An app to share food photos with people who care about food.

What the job actually is

Sharing a food photograph is three separate wishes: that somebody sees it, that the right somebody sees it, and that you can find it again when you want to cook the thing. Most apps do the first, a few do the second, and almost none do the third well. This page is about which app does all three, and what to check before you commit your archive to it.

What to check in any food photo app

• Does a post keep its caption and its cook? A photograph of a stew is nearly useless a year later without the note about which cut and how long. The post should travel with its words and its author.
• Is video a normal post? A sauce coming together, a dough being folded, the sound of a sear: some dishes are only legible in motion. Video should not be a separate product.
• Is saving separate from liking? If the two are one gesture, the archive you build is a record of what you approved of, not of what you intend to cook.
• Can you name your saves? An undifferentiated bookmark pile stops working at about sixty items.
• Is the feed food, or everything? A general network will show your plate between a car advert and a cousin's wedding. That is fine for some people and maddening for others.
• Are there ads, and what is done with your data? Read the privacy policy before the terms. Check whether you can export and delete from inside the app.

What a post is on Foodies

A post is one or more photographs, or a video, with a caption. You choose the media from your library or capture it in the app, write whatever you want to say about the dish, and publish. The post then appears in the Following feed of everyone who follows you, newest first, and becomes eligible for the For You and Nearby feeds of people who do not follow you yet.

The caption is the recipe. Write it however you cook: the cut, the heat, the thing that went wrong and turned out better. Because every post on the network is food, a caption that says “more salt next time” reads as a note from one cook to another rather than an intrusion into somebody's timeline. Technique written at length lives in the recipe guides on this site.

Video is a first-class post type, not a separate tab. A clip sits in the same feeds as a photograph and is liked, commented on and saved in exactly the same way. Food video covers how to shoot one that holds attention.

Where a photo goes once it is posted

Three feeds, and readers choose between them. Following is the people they follow, in order, with nothing inserted. For You is ranked from what each reader opens, likes, saves and watches to the end, so a good photograph from an account with two followers can still be seen. Nearby shows posts from people around the reader, ordered by proximity and recency.

On Nearby, the coordinates attached to a post are snapped to roughly a one-kilometre grid before they are stored, so a photograph of your kitchen table is never tied to your address or building. It answers “what are people cooking and eating in my city”, not “where does this person live”. If you would rather a post carried no location at all, that is your choice at posting time.

How people respond, and what each response means

Three distinct actions sit under every post. A like is applause: it tells you somebody saw it and it feeds into what For You shows them next. A comment is a public conversation under the post, which is where the useful part usually is: which flour, how hot, how long. A save is for the reader rather than for you: it puts the post into one of their named collections, keeping the photograph, the caption and your name, so what they saved in March still makes sense in November and they can come back and ask you.

Keeping saves and likes apart is the single feature that decides whether an app is a place to share food photos or merely a place to post them. On Foodies the two are different gestures with different meanings, and your own collections work the same way: as many as you like, named by you, any post you can see.

Sharing privately, and not sharing at all

Not every plate is for the feed. Direct messages on Foodies are encrypted end-to-end on the device, so a photograph of your kitchen, your home or your children eating dinner is relayed by the server as ciphertext it cannot read. The limits are stated plainly on the features page: there is no key-fingerprint verification screen and no forward secrecy, so it is real encryption and not the same guarantee as a dedicated messenger.

You can also use the app without posting anything. Guest browsing lets you read the feeds, open posts and look at profiles with no account. With a free account you can like, comment, save and message without ever publishing a dish, and reading for months first is a normal way to use it. When you do want out, export and account deletion are each one tap inside the app.

Taking a photograph worth sharing

The short version, from the food photography guide: use window light, not the overhead bulb; shoot from directly above for flat dishes and from a low angle for tall ones; get closer than feels natural; and photograph the food before you are hungry enough to eat it. A phone is enough. What separates a good food photograph from a poor one is almost never the camera.

Frequently asked questions

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