Apple released the third beta of iOS 9 to developers this morning, bringing some significant changes to the operating system, including the new Apple News app.
First introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, "News" provides curated lists of personalized news content for iOS users, offering up content from popular websites and newspapers and displaying it in an iOS-friendly layout. We went hands-on with News to give our readers a detailed walkthrough of the app and the different features that it offers.
News is built around topics and channels that are selected by each individual user, which are then used to populate an individualized "For You" tab that displays a list of stories each day. There's a Favorites section that display the sites you've added to a favorites list for quick browsing, a search feature for finding new content, and an Explore tab for casual browsing. Explore suggests topics or channels you might be interested based on what you've previously read.
If you come across a favorite story, you can add it to the "Saved" section in News, and you're able to share stories with friends by using the Share Sheet when reading content. In Safari, there's also a feature that will let you add any RSS feed to News by visiting a site and choosing "Add to News."
News includes more than a million topics, and as you read more stories, the app will get better at offering content that might interest you. Media content like photos and videos can be displayed full screen and there are features like built-in audio and photo galleries.
News is only available in iOS 9 beta 3, which is limited to registered developers. Public beta testers will likely get access to News in the near future when the first public beta test is released, and the general public will be able to access the app when iOS 9 launches in the fall.
