Soap Genie is here to help you with the science of soap making so you can focus on the art – and fun! – of soap making. If you ever feel lost, you can use this manual to find out how to achieve what you want with Soap Genie. Some features are only available when you unlocked the full app. These features are marked with PRO.

Creating a New Soap Recipe

Setting Soap Properties

Create a new soap by specifying either the weight of the oils or the weight of the batch. You select the mode by either tapping either "batch" or "oils". If you choose the batch mode, Soap Genie tries its best to make the weight of all ingredients (including water, lye, essential oils/fragrances) sum up to the weight you provided. To specify the weight you tap the "Total Weight" field or the weight itself. When specifying the weight an extra bar is visible on top of the keyboard where you can specify the weight unit (grams, kilograms, ounces, pounds).

Soap Genie supports dual lye. This means you can specify a mixture of both NaOH (used to make a hard soap) and KOH (used to make a liquid soap). To do so, tap the "Type of Lye" field and move the slider to the desired ratio.

Superfat allows to have excess oil in the calculation. This is both for safety (lye on its own is dangerous) and to add extra moisturising qualities to your soap. Tap the "—" or "+" to increase or decrease the superfat percentage.

Water dissolves the NaOH and KOH. Higher water concentrations are easier to work with but means that the soap takes longer to cure. To change the water concentration, tap the field named "Water Concentration" or "Lye Concentration" (the name depends on your previous choices). You can then express the amount of water either as a percentage of the oils or as a percentage of the lye which Soap Genie calculates for you based on the oils you choose.

PRO: If you always use the same soap properties you can set them as your defaults. To do so, go to Settings, "Change Calculator Defaults". Whenever you create a new recipe Soap Genie loads your defaults so you don't have to select them all over again.

Selecting Oils and Fats

When selecting oils and fats you can specify which ones you want by tapping on the left-hand side of their name. A check mark appears when you select the oil or fat. To unselect you can tap again. Each time you make a change Soap Genie gets started and calculates a recipe for you that matches your requests. You can see the result on the right. For example, "no oils selected" means you first need to select one or more oils.

In addition, you can add restrictions to the oils. To do so, tap "no constraints" on the right-hand side. The keyboard pops up and an extra bar is visible on top of the keyboard.

There are many options for constraints. You can specify that you want an exact percentage of a specific oil. To do so, tap "=" (it turns blue) and "%". Then, tap in the percentage, for example 10. Soap Genie now makes sure this oil takes up exactly 10% of the weight.

You can tap "max" to specify the maximum amount you want, or "min" to specify the minimum amount. Instead of working with percentages, you can specify the exact weight. To do so, tap on the unit symbol on the bar instead of "%". The choices vary and could be "g", "kg", "lb", or "oz". Which options you get depends on the unit you used for the total weight, and on the unit you selected as the main unit in Settings (Settings, "Set Main Units", e.g. "lb").

You can have one constraint on every oil or fat you select. Soap Genie automagically* calculates a new recipe for you when you change a constraint. This way you can see if a solution is possible or not.*

Whenever Soap Genie has found a recipe, you can add it to your collection of recipes by tapping the "+" button on the top. The button only works when Soap Genie did found a recipe. This is to prevent you from adding an incomplete recipe. To start anew, click on the reset button in the top left.

To add a recipe you already have, start by selecting the oils used in the recipe. For each of the oils, add a constraint where you specify the exact oil percentage and make sure "=" is blue in the bar on top of the keyboard. If all percentages sum up to 100% Soap Genie allows you to add the recipe to your recipe collection. You can achieve the same by using the exact weights instead of percentages.

Selecting Soap Qualities

The soap qualities determine the characteristics of your soap. For example, some soaps are better at building up a lather, others are great for cleaning. With Soap Genie you don't have to worry about the soap qualities. The recipes calculated by Soap Genie always have soap qualities within the ideal range. If you want to change these ranges, you can do so. This is useful if you are looking for a soap that, for example, is extra cleaning or very creamy.

Tap on "Desired Qualities" to change the qualities for the current recipe you are working on. A new view opens that lists all the soap qualities, along with the range of their accepted values.

The ideal range for conditioning is 44-69. Let's change this range to 55-65. Tap the "+" repeatedly or continuously to increase the value of 44.

To change the upper limit, first tap the upper limit itself. In our case, this means tapping the number 69. As you do so, the number turns bold.

If you now tap the "–" and the "+" you see you are changing the upper limit. By repeatedly tapping "–" you can change the upper limit to "65".

Soap Genie now recalculates the recipe to ensure that the conditioning value is in the range 55-65.

Sometimes the qualities you want just aren't possible with the oils and fats you selected. You can ease up on the desired qualities by widening the range of values. Tap on the top right corner of the desired qualities view to reset all the qualities to their default values.

Soap Genie searches through millions of recipes. By default, Soap Genie selects the soap that has an optimal INS value. If you want to, you can tell Soap Genie to optimise for another soap quality. For example, to maximise the conditioning quality of your soap you tap on "Optimise For" in the Calculator screen and choose "Conditioning".

PRO: You can optimise for a "Low Soap Price". Soap Genie takes all your requirements into account and then finds the recipe with the lowest oil and fat cost. You can set the individual oil prices by going to Settings, "Select and Price Oils".

Selecting Fragrances

Soap making becomes an art when you add colours and fragrances. Soap Genie can still help you as it can calculate the optimal amount of an essential oil/fragrance to add to your soap. To simplify the selection these are grouped by their scent, their effect, and the desired note. Scents can be citrus, fresh, spice, floral, woody, or herbal. Effects are healing, relaxing, mood-improving, refreshing, cooling, or warming. The notes are top, middle, or base. A top note is one that is instantly present but fleeting. A base note may take time before you notice it but lingers for a long time.

