Simmer Down vs Constella
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Simmer Down
Easily extract and organize recipes from any source, including URLs, screenshots, and scanned pages. Enjoy a clean, distraction-free cooking experience with a built-in shopping list that syncs across family devices. Privacy is a core focus, with all smart import features running on-device.
- Smart recipe import from URLs, screenshots, and scans
- Distraction-free recipe display
- Integrated shopping list with check-off functionality
- Anonymous family sync for recipes and lists
- Cooking mode to keep screen awake
- Cross-device compatibility (iPhone, iPad, Mac)
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Simmer Down strips the clutter out of online recipes. Paste a URL, snap a screenshot of a Facebook post, or scan a cookbook page — and get back a clean recipe you can actually cook from. No life story. No ads. No "jump to recipe" button. Recipes you save sync to every device in your family on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Whoever's cooking has the recipe. Whoever's at the store has the shopping list. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT • Smart import from anywhere — Paste a URL, paste recipe text, drop in a screenshot, choose a photo from your library, or scan with the camera. Apple Intelligence reads loose-prose captions and photographed text on-device, no servers involved. • Just the recipe — When you open a recipe, you see title, ingredients, and steps. That's it. Big serif typography that's easy to read at arm's length on the kitchen counter. • Built-in shopping list — Send any recipe's ingredients to your shopping list in one tap. Check things off as you shop. The list syncs across every device in your family. • Anonymous family sync — Share recipes and your shopping list with your household. No name, no email, no profile required. A 6-character family code is all anyone needs to join. • Cooking Mode — Keeps the screen awake while you're following a recipe so your phone doesn't lock with floured hands. • iPad and Mac — Same app, same data, same family. On iPad and Mac, the recipe list lives in a sidebar with the detail in the main pane. • Share to anywhere — Send a recipe via Messages, Mail, Notes, AirDrop — any iOS share target. Title, link, ingredients, and steps formatted to paste cleanly. PRIVACY BY DESIGN Simmer Down doesn't collect your name, email, phone number, or location. The smart-import features (image OCR, recipe extraction) run entirely on your device using Apple's Vision and Foundation Models frameworks. Your photos, recipe text, and search activity never leave the device for AI processing. Family-shared data syncs through Google Firebase, but is shared only with members of the family group you create or join. Read the full privacy policy at lhvantage.com/privacy/simmerdown.html. REQUIREMENTS Simmer Down works on iPhone (iOS 17+), iPad (iPadOS 17+), and Mac (macOS Sonoma+). The smart-import features additionally require an Apple Intelligence–capable device on iOS / iPadOS / macOS 26 or later — iPhone 15 Pro and later, iPad with M1 chip or later, or any Apple Silicon Mac. SUPPORT FAQ at lhvantage.com/support/simmer-down.html. Or email us at support@lhvantage.com — we read every message.
Constella
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Wine is the land writing back. Constella keeps every letter. RECORD A GLASS Structured WSET-style tasting: appearance, nose, palate, conclusions. Two minutes, done. SCAN A LABEL Point the camera at the bottle. Producer, grapes, vintage, ABV — filled in. What it can't read, it leaves blank. No guessing. SEE THE NETWORK Wines, producers, regions, grapes, aromas, importers — every glass joins your own graph. Press a dot and drag. Its friends follow. FIND IT AGAIN Search, stats, dedupe. Export to Obsidian backlinks or JSON. Your data stays yours. No accounts. No ads. Nobody reads your notes. Everything lives on your device and in your iCloud. That's all.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Constella at every 4 weeks against Simmer Down's every 3 months. Simmer Down's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Simmer Down ships an update every 3 months, Constella every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Simmer Down | Constella |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 4 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 17 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Donnie Sullivan | Chen Chen |
In-app purchases
Simmer Down
No in-app purchases
Constella
No in-app purchases









