Smak Help

Everything you need to build your own recipe book and cook with it without the fuss.

Getting started

Smak runs on phones with Android 8.0 or newer. There is nothing to set up after installing: no account and no sign-up, so you can start adding recipes right away. The book, cooking mode, timers, meal plan and shopping list all work offline.

Smak is getting ready for Google Play. Leave your email and we’ll let you know as soon as you can install it.

Adding recipes

  • From a website. Paste a recipe link or open the site in the built-in browser — Smak finds the title, photo, ingredients and steps. The page is loaded straight from the website, without our servers.
  • From text. Paste a recipe copied from a chat or your notes.
  • From a photo. Take a picture of a cookbook page or a handwritten notebook — the AI assistant turns it into a tidy recipe. This needs a Gemini key.
  • By hand. Write your own recipe in the editor.

After an import you can always review and fix the recipe in the editor: websites format recipes in different ways, and small details are worth a quick look.

To find dishes faster, sort them into collections and categories, add tags, mark favorites and rate them. Without Smak Pro you can create up to three collections.

AI assistant and Gemini key

The assistant is optional: everything except the AI features works without it. It uses your own Google Gemini API key, so requests go straight to Google — without our servers and without a subscription.

How to get a key

  1. Open aistudio.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
  2. Go to the API keys section (Get API key) and create a new key.
  3. Copy the key.
  4. In Smak, open Settings → Google Gemini and paste the key.

What the assistant can do: turn a photo of a page into a recipe, answer questions while you cook, suggest ideas from what’s in your fridge, adapt a recipe (vegetarian, lighter, kid-friendly), estimate calories and plan a menu from your recipes.

Privacy. The key is encrypted with the Android Keystore, stays only on your phone and is never included in backups. Only what a particular request needs is sent to Google. If your key is on the free tier, Google may use what you send to improve its products — so please don’t share personal or confidential information with the assistant. See the Smak privacy policy for details.

Stay careful. AI answers can be inaccurate — double-check advice about food safety and allergens. If an answer is wrong or inappropriate, report it from the answer’s menu: the report reaches us and we will review it.

The free tier of the Gemini API has request limits set by Google. If you run out, the assistant won’t answer for a while — try again later.

Cooking and timers

  • Cooking mode shows the recipe step by step in large text, and the screen stays on while you cook.
  • Timers. A time mentioned in a step starts as a timer with one tap. Timers keep running in the background: the notification shows the time left, lets you stop it or add a minute, and rings when the time is up.
  • Servings scale with kitchen-friendly rounding: “½ tsp”, not “0.48”.

Don’t see the timer notification? Make sure Smak is allowed to send notifications: Android settings → Apps → Smak → Notifications. Some phones restrict background work aggressively — if so, turn off battery optimization for Smak.

Meal plan and shopping

  • A weekly menu: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for every day.
  • The shopping list builds itself from the recipes on your menu and is grouped by store aisle. Identical items are merged, and grams and milliliters turn into kilograms and liters.
  • With Smak Pro you also get weekly nutrition (calories, protein, fat and carbs per day and per week), menu templates and “repeat last week” in one tap.

Backups and a new phone

  1. On your old phone, open Settings → Create backup. Smak saves the whole book to a single .smak file — keep it wherever is convenient: Google Drive, email or your computer.
  2. On the new phone, install Smak and restore your book from that file.

Restoring only adds and updates recipes — nothing in your current book is deleted, so it is safe even on a phone that already has recipes.

If Google backup is turned on, Android may store the app’s data in your Google account. The AI key and the purchase status are not part of that backup: you will need to paste your Gemini key again and restore Pro.

You can share any single recipe as text or a beautiful PDF.

Smak Pro

The core app is free forever. Smak Pro is a one-time purchase with no subscription that adds:

  • five more color palettes and seven more home screen icons;
  • a PDF cookbook with a cover, contents and page numbers;
  • weekly nutrition: calories, protein, fat and carbs;
  • menu templates and “repeat last week”;
  • unlimited collections.

Payment goes through Google Play, and the app shows the price. If you chose a payment method that is confirmed later, Smak shows that the payment is pending and unlocks Pro as soon as Google Play confirms it.

New phone or reinstall. Sign in to Google Play with the same account, open “Smak Pro” and tap “Restore purchase”.

Refunds are handled by Google Play under its rules; after a refund, Pro is turned off. Collections you created beyond three are not taken away.

Tips are an optional way to say thanks: they don’t unlock anything and don’t affect how the app works.

Contact us

In the app, open Settings → Contact the developer, use the form on this website or email jason.statusom@gmail.com. If something doesn’t work, please include your phone model, Android version and Smak version — you can find it in Android settings: Apps → Smak.

Updated September 29, 2026