HOWTO | SET UP YOUR NEWS SUBSCRIPTIONS
1 Get started
When you open the News app, you’ll be presented with a short description of what it does, and a link to the service’s privacy policy. Tap Get Started, then browse the suggested channels, tapping any you want to subscribe to, which highlights them with a blue border. More channels appear as you scroll down, but once you’ve added major news providers, you’re better off tapping Continue at the bottom of the screen and finding specialist interests another way, which we’ll look at in a moment.
2 Stories selected for you
When you tap Continue, the app prepares a list of stories from the channels you selected, then takes you to the For You page, which lists them. Tap a story to read it. (On an iPhone 6s, you can lightly press on a story to peek at it, then press harder to pop it open if it looks interesting.) Items in the list that you’ve read are greyed. If you only want to read a channel now and then, open one of its stories, tap the Share icon, then Mute Channel in the bottom row. (You can access its stories in the Favourites tab.)
3 Share and save stories
When reading a story, three icons appear at the bottom of the screen. First is iOS’s familiar Share icon, which enables you to share the story on social networks and in private messages, add a link in the Reminders or Notes apps, open the version published on the web in Safari, and report concerns about the content. The heart icon marks a story as something you like, but you’ll find the bookmark at the bottom-right is more useful as it adds the story to the Saved page so you can quickly find it again.
4 Favourite channels
Channels you added during step 1 are listed here, and you can add more from the Explore page (see step 5). To remove a channel, tap Edit at the top-right and then the ‘X’ at the top-left corner of any channel. Tap Done to return to reading. Tap a channel listed here to browse just that publisher’s stories, rather than the mix of them shown in the For You page. Browsing some channels directly, such as The Guardian and The Telegraph, provides a means to browse their broad content by category.
5 Find more channels
At the top of the Explore page, the app suggests channels and topics you might also be interested in. Tap the + at the top-right corner of one of them to subscribe to it, or tap elsewhere on its graphic to investigate the content it offers; you can then tap the + at the top-right of the screen to subscribe to it. Further down the Explore page, you can browse for channels by category; the same shortcuts described above work there, too. If you still can’t find what you want, tap Search and enter some keywords.
6 Reading tips
Among the actions listed when you tap the Share icon while reading a story is Report a Concern. This draws Apple’s attention to content that’s contentious in some way, or which is broken or improperly categorised (and so not what you expected from its channel). One last tip: when you open stories that originate on a channel’s website, you’ll see only a summary until you swipe upwards to load the whole thing. This can be overridden in Settings app; go to News and turn off Show Story Previews.