Apple takes on recipe apps with Apple News+ Food

Recipe app developers just got new competition. On Friday, Apple introduced a soon-to-launch feature for Apple News+ subscribers called Apple News+ Food, a new section that will allow users to search, discover, save, and easily cook recipes from dozens of existing News+ publishing partners.

It’s set to roll out as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, but only in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.

Instead of building a standalone recipe app that could import content from all over the web — like recipes from blogs or TikTok videos — Apple News+ Food will only focus on recipes offered by Apple News+ publishers.

At launch, Apple aims to have north of 30 publishers on board, up from the 20 it’s currently testing. Existing partners include well-known brands like Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, Serious Eats, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Delish, Real Simple, CountryLiving, and others. Tens of thousands of recipes will be available through the Apple News+ Food service, the company notes.

The new experience lets Apple’s publishing partners get their content in front of more consumers at a time when Google’s ability to refer direct traffic to their websites continues to decline.

iPhone and iPad users will be able to find a new Food section by scrolling down in the Apple News app’s Today feed. Here, they’ll find a featured recipe, curated by Apple’s editorial team, followed by a collection of food and dining-related stories, a broader recipe collection, plus links to the Food+ recipe catalog and their own saved recipes.

Apple notes that select food stories and recipes will also be available for users who do not subscribe to Apple News+.

The Apple News+ Food subscription service can be accessed in multiple ways.

You can either tap on the “More food” link from the Food section in the app’s Today tab or you can tap on the link to “Food” from the Following tab. (The latter is a more direct method if you want to bypass reading the news articles and go straight to the recipes.)

In the Food+ section, users will see the featured recipe which is updated daily alongside an expanded set of recommended stories related to their interests. That personalization improves the more users engage with the app.

Other curated sections include those that link to your saved recipes or other types of recipe collections, like those from certain publishers, a selection of popular recipes, or those focused on some type of theme — like healthy eating or weeknight chicken dinners, for example.

As users browse the recipes, they can choose to save the recipe directly to the News app for later reference.

If users are in search of something specific, they can look through Apple’s News+ Food’s recipe catalog, tapping on buttons to narrow searches by various filters like “dinner,” “easy,” “vegetarian,” “under 30 minutes,” and more. Filters are also available for searching across your saved recipes.

The recipes themselves are formatted to be clutter and ad-free as well as easy to read — an experience that’s far less common on today’s web.

Key information — including the ingredients, steps, description, cooking time, servings, and more — is pulled out and featured in a clear format that highlights a photo of the dish and links back to the publisher’s website.

Other features Apple added also come in handy. One lets you tap on an ingredient to see the amount needed without having to scroll back to the ingredients list. Another lets you tap on the cooking time in the recipe’s instructions to automatically start a timer on your iPhone or iPad.

A dedicated cooking mode is available, too, which displays the recipe in full screen with larger text, so you can follow instructions with minimal tapping and scrolling. In this mode, the screen will stay on, even if your device is normally set to turn off the screen after a period of time.

One thing Apple News+ Food is missing, however, is the ability to add your own recipes or those saved from elsewhere on the web, as well as any tools to import or export recipes to and from other apps. You also can’t save recipes directly from social media, though many home chefs today find recipes on places like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

With the launch of Apple News+ Food, the tech giant continues to inch its way into the mobile app ecosystem where it competes with third-party developers who help the company generate revenue through App Store purchases. Recent additions to the Apple app lineup over the past year or so include the party-planning app Invites, iOS 18’s new Passwords app, the Sports app, and the mobile Journal, for example.

Unlike independent developers, Apple can afford to launch new apps that don’t have to be supported by a business model other than continued iPhone sales. This puts smaller and indie developers at a distinct disadvantage.

In the case of Apple News+ Food, publishers weren’t additionally compensated for their recipes, TechCrunch understands. Instead, the experience is an extension of Apple’s existing relationship with its partners, where the iPhone maker generates revenue by selling ads within the publishers’ articles for a 30% cut of sales.

The new service requires an Apple News+ subscription, which is $12.99 per month in the U.S., £12.99 in the UK, $16.99 in Canada, and $19.99 in Australia. That includes access to over 400 magazines, newspapers, and digital publishers.