WhatDinner now with Solo Mode

WhatDinner was designed for couples and families. I originally created it to help my partner and me decide what to cook together. A few months ago, I published the first version to the App Store, and it has been downloaded more times than I expected.

The app’s main idea is essentially a “Tinder for deciding what to cook tonight.” You create a family, add all your members, and list the recipes you enjoy making. Unlike other apps, you specify how often you’d like to prepare each dish. The app then suggests different dishes daily, based on your preferences. Each family member swipes on their choices, and the app selects the first match.

That was, at least, until I checked how many people actually used the app with a partner: less than 5%. It seems the majority of users use the app on their own to decide what to cook—or don’t use it at all. When using it solo, you basically swipe left and right and end up with no decisions.

That might work for some, but it would be nice to provide some feedback. I’ve always wanted to implement a solo mode where the user can swipe left and right, and then at the end, the app would make a random choice. I’m not sure if that’s the best approach, given that the list of proposed recipes is already sorted by frequency.

For now, I went with the simplest solution: if you don’t have any other family members attached to the app, it assumes you’re using it in solo mode . In that case, each time you swipe and say yes, that becomes your choice.

Other changes

Apart from the above change, I fixed a few crashes when you had no recipes to select from.