Apple News+ Food: New Recipe Section Coming to Apple News App for Subscribers in April

Apple News Plus subscribers will have access to a new recipes section in Apple’s News app, the company announced in a press release. When iOS and iPadOS 18.4 are released in April, the new section, Apple News Plus Food, will be accessible as part of those updates. Within the Apple News app, subscribers to Apple News+ will soon have access to tens of thousands of recipes, restaurant reviews, cooking & kitchen tips, and more.

The competition for recipe app developers has increased. Apple announced Apple News+ Food, a new section that will soon be available to Apple News+ subscribers. It will let users search, find, save, and prepare recipes from dozens of current News+ publishing partners. Only in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia will it be available in April as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4.

Apple News+ Food: a New Recipe Section

Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will debut with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April. This section will include tens of thousands of recipes from the world’s leading food publishers, such as Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats, along with stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more.

Apple News+ Food will only focus on recipes provided by Apple News+ publishers rather than creating a stand-alone recipe app that could import content from all over the internet, such as recipes from blogs or TikTok videos.

Users will be able to browse, search, and filter tens of thousands of recipes in the Recipe Catalog, with new recipes added daily, as well as discover stories selected by Apple News editors with the new Food feature. The new cook mode brings step-by-step instructions to the full screen, and the elegantly designed recipe format makes it simple to review ingredients and instructions. Additionally, users have the option to offline access and store their favorite recipes for later use.

Apple News editors will curate stories for Apple News Plus Food as well. Additionally, Apple announced that non-Plus subscribers will have access to “select stories and recipes.”

With the addition of a recipes section, the Apple News app and The New York Times’ main app are now even more competitive. Sudoku and crossword puzzles are among the games available to Apple News Plus subscribers.

Apple plans to have more than 30 publishers on board at launch, up from the 20 it is now testing. Renowned brands like Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Delish, Real Simple, Country Living, Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Good Food, Serious Eats, and Allrecipes are among the current partners. According to the company, the Apple News+ Food service will offer tens of thousands of recipes.

At a time when Google’s ability to drive direct traffic to their websites is still declining, the new experience enables Apple’s publishing partners to reach a wider audience with their content.

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Scrolling down in the Today feed of the Apple News app will reveal a new Food section for iPhone and iPad users. Here, users will discover a featured recipe selected by Apple’s editorial team, a selection of stories about food and dining, a larger collection of recipes, and links to both their saved recipes and the Food+ recipe catalog.

Apple notes that users without an Apple News+ subscription will also be able to access a selection of food stories and recipes.

There are several ways to use the Apple News+ Food subscription service.

Either tap the “More food” link from the app’s Today tab’s Food section or tap the “Food” link from the Following tab. (If you prefer to skip the news articles and go directly to the recipes, the latter is a more straightforward approach.)

The featured recipe, which is updated every day, is displayed in the Food+ section along with a larger selection of suggested stories based on user interests. The more users interact with the app, the better that personalization becomes.

Links to your saved recipes or other kinds of recipe collections, such as those from particular publishers, a selection of well-liked recipes, or sections centered around a particular theme, such as weeknight chicken dinners or healthy eating, are examples of other carefully chosen sections.

During the recipe browsing process, users have the option to save a recipe straight to the News app for future use.

Apple’s News+ Food recipe catalog allows users to search for specific recipes by tapping on buttons. These filters include “dinner,” “easy,” “vegetarian,” “under 30 minutes,” and more. You can also search through your saved recipes using filters.

The recipes themselves are presented in an easy-to-read, clutter-and ad-free manner, which is much less common on the internet these days.

Important details are highlighted, including a picture of the dish and links to the publisher’s website. These details include the ingredients, preparation instructions, description, cooking time, serving sizes, and more.

Apple also added other useful features. Without having to go back to the ingredients list, one allows you to tap on an ingredient to view the required amount. Another allows you to automatically start a timer on your iPhone or iPad by tapping on the cooking time in the recipe’s instructions.

There is also a dedicated cooking mode that shows the recipe in full screen with larger text so you can follow directions with less scrolling and tapping. Even if your device is configured to turn off the screen after a certain amount of time, the screen will remain on in this mode.

The ability to add your own recipes or ones you’ve saved from other websites, along with any tools to import or export recipes to and from other apps, is one feature that Apple News+ Food lacks. Although many home cooks now find recipes on sites like TikTok and Instagram Reels, you can’t save recipes straight from social media.

Since the release of Apple News+ Food, the tech giant has been making inroads into the mobile app market, where it faces off against third-party developers who assist the company in making money through App Store purchases. The party planning app Invites, the new Passwords app in iOS 18, the Sports app, and the mobile Journal are just a few of the recent additions to the Apple app store over the past year or so.

Apple has the resources to release new apps that don’t need to be backed by anything other than sustained iPhone sales, unlike independent developers. Smaller and independent developers are severely disadvantaged by this.

An Apple News+ subscription is required for the new service; this costs $12.99 in the United States, £12.99 in the United Kingdom, $16.99 in Canada, and $19.99 in Australia each month. This includes having access to more than 400 newspapers, magazines, and online publishers.

With iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, Apple News+ subscribers will be able to access Apple News+ Food in April. Users without an Apple News+ subscription will also be able to access a selection of stories and recipes.