The internet and the integration of social media with significant global events have made it nearly impossible to live under a rock nowadays, making it easy to get news.
Finding a trustworthy one-stop shop to interact with your news might be difficult, though.
I used to typically watch TV, bookmark news websites, and occasionally even use Twitter to obtain my news (…I know).
I tried out over 20 news aggregator apps in quest of a more effective approach to acquire diverse news—some were fantastic, others were passable, and some weren’t so great.
Here are my top five selections for the greatest news apps after using them for a few weeks.
What characteristics distinguish a top-notch news app?
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The majority of the applications on this list use the same news sources, but you’ll see that some, like NewsBreak and Google News, give free content precedence over sources that require a subscription.
Because of this, such news applications frequently feature items from less well-known publications, offering a greater variety of news than apps like Apple News, which primarily highlights news from more well-known sources.
Google News (iOS, Android, Web)
We all agree that Google excels at aesthetics, and the Google News app’s contemporary design undoubtedly contributes to a more pleasurable news-reading experience.
Additionally, it has just had a redesign, so you know they’re trying to keep it current.
The Full Coverage panels, which are available on bigger stories, were my favourite. They include a variety of sources on a breaking story, as well as pertinent tweets and videos, and even a timeline outlining how events have developed.
You can acquire more information about a topic by simply clicking the complete coverage icon after reading an article.
This allowed me to quickly and easily identify related articles without having to make a special effort to manually search for them.
It also makes sure you’re hearing from a variety of people on a subject rather than just accepting one viewpoint as gospel.
You can save the searches and articles you find most interesting, follow the themes and news sources you find most interesting, and rate individual pieces with a thumbs up or down.
The wide search options, which include subcategories, suggested sources, and pertinent articles, were also liked by me. This ensures that the news you receive the following time is more pertinent.
Apple News (iOS, Web)
Although it may not be the most popular app on this list, Apple News earns a point for its usefulness to users of Apple products. The app comes pre-installed on devices, and you can set Siri to suggest stories based on the apps and websites you’ve been using recently in Safari.
Because many of the items on the app are only accessible to members, I’d suggest Apple News is best enjoyed with the premium $9.99/month subscription.
Many people complain that Apple aggressively pushes its free trial and premium plan on users, but I believe the cost is reasonable.
Other applications on this list allow you to view articles from subscription-only sites, but after a certain number of articles, you’ll either need to subscribe to those publications, or worse, you’ll be prompted to pay right away.
But with Apple News+, you can read several of the most popular, subscription-only news sources, including The Wall Street Journal and TIME, without having to pay a fee, but Apple also offers audio stories that you can hear.
Ground News (iOS, Android, Web)
Ground News has a somewhat bland appearance, but the app more than makes up for it in other ways.
Each article begins with a Ground Overview, which is a one-paragraph summary.
It provides you just a little bit more information than a headline so you can decide if you want to spend time reading a story (which you can do by clicking on a source under Full Coverage).
Ground News takes itself in offering a variety of viewpoints, and I could see this in action with its Across the Spectrum and Factuality segments.
Three bars of varied lengths and colours appeared after the Full Coverage part of an article: one blue for politically left-aligned sources, one red for politically right-aligned sources, and one white for sources that lie somewhere in the middle.
The software automatically finds articles from sources that support the sentiment when you click on one of those bars.
Ground News is a worthwhile investment if you value knowing more about the tendencies and objectives of your news sources.
NewsBreak (iOS, Android, Web) (iOS, Android, Web)
When I first opened NewsBreak, the button devoted solely to local news caught my attention (including a neat weather report).
However, the other tabs at the top of the screen offer a multitude of topics to investigate from international news sources.
It was simple as I glanced through the feeds.
Each article on NewsBreak is shown as a separate card with a prominent graphic and title rather than being inundated with endless lines of text.
Each article on NewsBreak has a thumbs-up function and a comment area.
As you can expect, people have a tendency to express their opinions in the comments section of some articles.
However, it’s generally polite, so if you like having intense conversations about the news, you’ll probably like this feature.
Yahoo News (iOS, Android, Web)
The dashes of yellow and purple give the platform, which I really loved, a little more personality. Yahoo News is attractive.
But it goes beyond appearances.
Yahoo News arranges your feed so that you may view related stories together before navigating to the next topic, unlike most applications that will toss news from different topics all together in one area.
This reduced the overall tension of the reading process.
The feature that most distinguishes Yahoo is the availability of video news, which has its own tab.
Even better, you’ll be happy to have the option to navigate while the video you’re now semi-viewing is still playing if you’re like me and have a goldfish’s attention span.
It’s magnificent.
The app does enable occasional advertising to appear while you go through your feed and articles, but because all of its features are totally free to use, I wouldn’t say that this is a big inconvenience.
