Your recipes, family cooking notes, and meal plans are deeply personal. Minthee is built on a strict offline-first, zero-vendor-lockin philosophy: your data lives on your device, belongs entirely to you, and is always protected.

Minthee offers two complementary ways to safeguard your culinary life:

Cloud Snapshots: Instant, point-in-time cloud backups tied to your Google account.
Local File Exports: Standalone JSON and ZIP archives you can keep on your phone, SD card, or computer.

1. Cloud Backup Snapshots

A Cloud Backup captures a complete, frozen snapshot of your entire database at a single moment in time.

What is saved in a Cloud Snapshot?

All recipes and ingredients: Full text, servings, calories, tags, and step-by-step instructions.
Recipe photos: Your high-resolution dish pictures and step photos.
Cooking history: Every timestamped cook log and personal rating.
Weekly meal plans: Scheduled meals on your calendar.
Pantry inventory and grocery items: Your active shopping list and pantry stock status.
App preferences: Cooldown times, category pins, and personal display settings.

2. Creating a Backup (“Backup Now”)

Creating a fresh snapshot takes a single tap:

Open Settings from the top-right corner of the app.
Under the Cloud Backup section, ensure you are signed in with Google.
Tap Backup Now.

Minthee packages your library, calculates a cryptographic checksum to guarantee data integrity, uploads the snapshot securely to your private cloud storage, and ensures all dish photos are safely backed up.

The 5-Day Freshness Reminder

Minthee uses a comfortable 5-day backup cadence:

If your last backup is recent, Settings displays a countdown (e.g. Next Backup: in 4d 22h).
If more than 5 days have passed since your last snapshot, Settings shows Next Backup: Due now as a gentle reminder to tap Backup Now.

Rolling 5-Snapshot Ring

Minthee automatically preserves your 5 most recent cloud snapshots. If you ever need to roll back to an older copy from last week or last month, earlier snapshots remain ready to restore.

3. Restoring from Cloud Snapshots

When switching to a new device or restoring an earlier backup:

In Settings > Cloud Backup, tap Restore from Cloud… (the window symbol indicates a selection sheet will appear).
Browse your available cloud snapshots, showing the date, time, and recipe count for each.
Choose your preferred restore method:

A. Safe Merge (Recommended)

Non-destructive: Adds any recipes missing from your device and updates older recipes if the backup has a newer version.
Preserves new recipes: Any new dishes you created on your device after the backup was taken are kept completely safe.
Never deletes data: Even if a recipe was deleted on another device in the past, Safe Merge ensures your active recipes remain intact.

B. Replace All

Fresh start: Clears the active local library and replaces it entirely with the selected snapshot.
Ideal when transferring your catalog to a fresh phone or reverting accidental widespread changes.

4. Built-in Safety Net & 1-Tap Undo

Restoring should never feel risky. Minthee employs a multi-stage safety pipeline during every restore:

Pre-check Verification: Before touching any local data, the app downloads and verifies the backup file to ensure it is not corrupt or incomplete.
Local Restore Point: The app quietly creates a safety snapshot on your phone’s storage right before applying the restore.
One-Tap Undo: After restoring, a confirmation banner appears with an Undo button. If the restored snapshot wasn’t what you expected, tapping Undo instantly rolls your library back to the exact state it was in before.

5. Local File Export & Import (Offline Peace of Mind)

If you prefer keeping offline copies without cloud storage:

In Settings, scroll to Your Data.
Tap Export data to save a standalone .json or .zip backup file to your phone’s Downloads folder, an SD card, or share it via email.
To restore on any device, tap Import data, select your backup file, and choose whether to merge or replace.

Explore more of Minthee’s sharing and kitchen organization tools:

Live Recipe Sharing & Web Links: Share dishes with interactive cooking timers, serving scaling, and high-resolution photos via web links or QR codes, plus use Grocery Live Share links.
Aisle-Sorted Grocery List: See how your grocery checklists and pantry items are organized by supermarket aisle, backed up safely, and shared with live collaborative links.
Hands-Free Cooking Mode & Step Timers: Learn how interactive timers and per-step instructions guide you smoothly through every dish.