Comparison

What happens to your recipes when a cocktail app dies

Two popular cocktail apps haven't shipped an update since 2018 and 2019. A four-step exit test to run before you type your fiftieth recipe into anything.

By Travis Rudisill · September 7, 2026

Every time someone recommends a cocktail app in an r/cocktails thread, the same reply shows up within a few comments:

“It’s only a matter of time before a proprietary app dies because keeping it alive is no longer financially viable. Sometimes apps die without notice and you lose everything.”

And the more specific version, from someone who’d actually committed:

“If Mixel ever goes out of business, I don’t want to lose all my recipes.”

That fear is correct, and it’s not hypothetical in this category. Here are two examples from the App Store on 7 September 2026, and then the four-step test that would have protected against both.

Two apps that are still for sale and haven’t been touched in years

Highball (Studio Neat) is a genuinely lovely recipe-card app that a lot of people still use. Its most recent version is 1.33, dated 6 October 2018. The reviews from the years since read like a timeline: a 2018 review asking for cloud backup because “manually entering recipes becomes pointless if data is lost”; a 2023 review from a working bartender describing how tedious it is to organise 30 new cards after a menu change. Nobody replied. The app still opens today. It will keep opening until an iOS release changes something it depends on.

Cocktail Flow has 21,000 ratings and sells a $4.99/month or $24.99/year subscription. Its most recent version is 3.4, dated 14 December 2019. Creating your own cocktails is a Premium feature. Its store page doesn’t describe any way to export them.

Neither of those is a criticism of the developers. Apps stop being worth maintaining; that’s normal. The point is that the people using them today have recipes inside software that no one is looking after, and in Cocktail Flow’s case they’re paying monthly for the privilege.

The exit test

Run this before you type your fiftieth recipe into anything. It takes ten minutes and it’s the most useful ten minutes you’ll spend on a cocktail app.

1. Find the export before you need it

Go looking for the export or backup feature now, while you have three recipes in the app and nothing to lose. It’s usually in Settings, sometimes under the profile, occasionally nowhere. Note the answer. “Sync across devices” is not an export; it’s the same locked box on two phones. “Share as image” is not an export; it’s a screenshot with a logo.

If there’s no export, you’ve learned the most important thing about the app, and you’ve learned it cheaply.

2. Actually run it

Export those three recipes. Open the file on a computer. Can you read it? Is the spec all there, with amounts, or is it a pretty image with the ingredients baked into pixels? A JSON or CSV file you can open in a text editor or a spreadsheet is the standard. Markdown is nearly as good. PDF is fine for cards but poor for a library, since nothing else can import it.

3. Check the version date

Open the App Store page, scroll to Version History. The date on the latest version is the single most honest signal an app gives you. Under a year: fine. One to two years: ask why. More than two: assume nobody’s home, and treat the app as a nice place to read recipes that live somewhere else.

4. Keep a paper copy of the keepers

The ten or fifteen drinks you make constantly go on cards. Not because paper is better than software, but because paper doesn’t depend on anyone. A stack of cards on the bar survives every app in the store, every subscription lapse, and every iOS release. The classic set is a start; the blank cards are for yours.

What a good exit looks like

Since I make an app in this category, here’s the standard I hold mine to, so you can hold it to the same one:

• Full-library export in a plain format. Mixed Spirits exports everything as JSON, CSV, or Markdown from Settings, and individual cards as PDF.
• On the free tier. If export is a paid feature, it isn’t an exit; it’s a ransom. You should be able to leave without paying.
• A format the next thing can read. CSV opens in every spreadsheet. Markdown opens in every notes app. JSON is what any competent app can import.

That’s not a unique achievement; it’s a floor. Cocktail Party’s one-time purchase and honest “no in-app purchases” pitch is another version of taking the question seriously. The full comparison scores each app on it.

If you’re already in an abandoned app

Don’t panic, and don’t wait for the iOS update that breaks it.

1. Export what you can, in whatever form the app offers, even if it’s images.
2. Retype the keepers onto cards or into whatever you use next. Ten recipes is an evening. Fifty is a rainy weekend. Don’t try to move the long tail; most of it you’ll never make again, and the exercise of choosing what to move is worth doing anyway.
3. Keep the old app installed as a read-only archive for as long as it opens.

The recipes that matter are the ones you’ve tweaked, because those exist nowhere else. The book specs you can always look up again. That’s the sorting rule: move the ones with your fingerprints on them first.