From a high level, most people searching for a cocktail app want one of two things: a vast library of static recipes, or an app that lets them easily curate their own collection.

There are genuinely great apps with huge recipe databases, and their creators have spent years building them. If that's what you're after, you're in luck. There are many options on the market with some really good recipes.

MixKings is not a static list of recipes. It's built to make the most out of your curated collection. And if you don't have a collection but would like to build one, it's great for that too, as covered in AI import below. But something MixKings excels at is sharing: sharing in the room with a digital menu, sharing socially with communities, sharing with your friends in chat, or sharing a laugh over a friendly cocktail competition where you get to taste the results. Cocktails are better together, and the app was built with that in mind.

Your recipes on your TV with a button click

If there's a screen in the room, it makes a better cocktail menu than anything you could print. It updates the moment you change something, it costs nothing to reprint, and everyone can read it from the couch.

Download the app on Apple TV or Fire TV. Alternatively, cast it to a Chromecast, or stand an iPad up on the counter. Same menu, whichever screen you've got.

A real menu, not just cocktails

Menus hold seven kinds of drink: cocktails, beer, wine, seltzer, spirits, mocktails, and a catch-all for whatever else you're pouring. That matters more than it sounds. Most people hosting aren't running an all-cocktail evening. There's a couple of beers in the fridge, a bottle of wine open, and someone who isn't drinking tonight. A menu that only holds cocktails makes you leave those people off it.

You can categorize and style it your way. The menu has close to limitless configuration options, so it can match your drinks and the mood you're going for. Change the order, the fonts, the background, and how much detail shows. Prices are optional. So are ingredients, if you'd rather keep a build to yourself. You can even put the background in motion if you want a bit of movement behind the list.

Keep everything in your library and switch a shelf on or off the menu with a button click. The reasoning on what belongs on a menu versus what stays in your library is in how to make a home bar menu that doesn't go stale.

The same screen runs a party game

The display isn't only a menu. Start a game and the TV becomes the board: everyone joins from their phone with a code, builds a drink, and the room votes.

The full walkthrough of a game night is in how to play MixKings, and if you want the version that's closer to an actual competition, judges are optional covers running one without a panel.

Bartender mode, for whoever's making them

Once the menu is on the TV, somebody has to make the drinks. Bartender mode is that view: the menu as a working list, built for the person behind the counter rather than the people reading it.

It offers two views: a quick peek for drinks you're familiar with, or a detailed view for the ones that are new to you. It's the difference between a menu that looks nice and a menu you can work from at eleven at night with music on.

A library you can find things in

Everything you save lives in your library, and the library is doing more work than a folder of recipes.

Shelves, so the list stays short

A collection gets unwieldy quickly, and most of what's in it isn't what you're making tonight. So the library isn't one long scroll. Drinks live on shelves you name, and every shelf collapses, which means you're looking at a handful of headings and you open the one you want.

Name them however you think: "Summer," "things I've made twice," "for people who say they don't like gin." Not fixed categories handed to you. What you leave closed stays closed next time you open the app. Drag drinks between shelves; the whole row is the drag target, not a fussy little handle.

Solo lab, for building something new

The game's structure is genuinely useful on your own, so it works without anyone else. Solo lab drops the timer and the votes and keeps the prompt: riff on one of your own drinks, work inside a style, or freestyle with the whole bar as your palette. It sits in the play area behind the test-tube icon.

It's the fastest path from "I have mezcal and an unopened thing of falernum" to a recipe that's saved and named.

AI import, from a book or a screenshot

Typing a recipe in by hand is the friction between seeing it and saving it. Point the camera at a page in a cocktail book and the recipe lands in your library, parsed into ingredients and steps. Or take a screenshot of something you find online and send it straight to MixKings. The next time you open the app it's there waiting to be imported.

Inventory: what you can make right now

Tell the app what's on your shelf and every recipe starts marking which ingredients you already have. Open a drink and the things you're holding are highlighted; the things you're missing are obvious at a glance.

That flips the usual question. Instead of picking a drink and discovering you're one bottle short, tap What can I make in the inventory section and you get exactly that, before anyone's disappointed. Stocking a home bar covers what's worth owning in the first place.

A pantry for the things you make yourself

Anyone who's gone past the basics ends up with a fridge full of homemade components: syrups, cordials, infusions, an oleo saccharum you should probably use up. Those live in a pantry, and they attach to the recipes that use them.

So a drink calling for grapefruit cordial links to your grapefruit cordial, with its own recipe. And if you share that drink, the component travels with it, because a recipe that depends on something only in your fridge isn't much use to anyone else.

The part that's social

"Better together" – this is how we do it on MixKings.

Rooms, and riffing on other people's drinks

Rooms are the community side: themed spaces where people post drinks they've made. You can save any of them to your own library in one tap.

The more interesting move is riffing. Take someone's drink and change it. Swap the base, cut the sugar, add a bitter. Post yours as a riff of theirs. The lineage is kept, so you can follow a drink back through everyone who touched it. A fixed list can't do that. It holds one canonical Negroni; this holds as many as people have made.

A trending view surfaces what's moving right now, which is usually where the good riffs are.

Messages, with drinks attached

Sharing a drink with one person shouldn't require posting it publicly. Messaging is built in, and a drink sent in a conversation arrives as a card with the full recipe. Not a link, not a screenshot. The person receiving it can save it to their library from the message.

Credit follows the original creator rather than whoever forwarded it, however many hands it passes through.

Your Palate, which learns as you go

React to drinks in the community and the app starts noticing patterns: the spirits you lean toward, the styles you keep coming back to, the things you reliably skip. That becomes a private read on your own taste.

It's off unless you turn it on, it's yours only, and it's not shared. If you'd rather the app didn't build one, it doesn't build one.

What does all of this cost?

The idea was to keep MixKings as free as possible, and every single feature discussed here comes with a free account: the TV display, the game, bartender mode, inventory, pantry, rooms, messages, and three AI imports to try. Not a trial. That's the free tier.

But every app has to keep the lights on somehow, and storage and AI cost money. To offset that, the free tier caps you at 50 drinks in your library and 3 AI imports. Pro is $14.99, once. A one-time purchase, not a subscription. It lifts the fifty-drink cap, unlocks 500 AI imports, and optionally removes the small MixKings credit from the bottom of your TV display.

That's the whole thing. No monthly fee, no per-feature unlock.

Ready to give it a try?

MixKings is live on iOS. Android is coming soon.

Build a menu, put it on the TV, and let the room decide what's next.