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What's going on everybody, Ian here for Cult of Mac and ever since it launched people have
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been kind of dismissive about the Apple News app on the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac
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A lot of people don't like it because of the way it hijacks links and sends you to Apple
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News instead of the open web. Other people don't like the general clutter of the app or the layout or the lack of certain
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features that you might look for in a news type app. For me personally, I really enjoy it and I kind of like the experience of getting everything
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in Apple News because it removes a lot of the ads and clutter that you find on normal
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websites and it's also a lot less emotional or kind of heated than you see on certain
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social media platforms. The trick to really taking advantage of the Apple News app though is having it serve you
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stories that you care about, which means you have to tune it with certain channels and
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topics you follow. You have to spend some time kind of curating what you do and don't like and you also need
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to try this one little trick that really makes the News app way better
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So to tone down your Apple News feed, you need to start by going to the Settings app
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on your iPhone. Kind of scroll down until you find the News section and tap on that
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From here you'll see a handful of toggles, switches, settings, etc. that are all for
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the News app. The one that you're looking for is Restrict Stories in Today
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This feature, once toggled on, basically cuts down on the overall noise and clutter
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you're going to see in the Apple News app. This isn't synced across all your devices, it is a device by device basis, so keep that
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in mind as you're turning this on, like on an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac, it's not going
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to affect the other devices in your life. Now if you head back to the Apple News app, you'll see that you're not being bombarded
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by obnoxious political stories and BuzzFeed listicles, but instead only seeing content
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from channels you follow or topics you follow, making the Apple News much more like a personalized
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newspaper or magazine than it is like a geyser of information. So while there's still plenty that people may dislike about the Apple News app, like
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the fact that you can't add your own RSS feeds anymore, or the fact that it constantly wants
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to badger you about Apple News+, which is definitely a topic for another day, having
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the Restrict News Stories option does make the News app significantly better
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And best of all, it's really easy to turn it on and off just by going into that settings
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menu and flipping that toggle. And I'll actually link a shortcut down below which you can use either via Siri or your
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Notification Center widget or Today View widget or even a button on your home screen to jump
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you into that setting to quickly turn it on and off. From there, you'll be able to see the stories that matter to you when you want and the stories
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from the rest of the world when you want to. Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below, be sure to give the video a thumbs
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up and share it with someone who might be interested in making the News app work for them or someone you know that really just wants a way to consume news pretty easily
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Also subscribe to the channel if that's something you're into and hit the bell if you really
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care to see all these videos when they come out. I'm Ian for Cult of Mac, I'll see you guys in the next one
