Five apps to use to stay on top of news without looking at Twitter

A few weeks ago, I deleted Twitter from my phone and tablet. This took a long time, but it’s clear why I chose it. So I’m not here to write an essay on why I did it. Instead, if, like me, you rely on Twitter to stay up to date on news and events, and you don’t want to use Twitter anymore, I’m here to give you some tips. .

I used a lot of the tools here before Twitter was removed, but these tools have become more useful and prominent in calculating screen time when Twitter is gone. (Sadly, deleting Twitter didn’t reduce my screen time.) Some may be obvious, others may be new, but keep up with both general news and topics. Here’s what I’m doing: I am particularly interested.

Apple’s News app has been around for years on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but it’s underappreciated for how good it is for those of us who consume a lot of long articles. Far from perfect. Of course, even if you pay $9.99 a month for a News Plus subscription (or bundled with an Apple One plan), you’ll still see ads in your articles (but I’m not sure how this would be different ). What about buying a magazine at a concession stand? As an aside), you’ll need an Apple device to access it.

Still, Apple News gives me the top headlines from events around the world, plus curated selections based on my reading history and the topics I choose, every time I open it. It also provides push notifications from publications I follow and integrates sports scores and reports from teams I care about.

But the best thing about Apple News is that it gives you access to long-form articles. Atlantic, New Yorker, New York magazine, Many other services are available for a flat fee through my News Plus subscription. No other service offers so much long-form content at a relatively low price. I used to rely on my Twitter feed to fill my Pocket queue with things to read later, but now Apple News gives me a lot of it.

Alongside Apple News, Google News offers a curated list of news articles based on my interests every time I open it. Compared to Apple’s service, Google News leans towards shorter stories and does a better job of providing local updates such as upcoming weather, local politics, and restaurant happenings. Available for both iOS and Android and free, it’s easy to pick up and get started.

Google News isn’t perfect — it relies too much on Google’s AMP-formatted website and isn’t very good at remembering login credentials for paywalled sites — but it does offer plenty of options for read-later queues. Now that Twitter is gone.

Google provides a similar article feed in its Discover product. It’s available just to the left of the home screen on Android phones and his Google app on iPhones. But in my experience, Discover is terrible and often offers more bad than good, so I usually go straight to Google News.

Believe it or not, RSS is still around and a great way to stay up to date from various websites. I’ve used an RSS reader longer than Twitter, but it’s one of the first apps I open every morning to keep track of what’s happening on sites I care about.

Setting up an RSS reader takes more effort than using something like Apple News or Google News, but in return you have more control since you are specifically entering the source yourself. increase. I use Feedly for syncing (free version, never forced to pay). Reeder app for iOS/Mac When FocusReader on AndroidIt consists of dozens of sources, mostly from tech news sites, but also includes a few small, infrequently updated blogs that I’ve followed over the years.

Hey, if you’re reading this article The Verge, You probably care a little about what’s going on in the world of technology. techmeme has been collecting tech news headlines and discussions longer than I’ve been blogging. For a quick overview of everything happening in this space every day, go here. Just visit the site on your mobile phone’s browser.

Wait, listen — if you don’t want to work setting up other sources and just want to scroll through your feed like you used to on Twitter, our website is great for that. In early fall, we redesigned it to incorporate short posts with links to other blogs, articles, social media posts, and other things we deem interesting from across the internet. Our team uses it a lot and we are very excited about our plans to improve it further in the coming year. has lots of videos and more.

Yes I am biased. Yes this is a shameless plug. But you have already read this article. You can also click

The final piece to this puzzle is a great read-after app. Use this to check and save articles from all these sources. I use Pocket, but Matter and Instagram are also good options. The Reeder app for iOS and Mac even has its own Read Later feature, just like Safari and other browsers.

Overall, this process of using multiple sources is more work than frantically scrolling through your Twitter feed at every spare moment. But the payoff is well worth it. You get the full story instead of snippets from questionable sources and don’t have to deal with the noise inherent in Twitter. Check the news and catch up on your reading-later queue so you can touch the grass.