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Paprika backup

How to export your recipes from Paprika

Whether you're backing up your library or moving to a different app, Paprika can export your whole recipe collection as a single portable file. Here's how, what's actually inside it, and what to do when it goes wrong.

Exporting your library

The steps are nearly identical across platforms - Paprika keeps its export menu in the same place whether you're on a desktop or a phone.

  1. Open the export menu. On Mac or Windows, go to File > Export. On iOS or Android, open the app's main menu and tap Export.
  2. Choose what to export. Pick All Recipes for a full backup, or select specific recipes or categories if you only need part of your library.
  3. Select the .paprikarecipes format. Paprika also offers plain-text and PDF export, but only the Paprika Recipe Format (.paprikarecipes) preserves every ingredient, step, photo, and piece of metadata - that's the one you want for a backup or a move.
  4. Save or share the file. Send it to a cloud drive, save it straight to your computer, or share it to another app depending on what you're doing with it next.

What's actually inside a .paprikarecipes file

A .paprikarecipes file is a zip archive. Inside it, each recipe is stored as its own gzip-compressed JSON file, holding the title, ingredients, method, timing, categories and notes as plain structured text - plus any photos you attached, stored alongside it in full resolution.

That structure is why a library with a lot of photos can produce a surprisingly large file: the recipe data itself is tiny, but food photography adds up fast across a few hundred recipes.

Common export problems

Exporting a very large library can hang or produce a file too big to comfortably move around. If that happens, export by category or in smaller batches instead of everything at once.

A few other things worth checking before you consider the export done:

  1. Missing photos. If photos aren't showing up in the exported file, confirm you didn't accidentally export a text or PDF format instead of .paprikarecipes - the other formats don't carry images.
  2. Very old app versions. Paprika 2 and Paprika 3 both write the same archive structure, but if you're on an old, unsupported version, updating first avoids export bugs that were fixed in later releases.
  3. The file "does nothing" when opened. A .paprikarecipes file isn't meant to be opened directly on most systems - it's a payload for another Paprika install, or for an app that knows how to read the format. Treat it as a backup, not a document.

Once you have the file

Keep it somewhere durable - a cloud drive is safer than a single device, since it's your entire recipe collection in one place. From there, you can import it back into Paprika on another device, or into a different recipe manager that supports the format.

Forno reads .paprikarecipes files directly, and rather than a silent best-effort import, it shows you exactly which recipes came across cleanly and which ones need a second look. You can see how that works on the Forno homepage.

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