Cook mode

Cook Mode is a switch on your recipe card that keeps a phone or tablet screen awake and strips the card down to the ingredients and the steps. It is built for the moment someone has your recipe propped up on the counter with flour on their hands.

Cook Mode is free on every plan.

What it does

When a reader switches Cook Mode on:

• The screen stays awake. The phone does not lock partway through the recipe.
• Ingredients and directions get bigger. Directions go up to 20px and ingredients to 18px, sized to read at arm's length.
• Most of the rest gets out of the way. The photo, description, star rating, nutrition, video, notes, FAQs, equipment list, step photos, unit converter and Add to Cart buttons are hidden.
• The title and details stay, smaller and dimmed, so the reader still knows what they are cooking.
• The servings adjuster stays, so the reader can still scale the recipe.
• Tick boxes get larger and ticked items fade right back, so it is obvious where the reader is in the list.

Switching Cook Mode off puts the full card back exactly as it was.

What it is not

Cook Mode does not page through your recipe one step at a time. There is no next-step or previous-step control. Every ingredient and every direction stays on screen, larger and with the clutter removed, so the reader can scroll to whatever they need.

Turn it on

1. Open Recipe Kit and go to Settings.
2. Find the Features section, under Accent Color.
3. Switch on Cook mode.
4. Click Save.

The Cook Mode switch then appears on every recipe card on your store. Stores that finished setup recently have it on already. On stores that installed earlier, it starts off.

Rename the switch

The label beside the switch can say anything, in any language:

1. Open Recipe Kit and go to Settings.
2. Open Translations & Labels and find Cook Mode Button Text.
3. Type the new label and click Save.

Common alternatives are "Start Cooking", "Keep Screen On", "Kitchen Mode" or a translation such as "Modo Cocina". Changing the text on your recipe card lists every label you can change.

Pair it with Click to check

Cook Mode is more useful with Click to check switched on, in the same Features section. Readers tick off ingredients and steps as they go, and Cook Mode fades ticked items so the next thing to do stands out.

Screen wake support

Keeping the screen awake uses the browser's Screen Wake Lock feature. Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari support it, including Safari on iOS 16.4 and later.

Where a browser does not support it, Cook Mode still works. The layout still simplifies and the text still gets bigger. Only the keep-awake part is skipped, and the screen dims on the device's usual timer.

If a reader switches to another app and comes back, Recipe Kit asks the browser to keep the screen awake again.

Write steps that work in Cook Mode

Cook Mode puts the directions front and center and hides the step photos, so the step text has to carry the recipe:

• One action per step
• Temperatures, times and pan sizes in the step, not only in the notes
• Doneness cues, such as "until the edges are golden"

Step photos help someone reading the recipe before they start. Do not rely on a photo to explain something the step text does not say.

What's next

• Recipe directions covers writing and organising steps.
• Customizing the recipe card covers the other card switches.
• Changing the text on your recipe card covers renaming the Cook Mode label and the rest of the card.