To select an essential oil/fragrance scroll through the list and tap the desired one. Soap Genie allows you to select one essential oil/fragrance as a top note, one as a middle note, and one as a base note. If you are looking for a specific scent, effect, or note, you tap it in the top and the list at the bottom updates to those that match your choice.

To help you, Soap Genie highlights those fragrances that are often recommended based on the ones you already selected. For example, if you select "Black Pepper", then Soap Genie recommends fragrances such as "Basil" and "Cedarwood Atlas".

You can choose to follow, or ignore, the suggestions made by Soap Genie. They are offered as a guideline to help you quickly create a wonderful soap recipe. In the end, which fragrances you like may be different to those someone else likes. Play around with the fragrances and find out what works for you!

Managing Recipes

When you tap on Recipes at the bottom, you see an overview of all stored recipes. The overview screen gives you the basic information such as the name, the rating you gave the soap, and the soap qualities. Qualities with a value above the optimal range are highlighted in red, and those below the optimal range are in blue. You can delete a recipe or change the order of recipes by tapping the "Edit" button on the top right. To exit the editing mode, tap "Done" on the top right corner. To see details of a recipe tap the recipe.

The detail screen gives you information on the recipe itself, along with other tools to manage the recipe. To change the title of the recipe, tap the title and use the keyboard to change its title. You can change the thumbnail associated with the recipe by tapping the thumbnail itself and selecting a desired photo. To change the rating, tap the desired number of stars. If you want to, you can also add notes for yourself in the box towards the bottom. These notes are a great place to write about your experiences and quirks with this recipe!

PRO: tap the export button on the top right to get a PDF of your recipe. The PDF contains all the information such as the weight of the ingredients, the soap qualities, and your notes. The PDF contains the INCI label associated with your recipe. Soap Genie adds a page to the PDF with a quick overview of the general steps to make a soap.

Towards the bottom of the screen you'll find a radar graph which gives a visual overview of the qualities of your soap.

The radar graph lists each quality and shows where this soap recipe falls compared to the ideal range. A green band shows the ideal range. If all the qualities sit within this green band, you have a great soap! If any of the qualities are too high or too low they fall outside of this band and are either red (too high) or blue (too low).

At the very bottom of the screen you can find two buttons. The first, "Find Similar Soap", is a great option if you want to see if any soap recipes exist that closely match the qualities of this soap. When you tap this button, the Calculator screen opens again and Soap Genie load all the parameters for you. As desired, you can change the soap's properties, select or unselect oils, add or change fragrances, etc.

A second option is the button "Find Replacement Oil". This comes in handy when you ran out of one or more oils for this recipe. Tap the button and the calculator Screen comes up. This time around, only those oils used in the original recipe are selected. Unselect any oils you no longer have access to and/or select oils you want Soap Genie to consider as it looks for a replacement. If Soap Genie finds a replacement, you can add it as a new recipe by tapping "+" on the top. If Soap Genie finds no replacement, you can add additional oils, or change the desired qualities of the soap.

Using the Photo Reel

The Photo Reel allows you to document your soap creation, or to keep track of a collection of images for any given recipe. To access the photo reel, click on the top on the photo reel icon:

To add a new photo to the photo reel tap the "+" in the top left corner. To exit the photo reel, tap "Done".

PRO: You are not restricted to a single photo. Your photo reel can contain as many photos as you want.

As your collection of photos grows, you can manage your photo reel by tapping "Edit" at the bottom. After tapping this button you can select any number of photos in your photo reel. Selected images are indicated by a tick mark:

A new control bar is displayed at the bottom when you are in edit mode:

Tap the far left button of a bin to permanently delete the selected photos from the reel. Tap the middle export button to open the selected photos in another app. This makes it easy to e.g. include the photos in a new document or an email. When done with editing tap the "Done" button to return to the normal mode.

Creating a Printout

PRO: You need to have unlocked the full app before you can create a printout. The options related to a printout described below are only available when you have unlocked the full app.

On the soap recipe screen you can tap the export button to create a PDF printout. This PDF printout can be saved, printed, or shared with friends and family. Due to the way lye reacts with aluminium it is strongly advised to create a printout of your recipe before you start with the soap crafting. In addition, a printout is where you van find the INCI label associated with your soap.

By default, each printout contains an extra page with instructions on soap making. These are a reminder for safekeeping and to ensure you don't miss any steps. If desired, you can go to settings and change the default to exclude printing this extra page:

Since paper sizing is different around the world, Soap Genie can also alter the page size for you to ensure you have the best possible printout. To select the desired size, go to settings and toggle either the A4 or letter print option.

Changing Soap Genie's Settings

The Settings screen allows you to unlock the full version of the app and to add to the tip jar – Thanks! The Settings screen also allows you to filter the list of oils based on preferences/requirements such as only showing vegan or nut-free options. You can toggle each option as desired. To have more fine-grained control over which oils to choose, you can select "Select and Price Oils". Tap on the left-hand side to select and unselect the oils and waxes you want to see in the Calculator screen.

The Settings screen also allows you to change the main units. This includes the weight unit, which is then always available when e.g. adding a constraint, and to set the default currency.

Setting the default currency only changes the currency label and doesn't change the prices themselves. Soap Genie is unaware of exchange rates, so setting the default currency is only a cosmetic change.

PRO: If you have soap properties which you use for all your soaps you can set them by tapping "Change Calculator Defaults". If you want to optimise for lowest price in the Calculator screen, you can tap "Select and Price Oils", then tap on the right hand-side to set the prices of the oils you are using.