How to activate and use Cookfolio Family: full guide

Cookfolio’s Family plan lets 4 accounts share the same cooking workspace: recipes, planner, shopping lists. This guide walks through how to activate it, invite the other members and manage the family day-to-day.

Before you start

To subscribe to Family, you need:

• A Cookfolio account (free or already Pro, either works)
• A valid payment method
• A way to reach the other members (SMS, WhatsApp, email…)

You’ll automatically become the family’s admin: you pay the subscription and manage invitations. The other members pay nothing and won’t see your payment info.

1. Activate the Family plan

Open Cookfolio (web, iOS or Android) → Settings → Family section → Activate Family plan.

Choose monthly or yearly billing (yearly works out cheaper over twelve months). Payment goes through Stripe on the web, Google Play on Android or the App Store on iPhone. The subscription is active immediately.

If you were already on Pro, the app automatically calculates proration: you only pay the difference for the remaining period of your Pro subscription. No double-billing.

2. Invite the other members

After activation, go to Settings → Family → Manage my family. You’ll see:

• Your invite code (6 characters, e.g. A4F9KZ)
• A Copy button to paste it into a conversation

Send this code to the people you want to add, by SMS, WhatsApp, email, whatever works. Maximum 4 accounts total in the family (including you), so 3 invitees.

3. On the invitee’s side

Each invited person needs to:

1. Create a free Cookfolio account (if they don’t have one)
2. Go to Settings → Family → Join with a code
3. Enter the 6-character code and tap Join

At that point, a dialog may appear: “Import my recipes?”. If the person already had personal recipes in Cookfolio, they can pick which ones to copy into the family workspace. Duplicates (same title + ingredients as recipes already in the family) are detected and skipped automatically.

Recipes that weren’t imported stay in their personal space, frozen: they’ll become visible again if the person leaves the family later. Nothing is lost.

4. Living in the shared family space

Once everyone has joined, you all work on the same cookbook:

• Any recipe added by any member appears for everyone
• The weekly planner is shared (you see what’s planned for Saturday night even if someone else added it)
• The shopping list builds from everyone’s meals
• Custom tags are shared
• Each member reads quantities in their own measurement system, Metric or US, while the shared recipe itself stays as written (more on units)

Important note: all members have the same write rights, including deletion. Anyone can delete a recipe or modify the planner. There’s no “admin can do everything / member limited” hierarchy. Choose your invitees with trust. Cookfolio doesn’t provide automatic recovery for deleted data.

5. Managing the family

From Settings → Family → Manage my family, the admin can:

• Regenerate the invite code (the old one becomes invalid), useful if you’ve shared the code too widely
• Remove a member (icon to the right of the name), the person reverts to the free plan and their previous personal recipes become visible again

Each member (admin included) can:

• Leave the family from the same screen, back to free plan, personal recipes unfrozen

If the admin chooses to dissolve the family (“Dissolve family” button), all shared recipes/planner/shopping lists are merged into their personal workspace. Other members revert to free and keep their prior data.

Things to know

• Maximum 4 accounts per family. For larger groups (team, restaurant), a dedicated plan isn’t available yet.
• Apple iCloud Family Sharing is not compatible with Cookfolio Family. It’s Cookfolio’s own invite code that determines who belongs to the family, independent of Apple’s sharing.
• Already on Pro through Apple or Google Play? To join a family as a member, you must first cancel that Pro subscription in the store: in Apple’s subscription settings on iPhone, or in your Google Play subscriptions on Android. A Pro subscription bought on the web is cancelled and refunded pro rata automatically when you join.

What if I change my mind?

You can cancel the Family subscription anytime, from wherever you bought it:

• on the web, from your account settings or the Stripe customer portal
• on Android, from your Google Play subscriptions
• on iPhone, from Apple’s subscription settings

If you dissolve the family (Settings → Family → Dissolve), you recover all family data into your personal workspace. If you were just a member (not admin), you leave the family and stay on free. The admin keeps the data.

Activate Family →