Review Insights · App Store
NYT Cooking: Quick Tasty Meals
The New York Times Company · 533,807 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
533,807 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 46 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"recipes"
16 negative reviews mention this · 35% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
2
"subscription"
12 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
3
"recipe"
10 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
4
"cooking"
10 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too Many Ads for a Paying Subscriber. I used to love NYT cooking, but it’s starting to give cooking blog vibes. I’m starting to see full screen ads when I scroll for recipes, even as a paid subscriber. I’m sure I’m not the only one frustrated by this short sighted decision.…" - JamesBessolo
5
"free"
9 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
6
"paid"
7 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too Many Ads for a Paying Subscriber. I used to love NYT cooking, but it’s starting to give cooking blog vibes. I’m starting to see full screen ads when I scroll for recipes, even as a paid subscriber. I’m sure I’m not the only one frustrated by this short sighted decision.…" - JamesBessolo
7
"cancel"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
8
"times"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Won’t respond to login. I used to rely on New York Times cooking every day. Now that I downloaded 26.3 or whatever, I can’t open it even though I have a paid subscription. NYT chat support was not helpful- it did not understand my issue, which is that it’s not res…" - A robot with tired eyes
9
"something"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Auto play videos. Who wants to open this app to cook something and be presented with a loud random video on auto-play. It’s obnoxious and an ill advised feature for this app which seems to be afflicted with a bad case of feature creep. More isn’t always bett…" - evonder
10
"able"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Free account is useless. They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d …" - Alc123123
11
"screen"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too Many Ads for a Paying Subscriber. I used to love NYT cooking, but it’s starting to give cooking blog vibes. I’m starting to see full screen ads when I scroll for recipes, even as a paid subscriber. I’m sure I’m not the only one frustrated by this short sighted decision.…" - JamesBessolo
12
"york"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Won’t respond to login. I used to rely on New York Times cooking every day. Now that I downloaded 26.3 or whatever, I can’t open it even though I have a paid subscription. NYT chat support was not helpful- it did not understand my issue, which is that it’s not res…" - A robot with tired eyes
📋 All 46 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Auto play videos
Who wants to open this app to cook something and be presented with a loud random video on auto-play. It’s obnoxious and an ill advised feature for this app which seems to be afflicted with a bad case of feature creep. More isn’t always better.
There should not be ads when you pay!!!!
There should not be ads in the app once you pay for it!!!! The app is great but I'm not going to keep paying to see ads!!!
Free account is useless
They offer a free account, stating to be able to see limited recipes a day. But what they really mean is you can only see a couple ingredients. I only ended up on this app because I was hoping if I downloaded it and made a free account I’d be able to see the one recipe I wanted to see that I found in my browser. But no I can’t see that recipe or any other recipe.
And I would never subscribe to their services because of all the reviews saying how hard it is to cancel. And I’ve had some experience with trying to cancel a NYT subscription. It was terrible, eventually it got to the point where I had to call them. And the man helping me actually said to me “why don’t you just keep your subscription for now and think about it a little more.”.
And I would never subscribe to their services because of all the reviews saying how hard it is to cancel. And I’ve had some experience with trying to cancel a NYT subscription. It was terrible, eventually it got to the point where I had to call them. And the man helping me actually said to me “why don’t you just keep your subscription for now and think about it a little more.”.
Too Many Ads for a Paying Subscriber
I used to love NYT cooking, but it’s starting to give cooking blog vibes.
I’m starting to see full screen ads when I scroll for recipes, even as a paid subscriber.
I’m sure I’m not the only one frustrated by this short sighted decision.
Can you add an ad-free subscription option or only load a single ad upon loading?
I’m starting to see full screen ads when I scroll for recipes, even as a paid subscriber.
I’m sure I’m not the only one frustrated by this short sighted decision.
Can you add an ad-free subscription option or only load a single ad upon loading?
Don’t sign up for an account
Account signup makes you feel like you’re going to be able to see the recipes, but it only gives you a free trial to see them. I would never recommend!
Won’t respond to login
I used to rely on New York Times cooking every day. Now that I downloaded 26.3 or whatever, I can’t open it even though I have a paid subscription. NYT chat support was not helpful- it did not understand my issue, which is that it’s not responding. The app is not responding to haptic touch. The Claire bought. Wanted me to provide info to connect me to human support, but I’m not going to provide personal information Just to get help with something I pay for. So I canceled my scrip and thanks for nothing.
App privacy = none
Why in the world is there so much tracking for a paid subscription cooking app?
Adverts on paid ap?
