Best simple meal planning app that ticks these boxes?

[MindGrapes]

I've been using what's basically an electronic post-it app on my phone to do meal planning - dragging a meal name from a pool of recipes to the day of the week. However now I'm having to meal plan weeks in advance really to keep up with ocado deliveries, I'd like something a bit more geared towards actual meal planning. I've looked at Yummly and things where you choose from their recipes but I don't want that.
I need to be able to:

• Have a calendar week-by-week
• Add a list of meal names of my own to choose from - not too bothered with 'their' recipes
• Be able to just view the meal names but be able to click through to see ingredients (don't need to see recipe methods etc)
• Simple interface - don't need it to show breakfast, lunch etc just dinner so would be good if I could get rid of screen clutter.
• Have a desktop version as well as phone version so I can type in everything easily
• A bonus if you can 'colour code' or label recipes for ease of finding, e.g. veggie, kid-friendly, etc

Thanks!

Oh and would be good if I can reorder my list of meals or automatically sort into alphabetical order.
I've looked at 'Say Mmm' which is almost what I want but I can't re-sort the meals and it needs a bit too many clicks to do things.

I have an Apple Pencil, so not sure how transferable this idea is. But have a look at digital planning - you can either buy a premade meal planner template from Etsy to import into a notability type app or make your own.

I use Paprika for my meal planning app but I like it’s integration with recipe websites but sounds like you just need a planner app

Thanks, didn't know you could get templates!

I use OrganizEat which I absolutely love and could not live without. I use it to store all my recipes in. You can tag all the recipes with key words like "kids", "dinner parties" or whatever and can search for things very easily. It has a meal planner that you can add your recipes to very easily and I think (I don't use it though) that you can do it in your desktop too. You can upload recipes by taking photos or importing or just writing them in. You can also share them with friends if they have the app. I literally love it. It has made my life so much easier. Totally recommend.

Hey, that looks pretty good! I've downloaded it for a trial. Do you know what 'this week' is supposed to do? I thought it might show the meal plan for the week once you've entered that. It just brings up 'search keywords and tags' for me.

I'm not sure about paying a monthly subscription though, do you know how much it is @Tipster100 ?

If you go to the three circles on the top
Right hand side, under "this week" it says "meal plan". That's what you're looking for. The "this week" is so you can just put recipes in a list of that's a way that works better for you. Gives you options. I have paid for a lifetime subscription which was around £36. Otherwise I think it's something like £12 a year.

I sue Plan to Eat - game changer for me.

I also use Plan to Eat. It’s full featured and has a robust and helpful community.

@Tipster100

If you go to the three circles on the top Right hand side, under "this week" it says "meal plan". That's what you're looking for. The "this week" is so you can just put recipes in a list of that's a way that works better for you. Gives you options. I have paid for a lifetime subscription which was around £36. Otherwise I think it's something like £12 a year.

This sounds good, but I can't see this on the free version. That's my main bugbear, that I can't see the meals in a list all at once, but by clicking on each day on the calendar. I might investigate further!

Plan To Eat looks ideal (except for the monthly/annual fee!).
I'm impressed with both of these being able to import recipes from websites. Luckily I tend to have a great recollection of where I got the recipes from...

If you have any questions re OrganizEat you can email them. I've had to do it a couple of times when I couldn't understand something and they were very good at responding (within about 24 hours). Think you can do it from settings. Have not heard of Plan to Eat. Going to take a look now and see what the difference is!

By the way, you can see all the recipes in a list at once - if you choose a
Recipe you want to eat that week, you tick it for "this week". You can then add it to the calendar. So
Then you get the list and the calendar. Tbh I don't use it for meal planning just storing my favourite recipes. I am a recipe book addict and find it hard to remember which recipes I cooked were in which book so I use it for that.

Plan to eat looks great but £38 a year is surely insane?

I want AnyList and was balking at £10/yr.

There are hundreds of these apps now and the trouble is once you've tried them they all have different brilliant features.

One of them will set off lots of different timers once you're cooking so if you have to fry something for five minutes and simmer something else for ten minutes it'll keep track of both of those for you. I can't remember which one it was now Think I deleted it because the recipe importing feature was rubbish.

Copymethat is the absolute best at importing recipes from the web, but no iPhone app at the moment.

Plan to Ear is well worth it and they always have a 50% Black Friday sale every year where you add/gift/buy an additional year’s subscription for half price.