HomeView's Start Cooking reads any recipe in Google's format, Apple says, and food writers fear for their ad incomeHomeView's Start Cooking reads any recipe in Google's format, Apple says, and food writers fear for their ad income

Start Cooking, the HomeView feature that turns a web recipe into a step-by-step cooking screen, works with any recipe published in Google's recipe format, Apple says, according to The Verge.

Apple's product page says only that a recipe found in Safari gets a Start Cooking button, and its 13 October announcement describes HomeView "converting recipes from the web into step-by-step instructions", with hands-free timers and help keeping track of ingredients. The Verge's Dominic Preston looked at what that means for the people who write those recipes, and food writers he spoke to are uneasy. HomeView is available from 13 November at $299.

Why are recipe writers worried?

Most independent food writers are paid by the adverts and affiliate links on their recipe pages. A cooking screen that lifts out the ingredients and steps leaves all of that behind. Eater's Bettina Makalintal told The Verge that tools which simply extract a recipe break an unwritten deal between the people who develop recipes and the people who cook them, and that the stories and notes around a recipe are often where readers find substitutions and fixes when something goes wrong.

Apple's design softens the blow without removing it. A recipe still has to be opened in Safari, on an iPhone or on HomeView itself, before Start Cooking appears, so the writer gets at least one page view with its adverts. Preston argues that one visit is worth less than a reader staying on the page while they cook. He also writes that Apple had not answered him on how Start Cooking treats recipes behind a paywall, which matters because paid newsletters are where many writers have retreated.

Has anyone tried this before?

• Recipeasly, a site that promised recipes without ads or life stories, launched on the weekend of 28 February 2021 and was taken down on 1 March after food bloggers objected; its creator apologised, TODAY reported.
• Google retired step-by-step recipes and the Assistant cookbook on its Nest smart displays in 2024, as part of a cut of 17 Assistant features, Droid Life reported on 11 January 2024.
• Amazon's Echo Show shows recipes only from partner sites, The Verge reports, which is what makes Apple's open approach unusual among smart displays.

Makalintal also told The Verge she sees Google's Gemini summaries in Search, which assemble a recipe from several sites with little sign of where it came from, as a bigger threat than HomeView. Food writer Jaya Saxena pointed out that most recipe blogs already carry a jump-to-recipe button for readers who want to skip the story.

Can recipe apps put their own pages on HomeView?

The Verge says large platforms such as Allrecipes or NYT Cooking can use HomeView's app casting, the CarPlay-style system where an app runs on a nearby iPhone and appears on the display, to show recipes on their own terms. Apple's own wording is narrower. Both the product page and the announcement describe compatible third-party audio and video apps, and nothing either says covers a recipe or cooking app. As we reported when we found that HomeView has no App Store and runs third-party apps from your iPhone, what an app may show there is Apple's call, and a cooking app is not on its list yet.

Our take

Apple's answer settles a question our guide to cooking with HomeView had to leave open, and it is a reasonable design choice for owners: one public standard instead of a list of approved partners means Start Cooking should work on most recipe sites from launch. The cost lands on the writers, and APPDOOK does not think a single page view settles it. Look at what Apple's own picture of the cooking screen keeps: the dish, a small source name, the time and the servings. A reader cooking from that card has no reason to scroll back to the page, see its ads, or find the notes on what to do when the sauce splits.

We read Google's documentation for that format to see what control writers really have. Only a recipe's name and photo are required; the ingredients list and the steps are recommended fields. If Start Cooking needs those two fields to build its screens, as the feature's description suggests, a writer could leave them out and keep readers on the page. That is a poor trade for most: the same fields feed Google's richer recipe results, so dropping them to block HomeView risks losing search traffic. Apple's announcement and product page offer nothing for writers, no way to opt out and no rules on credit, and that is the gap we would most like it to close before HomeView reaches kitchens.

For owners, the useful habit costs nothing. When a recipe works, go back to the page it came from at least once, read the notes, and if a writer's recipes keep turning up in your kitchen, subscribe to them. Start Cooking is a reading mode, and a good one for wet hands, but the recipe inside it was tested by someone who needs that visit to keep writing.