More than eight years following its US debut, Apple News may finally expand to new countries and expand its global reach.
The Financial Times reported Apple has been working to expand Apple News internationally, with the effort apparently involving daily word games and Sudoku puzzles that are exclusively available to Apple News+ subscribers.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t say which countries may receive Apple News. With so much human curation going on, it may take a while before the company manages to expand Apple News to non-English parts of the world.
The difference between Apple News and Apple News+
Apple News launched alongside iOS 9 in September 2015 as a US-only news aggregator. It lets you read news articles from participating publishers, explore topics that interest you, save articles for offline reading and more. The News app made its Mac debut with the 2018 macOS 10.14 Mojave update.
The service is currently available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. The article claims the service has about 125 monthly readers. One news publisher described Apple News as “the front door to everyone’s iPhone.” Apple pays publishers based on a share of engaged minutes.”
The News app also integrates the paid News+ service, which offers over 400 local, national, and international newspapers and magazines and daily puzzles. Apple News+ is $13/month, with a free one-month trial available. You can also get the service as part of the Apple One subscription bundle, but only if you pick the most expensive $38/month Premier tier.
Apple News brings human editorial curation
Apple News has been something of a sleeper hit. I like that Apple employs real editors and journalists to curate top stories and editors’ picks in the Today tab (which I check several times per day to get myself up to speed). Similar to human curators and radio hosts on Apple Music, human editors for Apple News work in dedicated newsrooms in New York, London, Sydney, and California.
That’s exactly why checking headlines on Apple News is part of my morning routine. I genuinely wish everyone could see the great job Apple did with the News app.
But the reliance on human editorial curation could make it easier said than done. Expanding the News app international isn’t just a matter of plugging local publishers into Apple News, but I do hope the service will soon expand its global reach.
How to get Apple News in unsupported countries
If you don’t mind using the US version of Apple News, be smart and take advantage of a nifty trick I’ve been using to get Apple News in the European Union, where I live.
All you need to do is set your device region in Settings > General > Language & Region to one of the supported countries (US, UK, Australia and Canada). After that, restart your device and the News app should appear on the home screen.
This trick works because Apple preinstalls the News app in every region, but it’s hidden by default if the device region doesn’t match any supported country.