1. Set up your family
Sign in with your Google account. Family Meal Board never sees your password; it only uses your account to know it's you. The person who starts the family shares an invite link from Settings, and each person who opens it joins with their own sign-in.
- Up to five people can sign in to one family. You can cook for as many as you like.
- An invite link works for 7 days, until the family is full.
- The family's owner can rename the family and remove people.
2. Add the recipes you already cook
Paste links, share TikToks, snap cookbook pages or paste text. Mark each recipe as breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack, star the favorites, and tag seasonal ones. Start with fifteen or twenty dinners; the big-family guide explains why that number. See every way to add recipes.
3. Generate the menu
Choose how many of each meal you want this week. A new family starts at 5 dinners, 3 lunches, 2 breakfasts and 2 snacks, and you can change any of them. Then tap Generate menu. For each spot on the menu, Family Meal Board looks for a recipe in this order:
- Fresh and in season. Not on any menu in the last three weeks and not already on this week's. The ones you haven't had in longest are most likely to come up, recipes you've never made come up the most, and favorites get three times the chance.
- Recent. If there aren't enough fresh ones, the in-season recipe you had longest ago.
- A repeat this week. Only if the first two run out.
- Out of season. Only when there's nothing in season for that kind of meal at all.
Seasons follow the calendar: winter is December to February, spring March to May, summer June to August and fall September to November. Recipes with no season can come up any time. The three-week window can be changed in Settings.
Don't like a pick? Swap it for another. Want to keep one? Lock it and generate again; locked meals stay put.
4. Shop one list
The Groceries tab adds up every ingredient on the menu, sorts it by aisle and shares it with everyone in the family. Check things off in the store, add what's missing, or send the whole list to your Kroger cart. More on the shared grocery list.
5. Start cooking
Open a recipe and tap Start cooking. The text gets big enough to read from across the counter, you tap ingredients and steps as you finish them, and the screen stays awake while you cook. Step away and come back within 12 hours, and it picks up where you left off.
Phones, tablets and computers
- Android: open it in Chrome and choose Install. It gets its own icon and shows up in the Share menu for recipe links.
- iPhone and iPad: open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
- Computers: any current browser works.
There's nothing to download from an app store, and every phone in the family is always on the latest version.
Your family's information
Only people in your family can see your recipes, menus and lists. There are no ads or tracking cookies, and nothing is sold or shared. You can delete your account from Settings at any time. The privacy page has the details.