Keeping up to date with the latest news has arguably been never more important than it is now.
There are many news apps on the market today that aim to provide users with a service which keeps them in the loop with latest news headlines. Today ,we are going to talk about the best ones available.
Best news app UK – Ranked
Apple News & Apple News+
If you’re already knees deep in the Apple ecosystem with an iPad, iPhone, Macbook and whatever else, it makes sense to get the Apple News app.
This makes it one of the best news apps you can currently find. A lot of users choose to upgrade to the Apple News+ source too, which gives you access to a whole host of paywalled content.
What kind of newspapers and magazines are included with Apple News+? Well, in terms of traditional newspapers you get access to the Times and the Sunday.
However, you also get access to financial magazines like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Entrepreneur.
In terms of magazines, you can read Rolling Stone, Heat, Cosmo and many more. Along with this, you can read through most of the BBC’s additional content, and the National Geographic too.
Of course, the Apple News app is best for those that use iOS devices as opposed to those that are using other operating systems.
BBC News app
If you’re looking for purely local news related to the area that you’re living in, then the BBC news app is probably going to be the best choice.
Even though Apple and Google have both released extremely good apps for news, they are generally better for international and global news events as opposed to reported breaking news in your area.
For this, there’s nothing currently better than the BBC News app, which has dedicated reporters focussed on different areas of the UK.
Sometimes the BBC news app may stop working, but for the most part, it’s one of the better options online.
Google News app
When it comes to the best news apps for Android, Google News would likely be a great choice for most, and it follows the BBC News and Apple apps closely in terms of usage.
It’s actually quite similar to the Apple News app in its layout and design as you might expect, and it’s free to use too which is definitely a bonus.
Though it’s a news aggregator app as opposed to an actually newspaper itself, it does put together news from some of the best sources worldwide.
Like most of the top news apps, you have the ability to save articles for later so you can save them as a permanent library.
Microsoft Start (Formerly Microsoft News)
It’s not one of the most popular news apps if you’re an iPhone user, but across different devices, the Microsoft Start app is not a bad choice.
It’s heavily focussed on trending events worldwide, top stories, regional events and much more – though it’s only available for iOS and Android devices.
Though it does touch on financial news too, you’re probably better off looking at something like the Bloomberg app if you want more in depth analysis of the current financial markets.
Alternatives news sources
While Twitter is in theory a social media website, it does a whole lot more than just keep friends in touch with one and other.
In fact, over the past decade it has arguably become the place where the majority of news now breaks. This is especially true when it comes to world news, as you can essentially see the latest stories in real time.
Every top Journalist in the UK is on the app, in order to every News organisation, allowing you to keep bang up to date with the latest news across the UK via your Twitter timeline.
Twitter is a really easy platform to use, and sign up to (arguably too easy given the trolls that it attracts.)
Once you’ve logged in to the app you will be able to follow all of the most popular news organisations in the UK including The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Sun.
You can also follow the most well respected journalists in the country.
If you want to be alerted each time one these accounts tweet then you can hit the bell icon attached to these accounts and then select ‘All Tweets’. Good accounts to turn notifications on for are Sky Breaking News and BBC Breaking News.
As the app figures out your interests you will be able to see what’s ‘trending’ within the world of Twitter. This essentially means which terms of being tweeted out the most by users across the app.
For example, if you see the word ‘Covid’ trending then you can assume that some big news about Covid has just dropped.
You can click on any trending topic to discover more information about why it’s trending. You can set a radius for the trending feature, so if you’re only interested in what’s popular in your local area then you can assign a shorter radius.
Another popular feature that is used by Journalists on Twitter are threads. This is where you create a series of Tweets that follow on from each other.
These are typically used by Journalist where they are reporting on live events as they happen such as press conferences or police incidents.
These are without doubt the quickest and best way to keep up to date with potentially history making events as they happen.
Feedly
From a social media giant to an app created specifically for News. While Twitter is fantastic for news, you can end up down a hole of following non-news accounts and potentially missing out on big stories.
With Feedly, that simply will not happen because the app is designed to provide users with the latest news on the topics that interest them the most.
When you download the app you can create an account for free in what is a really quick process.
If you have an Apple phone then you just sign up via your Apple ID using face ID and you’ll be on to the main hub of the app within seconds. From here, you can start adding content to your home page.
You will get the choice of websites, Twitter accounts, Reddit page and newsletters. To find content that suits your interests the most you can either use their ready-made categories or their search bar.
Personally, I would use their search function because this will bring up everything related to the term(s) you put in here.
For example, if you’re on the website tab and type in football, it will bring up every website related to football which can be added to your feed. The process is exactly the same for Reddit, Twitter and Newsletters.
The explore tab is another great feature which allows users to see which articles on the internet are trending across a whole host of different categories including technology, gaming and business.
These articles will be the most up to date and/or most popular news stories of the day meaning that you won’t miss out on any of the key stories.
If you’re busy but see an article that interests you, then you can add it your ‘read later’ tab meaning that you never end up forgetting about or losing a news story that you wanted to read.
Newsstand UK
Newsstand UK is an app which collects all the content from the biggest newspaper in the UK and puts it in one place.
When you first open the app you are able to select which topics interest you the most to give Newsstand an idea of what content to suggest to you.
Once you’ve told them your interest then your homepage will be made up of all the latest stories from every newspaper in the UK that match with these topics of interest.
If there are any particular newspapers that you want to see content from then you can select them via the newsfeed tab.
You can even scan through everything a particular paper has to offer by clicking on its name. Within the newsfeed tab, you can also save any of your favourite articles in here too.
It’s a really simple app that does exactly what it says on the tin.
Conclusion
To conclude, there are a variety of different apps on the market today which provide you with a comprehensive outlook on the latest news.
For me, Twitter is the best for keeping up to date on the latest hot topics due to the fact its short and snappy nature allows Journalists to break news in the quickest way possible.
