Frequently Asked Questions

Neutral News is a free news app for Android and iPhone. Every story is built from several independent sources. You see the supportive and the critical view side by side, with a neutrality score that shows how balanced the story is.

Reading five versions of the same event should not leave you more confused. Most coverage arrives with a conclusion already attached. We give you the facts and both sides, and leave the conclusion to you.

Yes. No account, no paywall, nothing to buy.

An aggregator hands you a pile of headlines. We read across the coverage and write one clear story. The supportive and the critical view sit side by side, with a score on top.

Follow a story arc to see how an event unfolds over time. Listen to any story. Tap a word to see what it means. Save stories for later and pick the regions you want alerts from.

At the end of every story in the app you give your verdict: Agree, Neutral or Disagree. You can change it any time. Our system reads every vote.

Open Settings. Under Content preferences, choose which regions can send you alerts and add any words you want muted. Under Notifications, pick how often we notify you and, on Android, set quiet hours.

Yes. Notifications are optional. Turn them off at any time in Settings.

Yes. Open Settings, Appearance and choose Large text. You can also pick a System, Dark or Light theme there.

Turn on Define Mode. In a story, tap Define Mode at the top. In the feed, tap the three dots on a card and choose Define. Then tap any word to see a short meaning. Tap a name such as New York and the whole name is looked up. Tap Done when you are finished.

Meanings come from Wikidata. When no short meaning is found, you can see web results instead. Define Mode needs an internet connection.

Yes. In a story, tap the waveform icon next to the bookmark. In the feed, tap the three dots on a card and choose Listen. A full story reads the summary, the context and both perspectives. From the feed you hear a short version: the headline, the score and the summary.

A small player lets you pause, jump between sections or close it. Listening uses the voices already on your phone, so it works without a connection. It stops when you leave the app.

Open Settings, then Narration voice. Choose Automatic or any voice your phone has for your language, and preview it before you pick. If a voice stays silent, download it in your phone's text to speech settings.

Tap the bookmark in a story, or tap the three dots on a card and choose Save. Find everything you saved in Settings, Saved stories, or through the Saved icon at the top of Search.

Saved stories stay on your phone and open even without a connection. Swipe a story to the left to remove it.

At the bottom of a story, under Similar stories. When a story has enough related coverage, Explore connections opens a map with the story at the centre and related stories around it. The closer a story sits, the more closely it is related. Tap any of them to open it.

Tap Share on a card in the feed, or Share analysis in a story. From the feed you share a picture of the card with a link. Anyone who opens the link can read the story on our website, even without the app.

Big stories rarely happen in a single day. A story arc collects every story we publish about one event, in date order, so you can see how it developed. Each arc is marked Ongoing or Concluded.

Tap the story arc icon on a card in the feed, the Part of label in a story, or Story Arcs in Search. You can also browse them on our website under Story arcs.

Yes. Open an arc and tap Follow. When a new story joins it, a small red dot appears on the Story Arc button the next time you open the app. You can follow up to 20 arcs.

No. Following shows the red dot inside the app and nothing more. Your regular alerts are set separately in Settings.

Tap Following on the arc, or open Settings, Following story arcs. If you change your mind, you can undo it straight away.

Yes. When it does, the story shows Also part of with the other arcs.

Open Settings, then Content preferences. Each region, Global, India, USA and Europe, has two switches. Feed decides whether its stories appear in your feed. Alerts decides whether it can notify you, so you can keep reading a region without being notified about it. At least one region always stays in your feed.

Words or phrases you would rather not see. Add up to 50 in Settings, Content preferences. Any story or notification with a muted word in its headline, summary or tags is hidden, in the feed, in search and in alerts.

Matching is by whole word, so muting earth does not hide earthquake.

You choose in Settings, Notifications. Quiet sends nothing at all. Balanced sends up to 5 a day and All up to 10, with at most 2 breaking alerts on top. Balanced is the default. On iPhone, Balanced sends alerts from your home region plus editorials and breaking news.

On Android, yes. Quiet hours are on by default from 10 pm to 6 am on your phone's clock. Change the times or switch them off in Settings, Notifications. Nothing arrives during quiet hours, breaking alerts included. With Reminders and catch up switched on, you get a short summary of what you missed.

On iPhone, use Focus or Do Not Disturb in your phone's settings.

Yes. Tap the bell at the top of Search or Neutral Topics to see the latest alerts for your regions.

Open Settings, Help and Support, Report an issue, or tap Report content issue at the bottom of any story. Pick a category, tell us what happened and add up to five screenshots if they help. Leave your email so we can reply.

No. The app gives your phone an anonymous ID, with no name, email or profile attached to it.

Open Settings, Help and Support, Delete account and data. It removes your phone's anonymous ID along with the votes and reports sent from it, and resets your preferences. Saved stories and followed arcs on your phone are cleared too. You can keep using the app straight away.

Partly. Stories you opened recently stay available for a while, saved stories open any time, and Listen works without a connection. New stories and Define Mode need one.

Open Settings and tap Show tips again.

That is the goal, and we work at it every day. Nobody gets it perfect, so we show our working instead. Every story puts the supportive and the critical view side by side, with a score you can check against our standard.

Think we got one wrong? Vote on it in the app or write to us.

Green, 70 and above, is Balanced: more than one side, measured language and the full context. Yellow, 40 to 69, is Mixed: the story leans in places. Red, below 40, is Leaning: the story reads in one clear direction.

When a score would not mean anything, we leave it off rather than invent one.

No. It tells you how fairly a story is told. What you make of the events is up to you.

An automated process helps gather perspectives from across the coverage. Our editors review every story before it is published, and they make the final call.

Only the writing in the article you paste. It asks the same four questions we ask of our own stories: is the language fair, is more than one side heard, is opinion kept apart from fact, and is the full context there.

No. It reads only the article you paste, so it cannot see how other outlets covered the same event. Every story in the Neutral News app is built from that wider view. That is why the two scores differ.

No. The free check reads one article on its own. A story in the app is built from several sources and reviewed before it is published. The two scores measure different things.

You see the score we published with that story. The free check and the app always show the same number.

Three a day. Your count resets after 24 hours. Stories in the app already carry their score, with no daily limit.

To keep this tool available and prevent abuse, we record the address you submit and the score we produced, and we count how many checks come from your connection each day. That record is deleted after thirty days. We do not store the page's content, we do not keep your IP address, and none of it is used for advertising or shared with anyone.

Tell us at contact@neutralperspectives.com. We read every message, and when we are wrong we correct it openly.

Please do, at contact@neutralperspectives.com. We would love to hear what we missed.

Share Neutral News with someone who would find it useful. Word of mouth is how an independent project grows.