Really NYT cooking? Really? Ads on an app I pay for? Wow, how low, and lacking of any kind of class.
Is it free now? Or do you have to subscribe?
!!
No Apple Watch App
Until last week, NYT cooking had an Apple Watch extension which doubled the value of the App. It meant you could follow a recipe on the watch without carrying a phone around and getting the screen all dirty and worrying about what was on your fingers. The Apple Watch screen stayed on without timing out and it is designed for swimming so you just rinse it off whenever is needed.
Without the Apple Watch extension, it makes us reconsider even subscribing to the service.
Restore the Apple Watch functionality, please!
Without the Apple Watch extension, it makes us reconsider even subscribing to the service.
Restore the Apple Watch functionality, please!
Recipes heavily skewed towards non-Christian
During Lent season, the front page of the app features recipes for Ramadan.
Apple Watch app?
What happened to the app for Apple Watch? That was the most useful thing about subscribing…
Scam?
I purchased a bundle to NYT games, cooking, and news. Since I’ve purchased it, every time I try to look at a recipe with the cooking app I’m told I need to purchase a very expensive separate subscription for the cooking. This alleged “bundle subscription” is incredibly misleading and confusing.
Annoying
Stop sending me emails that I never signed up for.
Don’t use this
Every recipe on this app has “5” stars, but all the comments are some version of “omg so good! But only if you don’t follow the recipe as written”. I’ve made over a dozen of these “five star” recipes and maybe one or two are keepers. Not worth the effort.
Beware! Cellular data hog, even in the background!
I love the NYT Cooking recipes, but somehow this app has used 11 gigabytes of my cellular data in 6 days!! I only use this app at home, on WiFi, but I think the auto play videos are still playing in the background if I haven’t quit out of the app. I don’t have unlimited monthly data, so this is going to be a costly mistake for me. Extremely disappointed, and hoping the developers look into this issue. Cellular data is now OFF for this app.
Good app bad customer service
Careful if you are on a free trial you cancel in time. They refuse to work with you and it won’t give you a notice that the trial is ending. When you ask customer service for anything they can’t help. They got my $50 bucks and I’ll be getting every recipe I can into my own book by the end of the year so I never have to use them again
Horrible, horrible app
Incredibly confusing and almost impossible to figure out how to save a recipe I keep having to go to a link I saved to get to a recipe I want.
The app also wants to always jump me to the homepage when I re-enter it instead of just leaving it at the recipe that I finally found.
I really wonder sometimes who design and if they let real users, try them out before releasing them to the public
The app also wants to always jump me to the homepage when I re-enter it instead of just leaving it at the recipe that I finally found.
I really wonder sometimes who design and if they let real users, try them out before releasing them to the public
Thieves
This app wants you to make purchases outside of the app for your monthly subscriptions which forces you to have to go back through and navigate through them in order to cancel your subscription. This is just a way for them to lock you in and make it harder for you to unsubscribe if you no longer want their services after your free trial. You should be able to sign up and unsubscribe through your iPhone settings portal. They also want to log into all of your information. I downloaded this app and then instantly deleted it once I saw what they were up to.
Evan better recipes?
I’m shocked to see misspelled words in the New York Times! This is the second one I’ve seen as I just added the app. Now I’m not sure if it’s being written by AI or a careless editor, which makes me hesitant to try the recipes.
Filter function
This app is amazing. It’s crisp, clean, and easy to use. The biggest problem is that it has no default filter function. We are vegetarian. We will never eat meat. We do not want to see meat recipes. There is no way to communicate that to the app. It makes it so annoying. Please introduce a simple filter function. Once you choose the filter, everything is displayed with that filter.
Ads for Paying Subscribers
This app inserts ads, even for those who pay for an annual subscription which is ridiculous. Ads should be waived for paying customers.
Get this to WORK please
I've deleted and reinstalled a few times but the app just freezes and I can't log in. Please fix this issue.
Malfunctioning
The app will not allow me to log in! The bugs have not been fixed!!!
Not allergy friendly
With allergies so prevalent today, it’s sad that this PAID app not only doesn’t allow for allergen filters/tagging aside from gluten and dairy, but most of its recipe spotlights don’t have allergen friendly variations. Give me a gluten-free holiday cookie, please!!
Terrible
I was trying to make French toast using this app but I couldn’t due to payment
Frustrating app
My one complaint is that the app has saved over 1,000 in my account without any input from me. I have not saved any of these recipes myself; this is done by the app. The only way I can delete any of these from my “saved” recipes according to the app and cooking.nytimes.com is to delete them one by one. Needless to say, very frustrating.
