The best apps to keep up with current events for iPhone and iPad
- jul
- 02
Extra! Extra! These fantastic news apps for iPhone and iPad will keep you up to date!
If you're an avid consumer of the news, you know just how fast stories break, headlines change, and events happen. Keeping up with all the news is practically an impossible task because, in our 24-hour news cycle society, there's always a new story breaking.
Whether you want to stay up to date with current events on all topics or prefer news tailored to your specific interests, downloading a good news app (or several) will help you achieve your goals. Here are our favorite news apps for your iPhone and iPad.
- Pocket: Save Stories for Later
- Google News
- Apollo Reddit Client
- BBC News
- NPR One
- Apple News
One of the highest-rated news apps on the App Store, Flipboard curates news for you based on your interests.
With a wide variety of topics you can choose to follow, Flipboard can help you keep up with Canadian news, Star Wars, global markets, and even memes. Once you have set up all the topics you want to follow, Flipboard organizes them into a beautiful interface under the "For You" tab and allows you to flip through the headlines.
You can also connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts to share news from Flipboard with ease, and you can even follow accounts like SoundCloud, YouTube, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and more to get even more news from those sources. The explore tab will let you find new topics and publications that you may not have heard about, making it ideal when you want to read something new or different.
Pocket: Save Stories for Later
While Flipboard and other services will curate the news for you, Pocket allows you to be your own curator.
The whole premise of Pocket is you can collect stories that you want to read from practically anywhere using your iPhone or iPad's share function. When you get to an article, post, or any webpage you want to explore later, just tap the share button and select Pocket. When it's time to read all the pieces you want, they will all be in the Pocket app ready to go in a list, and you can read through them at your convenience.
You don't have to do all the heavy lifting if you don't want to, Pocket does have a recommended tab that allows you to follow different publications and journalists and will curate news for you based on the accounts you follow.
Google News
If you're already heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, or just want a simple and straightforward news app, then Google News is a great addition to your newsstand.
With Google News, you get a personalized briefing that is tailor-made to suit your preferences and taste. Your briefing contains the top five headlines of the day, and you can dive into various categories and topics for the biggest headlines in those areas as well. Find an area or source that you love? Add it to your favorites for quick access. There is also support for local news, which is nice.
Google News is a great way to catch up with the day's biggest headlines at your own pace if you don't mind Google being behind it all.
Apollo Reddit Client
Reddit is one of my go-to places for news from a variety of different sources about a wide range of topics and Apollo is the best way to access Reddit on your iPhone or iPad!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Reddit, it's divided into thousands of subreddits that act as a topic page; you can then subscribe to as many subreddits as you want. If you can think of it, chances are there is a subreddit dedicated to it.
What makes Apollo the best way to browse Reddit is the ability to perform tasks with gestures, specifically upvoting, downvoting, commenting, and saving.
Like everything else in the app, the gestures are kept simple — swiping left or right — and they allow you to browse Reddit at lightning fast speeds. If you come across a post you want to upvote, merely do a short swipe right on the post, and you'll be done. Want to downvote a comment? Easy! Just perform a long, right swipe. Of course, you can choose to ignore the swiping gestures and use icons and buttons to accomplish the same task, but once you get used to the gestures, you'll realize just how quickly you can do everything.
Apollo is free to download and use. However, if you go for Pro or Ultra upgrades, you'll get access to new themes, icons, and more bonus features. The developer is also very active and responsive on Reddit.
Free with in-app purchases - Download Now
BBC News
BBC News is a personal favorite app of mine because when it comes to international coverage — especially about events happening in the eastern part of the globe — I find the BBC coverage to be impeccable.
Personal tastes aside, the app offers a super smooth experience for browsing BBC's top stories on various topics like business, Middle East, politics and more. If you want an experience that's more tailored to your specific taste, the My News tab allows you to choose topics you want to follow or developing stories you want to keep a close eye on, and the app will only show you articles pertaining those selected interests or stories.
Of course, the BBC New app will only show you news they report, and I don't suggest anyone get all their news from only one source; however, BBC has a reputation for great reporting, and I appreciate their international coverage a lot. If you want a reliable app experience and quality coverage in lots of regions in the world, BBC News is worth a look.
NPR One
If you're a fan of listening to the news rather than reading it (particularly if you're American), NPR One is a fantastic app for NPR programming.
If you're just looking for the top headlines of the hour, you can listen to short three-to-five minute clips from NPR's radio network. You can even choose from dozens of stations that NPR has around the country, so if you're on a business trip away from home, you can find a little comfort in a familiar voice.
Everyone knows that NPR has some amazing podcasts — the Pop Culture Happy Hour is a personal favorite — and you can find most of them on the NPR One app, meaning you can be listening to content all day long!
NPR One will even allow you to tag things as "interesting" and will tailor it's recommended news, soundbites, clips, and podcasts based on what you select as interesting.
Apple News
If you don't want to download a third-party app but still want to stay up-to-date on the biggest headlines, then you should try Apple News, which is already built right into your device (or you can re-download it if you accidentally deleted it).
In Apple News, you'll easily see the Top Stories for the day, what's trending right now, and a personalized feed of stories that are tailored to suit your tastes. You can "love" stories to get more like that to show up in your feed, or "dislike" to get less like that. Apple News gives you the ability to follow channels of topics or sources, and you can save stories for reading later.
Apple News covers the basics for your news needs. There is also Apple News+, a $10 a month subscription that gets you access to over 300 digital magazines. This is built-in to the News app, but you do not need a subscription to use the News app.
Do you have a favorite news app?
Let me know in the comments below!
Updated June 2019: Updated with Google News and Apple News. These are currently the best news apps for your iPhone or iPad!