The latest trend in news consumption is curation. Apple News — replacement for the earlier, less-than-successful Newsstand — does just that. It may not be the first app to repackage the web for easy reading (looking at you, Flipboard), nor maybe even the best, but chances are it’s already on everyone’s iOS 9 iPhone or iPad, making it a clear winner for mindshare.
News is pretty fantastic, as it allows you to customize and set up the News channels and outlets you want to check on regularly without having to rely on any specific outlet for updates. News pulls from your favorite websites RSS feeds and repackages it all in an intuitive, newspaper and magazine-like format for easy browsing and reading.
Let’s take a look at how to set it up and use the iOS 9 News app to your best advantage.
Find the best News for you
News is all about personalization. When you first launch the app, you’ll get a screen that asks you to pick your Favorites. Swipe up and down the visual list and tap on all the news outlets you like: they’ll end up in your For You section, which will be familiar to anyone who’s used Apple Music.
Once you’ve selected as many channels as you’d like, you can hit the Continue button. You’ll go right to the For You section with its collection of various news stories from your Favorites.
If you want more suggestions for channels or topics to “follow,” simply tap on the Explore channel at the bottom of the News app screen. You’ll get a top row of Suggested Channels (mine shows Daily Mail, MSNBC, and SFGate, among others), and Suggested Topics below that, with categories like Entertainment, Business, Technology, and Food and Drink. Swipe left or right along the top row to see even more Suggested Channels.Tap on whatever you like; you can always go in and un-select them with ease.
Swiping to the bottom of the Explore tab will let you browse even more finely-tuned topical areas. Tapping Arts, for example, showed me The New Yorker, TED, McSweeny’s, and Make magazine, along with Photography, Theater, Books and Literature, Fine Art, and Museums for Featured Topics.
Search for the best
The thing is, Apple doesn’t feature everyone. For some reason, the powers that be over there find it more interesting (and probably lucrative, we have to admit) to feature massive print and online news sources, rather than the fantastic consumer sites like Cult of Mac or Cult of Android.
That’s where Search comes in. If you’re looking for specific sites, like Cult of Mac (of course you are!), then you just tap on that Search tab at the bottom and start typing in the name of your favorite sources.
You can tap on the Top Hit, Topic, or Channel that matches your Search term to see the main News layout and then tap the big Plus icon in the upper right if you like it and want to add it to your feed. If you already know that you want to add it, simply tap the Plus icon in the Search results – super handy!
Reading the news in News
One way to read the latest news from the News app is to swipe left from the Home screen on your iPad or iPhone. Below Siri’s suggested contacts and any Nearby attractions, you’ll see a News section. Simply tap on any of those to go directly to that story in the News app.
When you launch News after your initial set up, you’ll go to the last screen you were reading when you left the app. To read new stories that have been curated according to your choices and preferences, simply tap the For You tab at the bottom and then tap an article to open it. Swipe right to go to the next news story, or left to go to the previous one. You can also tap the Back button to return to the list of stories.
You can tap on the Favorites tab at the bottom of the News app screen, as well, and then tap into your favorite channels and topics. When you do so, you’ll get the channel’s main news feed, and some channels — like our’s — will let you tap on tabs arranged across the top, like Main, News, Reviews, How-tos, and Deals. When you tap into a new screen, the News app will go fetch new articles and tell you how many at the top so you know what’s new.
Customize your feed
You can add more channels and topics at any time in the Favorites, Explore, or Search tabs, as above, but what if you want to take some out? It’s pretty darn easy. Simply head to your Favorites tab at the bottom.
Next, tap the Edit button in the upper right corner of your screen. All your favorite feeds will get a little X icon in their upper left corner. Simply tap whichever ones you’d like to delete from your For You section. They disappear right away without any extra confirmation, so be sure you want to dump them. You can, of course, always add them back as above, but it’s good to be sure.
When you Like a story, Apple’s News app will add that to its magical algorithms behind the scenes that, along with the articles you read and the channels in your Favorites list, will further customize what future posts you’ll see. If you tap and hold on any article in the For You section or individual channel pages, you’ll get a pop up menu that allows you to Like the story. You can also Like stories from the article page itself, with the little heart icon in the upper right.
That contextual menu pop up can also be toggled with a peek and slide up on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
Along with Liking a story, you can Share that story, Save it for offline reading, or Mute the whole Channel it’s a part of. You can’t dislike individual stories, however.
The Share option works just like hitting the Share button in an individual story. You’ll be able to send it along with Messages, Mail, Reminders, Notes, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever you have enabled in your iOS device’s settings.
Saving a story will make it available all the time, even when you’re offline (heaven forbid!). Simply tap the Saved bookmark tab along the bottom right, and you’ll see all the stories you saved. That’s also where you can see a list of all the stories you opened up. Just tap on the History tab at the top. Tap Clear History to hide your viewing habits from your kids (or spouse, I suppose).
Now you’ve got a running start on getting your News app set up and working best for you. Any questions? Hit me up in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.