay empty when the video never announces them. Servings is worth filling in by hand: it is the baseline every quantity recalculation works from.

Cups. English-language channels measure in cups, and cups stay cups. Volume converts to volume, but a cup never becomes grams, because that depends on what is in the cup. See cups to grams.

Picking videos that import well

Three signs of a video that imports cleanly. The cook says quantities out loud instead of pouring in silence. The video puts the ingredient list on screen, at the start or as a banner, the best case of all since that text is read directly. And the format is short and follows the recipe start to finish.

What imports badly, predictably: silent videos over a music bed, compilations like “5 recipes in 10 minutes” (you get one recipe, not five), and channels that put everything in the description.

Plenty of channels also publish on a blog. If a description links to the written version, that link imports more reliably, though it still uses one of your free imports.

Once the recipe is in your collection

Cooking mode: full-screen step by step, the screen stays awake, ingredients on a checklist. Any duration written in a step becomes a tappable timer, so “rest for 25 min” gives a 25-minute timer, detected in all six languages. There is no voice control.

The meal plan: drop the recipe on a day, Monday to Sunday, with no lunch or dinner split. The shopping list is built from planned meals only, and duplicates merge across compatible units, so 500 ml and 1 l come out as one line.

Sharing is a web link. There is no PDF or Excel export.

The plans, exactly: free gives 5 recipes and 5 lifetime imports across all sources; Pro is 4.99 euros a month or 39.99 a year, unlimited on both; Family is 6.99 a month or 59.99 a year for up to 4 accounts sharing recipes, meal plan and shopping list in real time, each person keeping their own login. Web, iOS and Android, six languages. An internet connection is required: there is no offline mode.