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Creating a recipeImporting a recipe from a URLEditing and ingredientsAdding images and videosSending photos and videos from your phoneUsing the clipboardUsing the moiety panelBook of Moiety

Sending photos and videos from your phone

Use your phone's camera to send photos and videos directly into a recipe step — no cables, no cloud round-trip, no transferring files manually. Your phone connects to the desktop app over your local WiFi and uploads the file straight to the step you have open.

How it works

  1. Take the photo or video first using your phone's normal camera app. For videos, hold the phone sideways (landscape) so the result is 16:9 — see the warning below.
  2. Open the recipe step you want to add media to in the desktop app.
  3. Toggle Photo from phone on. A pairing dialog opens with a QR code and a URL.
  4. On your phone (connected to the same WiFi network), open the camera and scan the QR code, or type the URL into your phone's browser.
  5. Tap the upload button on the phone page. The phone's share sheet opens with several options.
  6. Tap "Choose from photos" or "Choose from file" to pick the photo or video you captured in step 1. Pick your file and it uploads to the desktop app in seconds.

The pairing dialog stays open between uploads — you can send several files in a row.

⚠ Don't tap "Take a photo" on the share sheet

The phone's share sheet shows a "Take a photo" option alongside "Choose from photos" / "Choose from file". Don't use it. That option opens your phone's generic system camera, which has no way to enforce the 16:9 aspect ratio Foodie Moiety needs — anything you capture that way will be rejected when it reaches the desktop.

We can't hide that option from the share sheet (it's part of the operating system, not our page). So the rule is simple:

  • ✅ "Choose from photos" — works
  • ✅ "Choose from file" — works
  • ❌ "Take a photo" — doesn't work; close out and use your phone's regular camera app instead

Photos and videos are both supported

| Photos | Videos | |---|---| | JPG, PNG, HEIC (iPhone default) | MP4 / MOV (H.264 or HEVC) | | HEIC is auto-converted to JPG so it displays everywhere | Must be 16:9 aspect ratio to match recipe-step media format |

If you record a video that isn't 16:9, the upload itself will succeed but the desktop app will reject it with a toast — re-shoot in landscape orientation (rotate your phone sideways before recording) to get 16:9.

Add the page to your home screen

Once you've opened the upload page on your phone, you can use Add to Home Screen (Safari on iOS, Chrome on Android) to save it as an app-like shortcut. The shortcut launches straight into the upload page with the Foodie Moiety icon — handy if you do this often.

Privacy — nothing goes through our servers

The upload happens directly between your phone and your computer over WiFi. Foodie Moiety's servers never see the photos or videos you send this way. The connection is local to your home network only.

The pairing dialog generates a fresh access token every time you open it — even if someone else on your WiFi loaded the page in the past, their old token won't work anymore.

Requirements

  • Same WiFi network — phone and computer must be on the same local network.
  • A modern phone — iPhone (iOS 14+) or Android with Chrome / a recent default browser.
  • Firewall permission — the first time you toggle the feature on, your operating system will ask whether to allow Foodie Moiety to accept incoming network connections. Click Allow (macOS) or check Private networks (Windows). On Linux you may need to open port 8123/tcp on your local firewall.

Troubleshooting

Phone can't load the URL. Confirm phone and computer are on the same WiFi network (not phone on cellular, not computer on a separate guest network). If both devices appear to be on the same WiFi but the page still won't load, see the next item — modern routers can quietly put your devices on different radio bands.

Page won't load even though both devices are on the same WiFi. Most modern routers broadcast one network name but actually run multiple radios underneath — often a 2.4 GHz radio and one or two separate 5 GHz radios — and decide for each device which radio to use. Tri-band routers and mesh systems can have three, four, or more radios, all sharing the same network name. Features that go by names like Band Steering, Smart Connect, Smart WiFi, or SON ("Self-Optimizing Network") make this fully automatic. The catch: the phone-handoff feature needs both devices on the same specific radio, not just the same network name. If your computer ends up on one 5 GHz radio and your phone ends up on the 2.4 GHz radio (or even on a different 5 GHz radio), they can't talk to each other even though they look like they're on the same network.

How to tell if that's what's happening: there's no obvious indicator in your phone or laptop's WiFi settings — both will just show the network name. The symptom is the page failing to load even though everything else looks right.

Quick fix — toggle WiFi: on both your phone and your computer, turn WiFi off and back on. There's a decent chance both will reconnect on the same radio the second time around. If the upload page loads, you're set for this session (the router may shuffle devices back onto different radios later).

Durable fix — pin a guest network to a single radio: if the WiFi-toggle trick doesn't stick or you use phone handoff regularly, configure your router's guest network to use only one specific radio — not just one band. On a tri-band router this might mean enabling only the first 5 GHz radio and disabling both the 2.4 GHz radio and the second 5 GHz radio (or whatever single radio combination your router allows). Then connect both your phone and computer to that guest network whenever you want to use phone handoff.

The exact steps are router-specific — log into your router's admin page (usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 in a browser), find the guest-network settings, and look for per-radio enable/disable toggles. Once the guest network is locked to a single radio, every device that joins it is guaranteed to be on that same radio as every other guest-network device, and phone handoff just works.

Phone loads the page but upload times out. Your firewall is blocking the incoming connection. macOS users should see a one-time "accept incoming connections" prompt — make sure you clicked Allow. Windows: re-check the Windows Defender Firewall rule for Foodie Moiety. Linux: open port 8123/tcp inbound (sudo ufw allow 8123/tcp on Ubuntu).

Video uploads but doesn't appear in the step. The video probably wasn't 16:9. Re-shoot with the phone held sideways (landscape) using your phone's regular camera app, then upload via "Choose from photos".

Photo or video looks wrong / cropped. Most likely you tapped "Take a photo" on the share sheet instead of "Choose from photos" or "Choose from file". The "Take a photo" path opens a generic system camera that doesn't enforce the 16:9 aspect ratio. Capture with your phone's regular camera app first, then pick the result via "Choose from photos".

The QR code expired. Toggle the feature off and back on. Each pairing generates a fresh QR code and access token.

Next steps