The developers of recipe apps have received a new competition. On Friday, Apple introduced an immediate release feature called Apple News+ Apple News+ Food. This is a new section that allows users to easily search, discover, save and cook recipes from dozens of existing News+ Publishing Partners.
It will be rolled out in April as part of iOS 18.4 and iPads 18.4, but only in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
Instead of building a standalone recipe app that allows you to import content from the whole web, such as blogs and Tiktok video recipes, Apple News+ Food will focus solely on recipes provided by Apple News+ Publishers.
At launch, Apple aims to have 30 publishers North, up from the 20 people they are currently testing. Existing partners include well-known brands such as AllRecipes, BonAppétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, Tearing Eats, Epicurious, Good Housepeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Delish, Real Simple, and Country Living. Tens of thousands of recipes will be available through Apple News+ Food Service, the company notes.
The new experience allows Apple publishing partners to get content in front of more consumers as their ability to introduce Google’s direct traffic continues to decline.
iPhone and iPad users can find a new food section by scrolling in Today Feed in the Apple News app. Here you’ll find featured recipes curated by Apple’s editorial team, then you’ll find a collection of food and meal-related stories, a wider recipe collection, a link to the Food+ Recipe catalogue, and a unique recipe.
Apple says food stories and recipes selected by users who do not subscribe to Apple News+ are also available.
You can access the Apple News+ Food subscription service in multiple ways.
You can tap the “More Foods” link from the Food section of the (App Today) tab, or tap the “Foods” link from the next tab. (The latter is a more direct way to read news articles and go straight to the recipe.)
In the Food+ section, users will see featured recipes updated daily, along with an expanded set of recommended stories related to their interests. That personalization will help more users become involved in the app.
Other curated sections link to saved recipes and other types of recipe collections, such as recipes from a particular publisher, a selection of popular recipes, or something that focuses on some theme. Includes sections.
Once users view recipes, they can choose to save the recipe directly to the news app for later reference.
If the user is searching for something specific, you can look up Apple’s News+ Food recipe catalogue or tap on a button to see “dinner”, “easy”, “vegetarian”, “less than 30 minutes” and more. You can narrow your search with a variety of filters. Filters can also be searched across saved recipes.
The recipe itself is cluttered, ad-free, and formatted for easy reading. This is a less common experience on the web today.
Important information including ingredients, stairs, descriptions, cooking times, servings, etc. are drawn out, highlighting the photo of the dish and presenting it in a clear format that links to the publisher’s website.
Other features that Apple has added are also useful. You can tap on the ingredients to see how much you need without going back to the material list. Another allows you to tap the recipe instructions cooking time to automatically launch the timer on your iPhone or iPad.
A dedicated cooking mode is also available. This allows you to follow the steps with minimal tapping and scrolling, as it displays the recipe in full screen with larger text. In this mode, the screen will usually be on even if the device is set to turn the screen off after a certain period of time.
However, one thing Apple News+ Food lacks is that you can add tools to import or export recipes to your own recipes or saved from other locations on the web, or to other apps. . Also, although you cannot save recipes directly from social media, many home chefs today find recipes on places like Tiktok and Instagram reels.
With the launch of Apple News+ Food, Tech Giant continues to enter the mobile app ecosystem, competing with third-party developers who help the company make money through the purchase of the App Store. Recent additions to the Apple app lineup over the past year or so include the party planning app Invites, the new password app for iOS 18, The Sports app, and the mobile journal.
Unlike independent developers, Apple can afford to launch new apps that don’t need to be supported by business models other than ongoing iPhone sales. This puts a clear disadvantage for smaller, indie developers.
For Apple News+ Food, publishers are not further compensated for their recipes, TechCrunch understands. Instead, this experience is an extension of existing relationships with Apple partners, where iPhone makers generate revenue by selling 30% sales cut ads within publisher articles.
The new service requires an Apple News+ subscription of $12.99 per month in the US, £12.99 in the UK, $16.99 in Canada and $19.99 in Australia. This includes access to over 400 magazines, newspapers and digital publishers.