iOS 18.4 isn’t expected to be released until April having only gone into beta yesterday, but Apple has unusually given a feature of the upcoming update the full press release treatment on its newsroom.
It’s an update to Apple News Plus which will bring “tens of thousands of recipes” to the service, a selection of which will be available to non-subscribers, the company says. Along with this foody inspiration, Apple News Plus Food will include “stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more”.
Just as Apple News Plus currently leans on newspapers and magazines from The Wall Street Journal to Vanity Fair, the new Food section will bring “the world’s top food publishers” into the tent, with Apple namechecking Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats in its press release.
Obviously the internet isn’t exactly short of recipes, but Apple hopes that its implementation will be user-friendly. The recipes themselves are not only “beautifully designed” (you can judge for yourself with the accompanying screenshots), but the update will introduce “cook mode”, where step-by-step instructions can be pushed to full-screen mode for easy reading. Recipes can be saved and accessed offline, in case your kitchen happens to be in a signal-free zone.
It looks promising, with the recipe instructions echoing how the Apple Music app displays accompanying lyrics. While it may be tough to read from the countertop on smaller iPhones, the iPad version could be a mainstay in many household kitchens, if the recipes prove to be winners.
Another update beyond news
Obviously there’s no shortage of free recipes online, but anybody who’s ever tried following one will know that the vast majority don’t prioritize readability.
The necessity of appearing prominently in Google means that the average internet recipe is packed with superfluous information about the author’s own relationship to the food in question and other fluff, long before you reach an ingredients list, let alone how to actually cook it. By sidestepping search engines and curating its own recipes, Apple has no need to pad the content and can get straight to the recipe.
Apple will likely also have noticed that The New York Times cooking app does pretty well on its App Store at $5 per month. It wouldn’t be the first time the company has set itself up as competition to the paper, having opened a puzzle section in its News app back in 2023 likely hoping to attract those looking for more after getting their daily Wordle fix.
Not all Apple News features are available in all regions — indeed, the aforementioned puzzle section has been exclusive to North America since launch. However, the beta phase includes both the U.K. and U.S., according to AppleInsider.
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