Apple News App – Setting Up Apple News Channels

The Apple News App is the news-reading app that aggregates published news from a range of sources, sort of a better-formatted version of RSS. The company launched the News app first on its mobile phone before it got to macOS earlier this year. Replacing the now-defunct Newsstand app on iOS.

Apple News App

The News app presents stories that are most relevant to your personal interests while keeping you up thus far on other parts of the world too. Apple News app is just available to users with an iCloud address within u.s., the UK, and Australia.

Apple News App?

The modern informed citizen of the planet must get their news from a wide range of sources. Any curious reader will quickly be overwhelmed by the amount of sites they’d prefer to visit regularly.

It’s this inconvenience that popularized RSS feeds. However, reading RSS will be like trying to sip from a firehose: it’s hard to check the forest for the trees. And this is what Apple News aims to solve.

Using a mixture of human editors and article metrics, stories are sorted depending on personal interest and subscribed feeds. Although you do not follow the massive sites, you’re sure to see major news of the day in Apple News without getting lost within the weeds.

Setting Up Apple News Channels

When you first open the News app, you will be asked to select a number of your favorite news sources, called “channels” within the app.

You can also follow topics like “Technology” instead of specific channels. You can get access to follow liberally, and you can always unfollow channels later if you choose to change your mind.

Working With Paid Subscriptions

If you have already got paid subscriptions to a news outlet, Apple News can handle that too:

When you open a story for the channel, you will be given the chance to subscribe at the top section of the screen. Tap that, then register using your credentials to activate your subscription. This may propagate over all of your iCloud-connected devices.

You can also register for paid subscriptions through Apple News with an in-app purchase. These subscriptions are tied to your Apple ID and billed like an app subscription. You’ll also get a message from the channel explaining the way to create a login for the site so to be able to view your subscription in a browser.

Voting on Stories

Once you’ve created your channels, you will need to “vote” on stories that interest you to refine Apple News’ understanding of your interest:

By swiping a story to the left, you’ll “Like” the story. Swiping to the right, you will “Dislikes” the story. Users can also tap on the love icons at the bottom of any news article to register their opinion. Apple News will then use this information when suggesting news stories.

You can also register your opinion on a whole channel. With the channel’s page open, tap the love icons at the top section of the screen. Tap on the heart to show you more stories from that channel in your home feed. You can also tap on the dislike heart to block news stories from that channel completely.

You can also save and share stories. After you share a story, it’s shared via the quality iOS share sheet. Saved stories are separated at the bottom section of the Channels tab for you to read later.

Navigating Apple News

This app’s main navigation is found at the bottom section of the screen. The first feed in Apple News, Today, shows the top stories of the day. The first section of Today, Top Stories, shows the top content of the day.

Scroll past the top Stories section and you will see Trending Stories. These stories are chosen by an algorithm due to their popularity with other readers.

Below Trending Stories is For You. These stories are selected algorithmically depending on your likes and dislikes. This is where the major personalized stories are presented to you.

Finally, underneath For You, you will see all of your followed channels. Apple News shows five stories from each channel until it runs out of channels.

Finally, the Channels tab configures your followed channels. You’ll be able to remove or reorder channels with the Edit button within the upper right. To include more channels, scroll to the bottom of the list and tap the red button labeled Discover Channels & Topics.

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