Glossary of Terms

Today

Today is the page that is presented on opening Apple News. It contains a combination of Top Stories hand-picked by a team of editors, plus Trending Stories. You’ll also find suggested stories for the topics and channels you follow.

Top Stories

Top Stories is a selection of current news stories chosen by Apple News editors. A new selection appears every day and is often updated throughout the day, particularly on busy news days. The stories are often international. Top Stories appear at the top of the Today channel.

For You

The For You section is curated by an Apple News algorithm, and is unique to the user. It appears on the Today channel between editorially curated sections and topic feeds. For You makes its article recommendations according to user search history, Siri search history, the publications followed by a person and the persons’ in-app history.

More For You

More For You is identical in every way to For You – it only appears with a different name if a user scrolls far enough through the Today Feed that they pass the first For You section. Every subsequent For You section is called More For You.

Trending Stories

To present the top six Trending Stories, an algorithm pulls from stories that are being shared and engaged with on social networks and the internet in a broad sense, as well as topics that are searched for and engaged with via Siri. From those results, it surfaces to editors a selection from trusted publications – that is, publications whose authority on the topic is strong within Apple News. The Apple News editors then select six of these stories to present in this section.

Top Videos

The Top Videos section is curated by Apple News editors, who scan the day’s most pressing events for engaging video news stories. They are not restricted to any specific place, and come from a wide variety of publishers.

Must-See Videos

Much like Top Videos, Must-See Videos is curated by editors. The difference is, Must-See Videos aren’t necessarily news; many are informative and entertaining reports on cultural happenings around the world.

Photo Stories

Curated by editors, the Apple News Photo Stories section hosts a daily selection of news stories lead by world-class photography. Found in the Today feed, the stories rotate on a daily basis.

Editorial Group

Editorial Groups are the sections which appear in the News Editors’ Picks channel, outlined in detail below.

Good News

Curated by editors, the Good News section is available in the News Editors’ Picks channel. It’s updated regularly but the stories therein aren’t all recent – just happy! At the time of writing, the most recently published story in Good News is a week old whereas the oldest is 18 weeks old, and there are 52 stories present. Together, these points illustrate that Good News is updated like a feed, rather than refreshed daily.

How To…

How To… is an editorially curated section that appears in News Editors’ Picks, hosting a regularly updated feed of instructional articles: everything from The Cut’s “How to Shut Down Gossip at Work” to “Sunscreen: is it Safe to Make Your Own?”, published by The Conversation.

First Person

Curated by editors, First Person appears in the News Editors’ Picks channel. It hosts gripping, first-hand accounts of remarkable experiences had by people all over the world. Apple News’ Editors seem to be stricter about what appears in this section than others in the News Editors’ Picks section, as fewer stories appear here than in the channel’s other sections. Some headlines featured include: “My Trial as One of the Stansted 15 Taught Me a Sad Lesson About the UK Justice System” on Vice, and GQ’s “How I Survived My First Olympic Weightlifting Competition”.

Counterpoints

Counterpoints is an editorially curated feed of opinion pieces which appears in the News Editors’ Picks channel. The feed encompasses politics, social issues, entertainment, technology and more. Some example headlines include “Boris v Hunt: no-one is a winner in Britain’s battle of the political bubbles” in Evening Standard and “Tesla’s losses suggest it may not live to see the world that it created” in WIRED UK.

Best Reads

Curated by Apple News’ editorial team, Best Reads is a long section in the News Editors’ Picks channel. But, it’s a difficult one to quantify. What the team deems a must-read article is largely subjective. Consider this an opportunity, though; an article on any topic can be surfaced on Best Reads. As with the other sections in News Editors’ Picks, Best Reads presents as a continually updated feed. It’s one of the most regularly updated feeds in News Editors’ Picks, with multiple stories added daily. To give you an idea of the breadth of subjects covered in this section, here are some example headlines: “This father of three put everything into bitcoin. Here’s what happened next.” in Vox, “The Legal Loophole That May Leave Some of Rock’s Greatest Riffs Up for Grabs” in Bloomberg, and “The Perfect Book to Read at Every Age, From 1 to 100” in The Washington Post.

Topic Feed

Topic feeds appear in the Today channel, interspersed among Top Stories, Trending Stories, For You, and the rest of Today’s regular sections. Topic feeds present as small groups of stories pertaining to users’ unique interests, such as Technology, Sport, Entertainment and more. What topics appear for each user is decided by an Apple algorithm according to user search history, Siri search history, the publications followed by the user and the users’ in-app history.

Dark Social

Dark social media, often abbreviated to dark social, are social shares that do not contain any referral information describing their source. Most often, dark social shares are the result of people sharing links through email, text messages and private chats on platforms such as WhatsApp. The word ‘dark’ is used because these mediums are not public.

Workbench

Workbench is an Apple tool for managing ad campaigns on Apple News. You can find out more about this here.

Recirculation area

The space below each article that contains links to further stories from the publication and further, often related stories from other publications. This is part of the Apple News UI, controlled by Apple.