Receiving Apple News alerts on your iPhone or Mac can sometimes feel like drinking from a fire hose. Here’s how to set granular news notifications and better control the flow using the popular app.
One danger with news notifications is receiving too many and being inundated with superfluous alerts. Fortunately, there are ways to customize the news alerts you receive using Apple News.
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If you’re unfamiliar with Apple News, the program offers free and subscription-based access to a variety of news outlets, magazines and newspapers. And while iPhone, iPad and Mac preferences permit determining whether you receive News notifications, the News app itself permits setting granular alerts for many channels, including CNBC, MarketWatch, NPR, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Wired magazine.
The first step in configuring customized alerts using Apple News is to enable notifications for the app.
How to enable News notifications on a Mac
- Click the Apple icon from the Mac title bar.
- Select System Preferences.
- Click Notifications & Focus.
- Scroll to and highlight the News entry.
- Slide the radio button to enable Allow Notifications, as shown in Figure A.
Figure A
How to enable News notifications on an iPad or iPhone
- Press Settings.
- Tap Notifications.
- Scroll to and tap News.
- Ensure Allow Notifications is enabled.
- Enable the Time Sensitive Notifications radio button if you wish to receive such alerts.
Once News notifications are enabled, you can turn your attention to setting alerts for specific channels.
How to configure granular News notifications on a Mac
- Open News.
- Click File from the Mac title bar.
- Select Manage Notifications & Email.
- Scroll through the channels you’ve instructed News to follow and enable the radio button for each outlet from which you wish to receive alerts.
- Scroll through the suggested channels for any outlets from which you wish to receive alerts.
- Scroll through the Alerts from Apple News section to enable any additional corresponding notifications you wish to receive.
How to configure News notifications using an iPhone
- Open News.
- Tap the Following icon.
- Scroll to the bottom and tap Notifications & Email.
- Enable the radio button for the outlets from which you wish to receive alerts.
- Scroll through the Alerts from Apple News section to enable any additional corresponding notifications you wish to receive.
How to configure specific News notifications using an iPad
- Open News.
- Scroll to the bottom of the left-side navigation menu and tap Notifications & Email.
- Enable the radio button for the outlets you wish to receive alerts from, as shown in Figure B.
- Scroll through the Alerts from Apple News section to enable any additional corresponding notifications you wish to receive.
Figure B
Try experimenting with news alerts. Just follow corresponding channels within the Apple News app, then ensure you open Manage Notifications & Email (as described above) and set the corresponding radio button to enable alerts for that item. Note: Not all channels or outlets support sending notifications, as not all send alerts for breaking news or important stories.
Should the sites you select generate too many alerts or notifications that prove not to be as useful as anticipated, simply open Manage Notifications & Email again and disable the corresponding alerts radio button. Alternatively, you can go one step farther and unfollow that channel within Apple News by right-clicking the selection within News’ left-side column and selecting Unfollow Channel.
