We've spent the last few months rebuilding the part of Home Bar Hero you spend the most time in: your bar. Not the recipe list, not the matching engine — the actual shelf of bottles that is your bar. The result is our biggest update yet, and it does five things we're genuinely proud of.
Here's the short version:
- A realistic bar shelf you build bottle by bottle and can pinch to zoom
- Shared bars so couples and roommates can stock one bar together
- A public bar page you can show off and share with friends
- Favorites to flag your go-to bottles
- oz, cl, or ml — every recipe, in whatever measurement you think in
All of it is free, with no paywall. Let's walk through what changed and why it matters.
A Bar That Actually Looks Like a Bar
Most cocktail apps treat your collection as a spreadsheet — a list of text labels you scroll past. We never liked that. Your home bar is a physical, visual thing. You know it by the silhouettes of the bottles, the way the labels catch the light, the order you keep them in.
So we rebuilt the bar view into a realistic shelf. Each bottle gets its own render, lined up the way real bottles sit on a real shelf. It looks like your bar, not a database.
And because some people keep three bottles and some keep three hundred, the shelf now pinches to zoom. Spread two fingers and the bottles get bigger and roomier; pinch in and the shelf steps down to fit more bottles per row — all the way to a tight, take-it-all-in overview of a serious collection. The zoom level even remembers where you left it.
It's the difference between managing inventory and looking at your bar. We think you'll feel it the first time you open it.
Tip: If you haven't added your bottles yet, the fastest way is Add by Photo — snap one picture of your shelf and the AI identifies up to ten bottles at once. The realistic shelf builds itself from there.
Share a Bar With the Person You Drink With
This is the feature we're most excited about.
If you live with a partner, you don't have two home bars — you have one. But until now, the app made you each track your own, which meant duplicate bottles, missed additions, and two half-accurate pictures of a bar you actually share.
Now you don't have to. Shared bars let two people stock one bar together:
- One of you opens the shared-bar settings and generates an invite code.
- You share the code with your partner (or roommate, or whoever you mix with).
- They enter the code, and that's it — you're both on the same bar.
From then on, when either of you adds a bottle, it shows up for both. Buy a new bourbon on the way home and your partner's "what can I make tonight" updates the moment you add it. The bar owner even gets a little notification when someone joins.
And you're never locked into one bar. You can keep your own bar and join someone else's, then switch between them with a tap — your solo bar, your shared bar at home, a friend's bar you got added to. Each one tracks its own bottles and its own matchable cocktails.
It's the obvious way a home bar should work when more than one person uses it. It just took us a while to build it right.
Build It, Show It Off, Share It
A great home bar is worth showing off. Now you can.
Every bar has a public page — a clean, shareable view of your realistic shelf and the cocktails your collection can make. Send the link to a friend and they can browse your bar in a browser, no install required. It's perfect for "come over Friday, here's what I can pour" or just flexing a shelf you're proud of.
Build it in the app, show it off on the web, share it with a link. The bar you've been quietly curating finally has somewhere to live in public.
Favorite the Bottles You Reach For First
Not every bottle on your shelf is equal. You've got the everyday rail and you've got the good stuff — the bottle you actually reach for, the one you'd save in a fire.
Now you can favorite those bottles so they stand out and rise to the top. It's a small thing, but it makes a big collection feel like yours — a quick read on what you love versus what's just there for completeness.
oz, cl, or ml — Whatever You Think In
Cocktails are written in a frustrating mix of measurement systems. American recipes use ounces; most of the world and the IBA use centiliters and milliliters. If the numbers don't match the way your brain works, you're doing mental math at the worst possible time — mid-pour.
So we added a measurement setting. Pick oz, cl, or ml and every recipe in the app converts instantly to match. A 1.5 oz pour shows as 45 ml or 4.5 cl; the whole recipe follows.
A couple of details we got right on purpose:
- Only real volumes convert. Dashes, splashes, barspoons, slices, and sprigs stay exactly as written — because that's how bartenders actually measure them, in every country.
- Nothing gets rewritten. The conversion happens only when a recipe is displayed, so switching systems is instant and your data never changes underneath you.
Small feature, but it's the kind of detail that tells you whether an app respects the craft. We think it does.
Everything Else That Makes It Work
These headline features sit on top of the things Home Bar Hero already does better than anyone:
- Find drinks by what you own. Add your bottles and instantly see every cocktail you can make right now, using ingredient hierarchy — add one bourbon and you unlock every whiskey cocktail.
- Scan your shelf with a photo. AI multi-bottle recognition reads up to ten bottles from a single picture.
- An AI bartender for substitutions, riffs, and "what should I make with this."
- Hundreds of recipes — the classics, rotating seasonal drinks, and community creations — all free.
For a full rundown of how the matching works, see what cocktails you can make with the bottles you own, or our guide to tracking your home bar inventory.
Go Build Your Bar
Open the app, build your shelf, invite the person you mix with, and switch your recipes to the measurements you actually think in. Then share the link and show it off.
This is the version of Home Bar Hero we always wanted to ship. It's free, there's no paywall, and your bar is waiting.