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Universal Ad-free News App Recommendations

heretiq

heretiq

Contributor
Original poster
Jan 31, 2014
1,043
1,716
Denver, CO
Apple News has been my go-to iOS, iPadOS and MacOS news app for years. It features great content, great UX, and respects user privacy. However, lately all of this is offset by annoying ads that interrupt content flow and degrade the overall experience. News is central to my life and I’ve enjoyed Apple News as a trusted news hub for years. However, Apple has recently decided that advertising revenue is a priority and has increased the ad content in News to act on that priority. Although the increase in ad frequency has been modest, the impact is disproportionate and has caused me to now detest using what was once one of my favorite apps on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS. Unfortunately, there is no way to elect an ad-free experience with Apple News — even as a subscriber to the highest-tier $33/month AppleOne Premier bundle. As such, I’m left with no choice but to seek an alternate, ad-free news app. I would be happy to pay for the option to turn off ads in News and to opt-out of supporting the corrosive and immoral ad-driven economy. Are there any Ad-free News apps with similar content scope as Apple News?
 
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I’m not aware of any ad-free News services or apps. Even a WSJ subscription, which is about $40/month, still has ads in the WSJ app and website. I’d recommend buying a VPN service like Mullvad or ProtonVPN (~$5-6/month). They have an adblock feature you can use to block ads across all apps, so you could theoretically use any news app you wanted and get rid of ads. I know for sure they block ads in the Apple News app. There are occasional websites that the adblock won’t catch, like YouTube, but like it works well for the very large majority of sites/apps. As a bonus, you get the privacy protection of using a VPN. There are probably some free VPNs out there that have an adblock feature, but I’d recommend not using those because if it’s free, the app has to be selling your data to be operational.
 
xxray said:
I’m not aware of any ad-free News services or apps. Even a WSJ subscription, which is about $40/month, still has ads in the WSJ app and website. I’d recommend buying a VPN service like Mullvad or ProtonVPN (~$5-6/month). They have an adblock feature you can use to block ads across all apps, so you could theoretically use any news app you wanted and get rid of ads. I know for sure they block ads in the Apple News app. There are occasional websites that the adblock won’t catch, like YouTube, but like it works well for the very large majority of sites/apps. As a bonus, you get the privacy protection of using a VPN. There are probably some free VPNs out there that have an adblock feature, but I’d recommend not using those because if it’s free, the app has to be selling your data to be operational.
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Thanks @xxray — great suggestion! I have a ProtonVPN subscription but stopped using it when I started using Private Relay thinking I would get better performance (speed-wise) with most of the benefits of a VPN. This has largely worked for me - the big exception being Apple News ironically. I’ll reactivate ProtonVPN and give it another go. Thanks again. 🙏🏽
 
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xxray said:
I’m not aware of any ad-free News services or apps. Even a WSJ subscription, which is about $40/month, still has ads in the WSJ app and website. I’d recommend buying a VPN service like Mullvad or ProtonVPN (~$5-6/month). They have an adblock feature you can use to block ads across all apps, so you could theoretically use any news app you wanted and get rid of ads. I know for sure they block ads in the Apple News app. There are occasional websites that the adblock won’t catch, like YouTube, but like it works well for the very large majority of sites/apps. As a bonus, you get the privacy protection of using a VPN. There are probably some free VPNs out there that have an adblock feature, but I’d recommend not using those because if it’s free, the app has to be selling your data to be operational.
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Thanks does Mullvad or ProtonVPN block CNN video ads as well? Curious.
 
max2 said:
Thanks does Mullvad or ProtonVPN block CNN video ads as well? Curious.
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I’m using Mullvad right now so not sure about Proton. I didn’t see any video ads in 2 CNN articles in the Apple News app, but I did see a video ad on the CNN website.
 
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xxray said:
I’m using Mullvad right now so not sure about Proton. I didn’t see any video ads in 2 CNN articles in the Apple News app, but I did see a video ad on the CNN website.
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Thanks CNN seems to be impossible to block video ads on mobile :(

Desktop it is easy.

Sucks.


I will try whatever I have to for CNN.com or CNN ios mobile app to not have video ads. If possible.
 
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I use NextDNS for blocking ads in Apple News (and many other places, although I haven't tried it on CNN).

I am on the free tier and have never hit the usage limit, even with the same configuration being used on my phone, iPad and MacBook.

A bit off topic, but another way to go to get ad-free (and, bonus: algorithm free) news would be to buy an RSS feed app like Reeder and get pull feeds from NYTimes, WSJ, etc.
 
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@xxray, I’ve confirmed that Proton VPN (with the ‘Block malware, ads and trackers’ setting active) completely blocks ads on Apple News — even on CNN articles. Thanks again for the suggestion! Overall, this works to restore the prior ad-free experience with Apple News, but at the cost of small but noticeable added latency and occasional VPN-related glitches with some apps (these side effects were less noticeable with private relay only).

@max2, on CNN.com it appears that inline text ads are blocked but video ads are not. This is not a problem for me personally since my news is consumed primarily through Apple News and NPR.

@iThom Pro Max, thanks for the Reeder suggestion. I’ll explore it to see if it can approach the utility and convenience of Apple News — but without the annoying “You blocked this channel” placeholders. If this works, I may be able to fall back to just private relay.
 
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heretiq said:
@xxray, I’ve confirmed that Proton VPN (with the ‘Block malware, ads and trackers’ setting active) completely blocks ads on Apple News — even on CNN articles. Thanks again for the suggestion! Overall, this works to restore the prior ad-free experience with Apple News, but at the cost of small but noticeable added latency and occasional VPN-related glitches with some apps (these side effects were less noticeable with private relay only).

@max2, on CNN.com it appears that inline text ads are blocked but video ads are not. This is not a problem for me personally since my news is consumed primarily through Apple News and NPR.

@iThom Pro Max, thanks for the Reeder suggestion. I’ll explore it to see if it can approach the utility and convenience of Apple News — but without the annoying “You blocked this channel” placeholders. If this works, I may be able to fall back to just private relay.
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Thank you.
 
iThom Pro Max said:
I use NextDNS for blocking ads in Apple News (and many other places, although I haven't tried it on CNN).
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Holy flaps, I cannot believe how perfectly this worked. It worked so well I was able to turn off my content blockers in Safari, well, except for Wipr Extra for those annoying YouTube video ads, but just wow. I thought it was going to be another 1.1.1.1 — which I've been using for years, and I still recommend — but this is next level.

Thank you so much for turning me onto this!
 
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I agree with the OP, Apple News is just horrific when it comes to ads. Apple completely ruins the user experience. I dropped my Apple One subscription all due to the ads on News. I left feedback with Apple but I doubt they care.
 
Eric Idle said:
I agree with the OP, Apple News is just horrific when it comes to ads. Apple completely ruins the user experience. I dropped my Apple One subscription all due to the ads on News. I left feedback with Apple but I doubt they care.
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Pretty sure the thumbs up or down doesn’t do anything in the news app.
 
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