Scroll Recipes With Messy Hands: No Touching Needed

You can scroll a recipe without touching the screen by using camera-based gesture control. AirTouch uses the webcam on a Windows laptop to read your hand in the air and turns it into scrolling, clicking, and keyboard shortcuts. Raise a palm, scroll to the next step, and go back to kneading. The screen stays clean and so does the recipe.

Why is cooking from a screen so annoying?

Every home cook knows the moves. The knuckle tap. The elbow scroll. The pinky you kept clean for this exact purpose. The desperate nose swipe when the screen dims with both hands inside a chicken.

Touchscreens assume clean, dry fingers. Kitchens offer butter, dough, raw meat, and dish soap. Trackpads are worse. And recipe pages are long, with the ingredient list at the top and step seven somewhere below three stories about the author's grandmother.

What are the usual workarounds?

• Voice assistants. Great for timers and unit conversions. Less great for "scroll down a bit, no, back up" while the mixer is running.

• Cook mode. Some recipe sites keep the screen awake. You still have to scroll.

• A stylus or a zip bag over the tablet. It works. It is also one more thing to wash.

• Printing the recipe. Respect. But then there is the video.

How do hand gestures fix it?

AirTouch is gesture control and hand tracking software that turns hand movement into normal mouse and keyboard input. Your browser has no idea anything unusual is happening. It works with any recipe site, any cooking video, and any app, because the computer simply sees scrolling and key presses.

• Open palm takes the cursor.

• Pinch and drag, with Touch mode on, scrolls the page like a finger on a tablet. Think invisible tongs.

• A mapped gesture presses Page Down for the next step, or the space bar to pause the video while you catch up.

It reads the shape of your hand, not the cleanliness of it. Flour, oil, and oven mitts are all fine within reason, although a mitt does hide your fingers, so stick to the open palm while wearing one.

How do you set it up in the kitchen?

• Install AirTouch on a Windows laptop. It takes about five minutes, and the steps are in how to install AirTouch on Windows.

• Park the laptop somewhere dry with the webcam facing where you stand. Across the counter is fine. You do not need to be close.

• Check the light. Kitchens with a bright window behind you can confuse a webcam. Turn the laptop so the light falls on you. The camera setup guide has more.

• Map two gestures. One for Page Down, one for the space bar. That covers most of cooking. The gesture mapping guide shows how.

What else can you do with it at home?

• Skip a song with greasy hands mid-barbecue prep.

• Follow a pottery, painting, or bike repair tutorial without smearing clay, paint, or chain grease on your keyboard.

• Pause the workout video from the yoga mat.

• Wave off the 6 a.m. alarm playlist like a wizard who is not ready for this.

More ideas are in gesture control on a laptop.

Is the camera watching me cook?

Camera video is processed on your own computer and does not leave it. AirTouch looks for hands so it can move a cursor. It needs an internet connection to run, and that connection is not used to send your video anywhere.

Where to start

Start a free trial, pick something ambitious for dinner, and keep your clean pinky in retirement.

Related: control your computer with hand gestures and a webcam, gesture control for Windows, and gesture control and hand tracking software.