No free version
You can only view one recipe as a non NYT Subscriber. I would keep the app if I could have seen more than just the one egg salad recipe. How do I know if I would like it without being able to even try it? Most apps have a non-premium version for us less fortunate people. Not this one, unless I am missing something.
Not working on iPad
I love this app, but I would really like it to work on iPad and not just iPhone.
Servers often down
Was very excited to use the app. I made a couple of wonderful recipes. However, frequently the app has stalled when loading, making it unusable in multiple instances I would have loved to make something. Unfortunately it hasn’t been very reliable for the time that I’ve had my subscription. I tried reinstalling the app and everything. I will change my reviews when this is fixed.
Not working on iPad after update ON THANKSGIVING
Just when I needed this app on my iPad, so I could cook with an easy reference, it updated overnight while I had it charging and now it DOES NOT WORK. When I open the app, it shows a splash screen that has a “Continue” button you can’t tap on, so you get stuck. Great timing, y’all. Don’t you know not to do releases before big holidays / office PTO / weekends?
Nutritional information
Please update the nutrition information page on this website. The top part is cut off and we are not able to determine saturated fat grams and/or anything else above that line.
The latest update broke voiceover Support for reading recipes in the app
I am a Blind subscriber to the New York Times and suite of applications. The New York Times cooking app has been recently updated, and this update has broken voice over support, the screen reader I use on my iPhone and iPad. I no longer can easily read any of the textual information describing the recipe, listing the ingredients or listing the preparation steps. Needless to say, this is very disappointing.
Impossible to cancel subscription
Not only is it impossible to cancel my subscription, NYT seems to thinks it’s acceptable to post pieces on why women have ruined the workplace. I will not support an organization that continuously publishes problematic content.
Latest update made this app useless . . .
. . . Unless I buy a new iPad. The app requires iOS 18. My iPad runs iOS 16. Ridiculous! I will not replace my iPad for this one app!!!
Can’t cancel easily
It’s ridiculous that they make it far far more easy to sign up for things than they do to cancel subscriptions. It’s like we have to have temporary credit cards for all these stupid subscription services.
The recipes are fine but they should be sortable based on skill level and effort. Some days I want to make something good but was and it would be nice to just see recipes like that
The recipes are fine but they should be sortable based on skill level and effort. Some days I want to make something good but was and it would be nice to just see recipes like that
Boring
Not as good as free apps.
Ads? For a paid app?
Come on. I know newspapers are dying but you really have to milk money from people who pay to use your service? Otherwise the best app. But really? Ads?
Private notes not saving
This is a recent bug.
Violation of Apple human interface guidelines?
For many years, tapping the “share button” on an iOS device brought you to the normal Apple share sheet. Here, NYT has interposed their own share sheet, meant to limit us paying customers to sharing info the way the NYT wants us to, not the way we want. Feels like less respect than NYT usually shows its readers.
Fine app but lack of Apple Watch support sucks
I use the app a lot and unfortunately it no longer supports the Apple Watch app, which was super convenient.
Ads ads everywhere
There are ads everywhere in this app even after you pay a subscription. Not impressed.
Used to be so good
I have had this app for years and it was good. However, there are a lot of recipes on repeat as the daily feature and those that are new highlight chickpeas and tofu. Cool if you are into that. Just not sure I’m getting much value at this point.
So tacky to put ads in a paid app
Love the recipes, but really imploring the NYT staff to seek other revenue streams than ADS IN A PAID APP. It’s giving Death of Journalism.
In General
This cooking section is hard to use. The recipes are hidden behind layers of gates. I pay for my subscription to the New York Times. Subscribers should have easy access to the information we pay to receieve. The entire digital experience of the NY Times is deficient and disappointing. The cooking section is the worst of all. I should not have to continually jump between venues in order to see a recipe.
I've just about had it and may cancel.
I recognize that this review may be useless because it is unlikely that a real person will read it, since everything is being done by AI.
I've just about had it and may cancel.
I recognize that this review may be useless because it is unlikely that a real person will read it, since everything is being done by AI.
Works on iPhone, not on iPad
I recently bought the app as I’ve always enjoyed the recipes from New York Times. On my iPhone, the recipes are easy to read, and I have no issues. While on my iPad, I am unable to login and the screen freezes. Which is unfortunate as I really looked forward to using it to make recipes. I’ve tried uninstalling reinstalling resetting my iPad, but nothing seems to work. 🙁
Sentiment summary
99%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
1%
Negative (1-2★)