Whether your a news junkie hunting for the latest headlines, or prefer to curate your news with RSS feeds, there's no shortage of apps to help you out. But with nearly every publication putting out there own apps these days, it can get overwhelming trying to find just the news you want.
I've rounded up six apps for iOS and Android that help you hone in on the headlines and updates that matter to you. A few of the apps bring you more general breaking news, while others give you complete control on what you see and from which sources.
Circa
If you're the type of person who wants your news in short, easy-to-digest tidbits, look no further thanCirca. The app covers major breaking news from all around the the world and the US, plus news topics including sports, technology, politics, and health.
For each story in Circa, the app breaks the facts down into small sections, each with a relevant piece of information, a photo, or an important quote. Each story gets its information for a variety of top news sources, and the editors at Circa put together the most useful facts into a short news timeline.
With the app installed, you can choose to get breaking-news notifications (usually one per week) of really big stories. You can also follow any story in the app, and get updates when there's a new development, which can be really helpful for sports tournaments, global conflicts, or anything else that has a longer news cycle.
What's great: Circa's sleek design and condensed news updates helps you get the key facts about the top news worldwide.
What's not: The individual story pages have a lot of information about related stories and citations, which can be overwhelming.
Yahoo News Digest
Yahoo Digest delivers you a collection of the top news stories every morning and evening, usually around 10 stories total. The topics span world and US news, technology, sports, and even odd or funny stories.
Like Circa, it combines quotes, pictures, and paragraphs of text to create a short news story. Yahoo Digest goes one further and include links to more in-depth coverage, including Wikipedia articles about basic topics covered in the news article, and embeds popular tweets about the news. However, you cannot browse other topics or stories in News Digest -- what you get in your morning and evening digests is all the news you can see. There are a few extra stories included at the end of your digest, but that's it. What's nice about that approach is that the app doesn't overwhelm you with too much news.
The app's design is impressive and features large color photos, and a simple interface for browsing the news.
What's great: The short morning and evening digests give you just enough of the most important news.
What's not: There's no way to personalize the content you see.
Digg
Digg has gone through a few changes in recent years, and its latest look is simple and clean, with a few great features. The app uncovers a mix of breaking news and unique stories that are popular in the Digg community. That's great if you want stories that are often thoughtful and interesting, and would normally get buried by other news apps. In many cases, you can read the full text of each story in a simplified view, but sometimes you have to open the full-page article. You can also save articles to read later in the app.
If you log into your Digg account in the app, you can use Digg as an RSS reader, by adding feeds from any news website of blog. You can also tell Digg what topics you're into, such as Fame, Design, Long Reads, and Art, and then browse sources in those categories and subscribe to feeds.
What's great: Digg finds unique stories you won't find in other apps.
What's not: The app sometimes crashes.
Feedly
This Google Reader replacement has become a must-have app for anyone who likes to subscribe to RSS feeds. Though some other RSS reader apps out there have more features, it's hard to beat Feedlyfor its simple design, solid performance and add-ons.
When you sign up, you can pick your favorite websites and blogs, and add them to your account, so everytime they post a new article, you'll be able to read it in Feedly. Some articles don't display full-text in the app, but that's up to the website's RSS settings, not Feedly. Still, you can open the full page article without leaving the app. You can also shared articles to other apps, including Pocket and Evernote.
Feedly has plenty of settings to tweak how you read articles and navigate through the app, which is great for customizing the app to fit your needs. Feedly's Pro subscription, which costs $5 per month or $45 per year, lets you search articles, gives you faster updates, and makes it even easier to save articles to Evernote.
An alternative to Feedly is Press, a beautiful Android-only app with offline reading capabilities. The only downside of Press is that it costs $3, which is a bit steep for an RSS reader.
What's great: Feedly's simple, sleek design doesn't distract from the articles you're reading.
What's not: Text formatting for articles can sometimes get messed in the app.
LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn purchased Pulse in April 2013, and since then gave the app a makeover with a new and updated sharing features. The app is part RSS reader, part news service that helps you organize the kinds of content you want to read, and easily share it on LinkedIn.
The app has a very visual design, with rows of tiles for each story, each with a photo background. Unfortunately, that design makes the app feel overwhelming at times. You scroll through those rows of tiles to view every story in each of your news feeds. What helps set Pulse apart is its sharing features. You can quickly share any store to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and, of course, LinkedIn.
Pulse encourages you to browse the app to find news topics and sites you want to follow, then organize each and every feed into personalized channels. You can group all of your favorite food blogs, business news, and technology sites in their own channels, or mix them up any way you want.
What's great: You have complete control of how your news feeds are organized.
What's not: You have to sign in with a LinkedIn account to use Pulse, and the design feels cluttered.
News Republic
The last app on my list, News Republic, tries to learn from your reading habits to build a personalized news feed. The app's design is similar to Flipboard with a grid of topics on the home screen, and like Flipboard, you can search for or browse popular websites and news outlets.
You can use the app without an account, but if you sign up, News Republic keeps track of what you read to understand what kinds of stories to show you in the future. You can also manually customize your homescreen with news topics you like, including Cooking and Android, or more specific choices such as the US Supreme Court and Goldman Sachs.
What's unique about News Republic is the the company behind the app partners with news organizations to syndicate their articles, which means that for many of the articles, you can read the full text right from the app.
What's great: There are hundreds of news topics, so you're bound to find something you want to read, plus the design is very clean.
What's not: The app's sharing features feel like an afterthought.
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