Edit on Your Laptop, Cook From Your Phone: How Cook.md Sync Works

The way you use recipes changes depending on where you are. At your desk, you're writing and planning — drafting a recipe, building next week's menu. At the store, you want a shopping list you can tick off. At the stove, you want big readable steps and timers, hands-free and offline.

Cook.md is built around that reality: different tools for different moments, all working on the same files, kept in sync.

One collection, every device

Your recipes are .cook text files. Cook.md keeps that single collection consistent everywhere:

  • Cook Editor on your laptop — write, scale, and plan with syntax highlighting and live preview.
  • Mobile apps (iOS and Android) in the kitchen — cooking mode, timers, and shopping lists grouped by aisle.
  • Cook Cloud in the middle — sync and backup so the same files are everywhere.

Draft a recipe on your laptop tonight; it's on your phone before you get to the kitchen. Add three recipes to next week's plan at your desk; the combined shopping list is in your pocket at the store.

How the pieces fit

Cook Cloud is the sync and backup layer. It keeps your collection consistent across devices and gives you an off-device backup, so a lost phone or a wiped laptop never means a lost recipe collection.

The Sync Agent is a tiny system-tray app for people who keep recipes in a local folder. It quietly mirrors that folder to Cook Cloud, so your editor of choice — Cook Editor, VS Code, vim, whatever — stays in sync without you thinking about it. Save a file; it syncs.

The mobile apps are offline-first. This matters more than it sounds. Kitchens have bad signal, wet hands, and no patience for a spinner. The apps keep a full local copy of your recipes, so cooking mode and timers work with zero bars. When you're back online, changes sync up.

A real flow

Here's a Tuesday:

  1. Morning, laptop. You ask CookBot for three quick dinners and accept the plan. It writes a .menu file.
  2. Lunch, phone. The shopping list — merged across all three recipes, grouped by aisle — is already on your phone. You order groceries.
  3. Evening, kitchen. You open the first recipe in cooking mode. Big steps, tap-to-start timers, no signal needed.
  4. After dinner, phone. You add a quick note — "more chili next time" — right on the recipe.
  5. Next morning, laptop. That note is waiting in Cook Editor.

Same files the whole way through. No copy-paste, no "which version is current," no export-import dance.

Sync without lock-in

Here's the part that separates Cook.md from a typical cloud recipe app: sync is a convenience, not a cage.

Your recipes are plain-text .cook files. Cook Cloud syncs them; it doesn't swallow them. They live on your devices as readable text, check into git, and open in any editor. If you stop using Cook.md, you don't export anything — you already have every recipe, as files, on your disk.

Most cloud apps make sync the thing that traps you: your data only fully exists on their servers. Cook.md inverts that. The canonical copy is yours, on your machine. The cloud just keeps the copies agreeing with each other.

Getting set up

  1. Download Cook Editor and write or import a few recipes.
  2. Sign in to enable Cook Cloud sync.
  3. Install the [mobile app](/) on your phone and sign in with the same account.
  4. Optional: run the Sync Agent if you keep recipes in a local folder you edit elsewhere.

That's it — edit on your laptop, cook from your phone, and never wonder where your recipes live.

Cook Editor and the mobile apps are free. Get started here.