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breross

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 19, 2015
2
5
Whenever I swipe left on the home screen where it displays search, Siri suggestions, nearby, and news, almost all of the news displayed is about politics, which is rather not see. I would rather customize it to display sports news rather than have Apple force feed me biased articles that I really don't care about anyway. I have changed the sources in the actual news app, but all the updates shown when I swipe left on the home screen are from CNN and The New York Times. How do I change this?
 

CaptMarvel

macrumors 68000
Sep 20, 2014
1,738
2,145
North Carolina
Whenever I swipe left on the home screen where it displays search, Siri suggestions, nearby, and news, almost all of the news displayed is about politics, which is rather not see. I would rather customize it to display sports news rather than have Apple force feed me biased articles that I really don't care about anyway. I have changed the sources in the actual news app, but all the updates shown when I swipe left on the home screen are from CNN and The New York Times. How do I change this?

not sure this part is customizable..yet. Maybe over time it will be or hopefully it learns and eventually changes in its own.

I would like to turn off the news section comletely.

Settings > General > Spotlight Search then toggle Siri Suggestions
 

mconk

macrumors 6502
Mar 10, 2009
371
69
Virginia
Unfortunately it's not customizable (yet). I've removed CNN from my list, but still often see CNN articles in Spotlight.
 
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KALLT

macrumors 603
Sep 23, 2008
5,380
3,415
not sure this part is customizable..yet. Maybe over time it will be or hopefully it learns and eventually changes in its own.

Settings > General > Spotlight Search then toggle Siri Suggestions

The function you are looking for is in fact Spotlight Suggestions (it’s listed among the apps in that settings screen).

I don’t think the algorithm will get that much better when you never click on any links. It is probably better to turn it off and use a good news app instead.
 
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breross

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 19, 2015
2
5
The function you are looking for is in fact Spotlight Suggestions (it’s listed among the apps in that settings screen).

I don’t think the algorithm will get that much better when you never click on any links. It is probably better to turn it off and use a good news app instead.
Thanks, this just turned off all the news suggestions. That will have to do for now.
 

bandofbrothers

macrumors 601
Oct 14, 2007
4,779
328
Uk
I've turned this feature off too as it brought nothing useful for me.

I agree the news topics should be user defined.

I've submitted feedback to 

I'm hoping others have / will too asking for this to be user defined for content.
 

lagwagon

Suspended
Oct 12, 2014
3,899
2,759
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
I've turned this feature off too as it brought nothing useful for me.

I agree the news topics should be user defined.

I've submitted feedback to 

I'm hoping others have / will too asking for this to be user defined for content.

I sent in feedback about it ages ago back in Public beta 1 or 2 builds. I haven't re-checked the keynote, but I swear they said it was supposed to be location based (took that as maybe more down to your city) but the reality is, it's just a broad country wide news with the occasional east or west specific stuff (depending what coast you're nearest.) at least that's how it seems to be in Canada.

Would be nice if it was actually more local to where you actually live and or user selectable so you could say have gaming or tech news, and so on.
 

lagwagon

Suspended
Oct 12, 2014
3,899
2,759
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
local for me, canada & winnipeg news. from canadian sites only.

I'm in Calgary and ever since beta all the way till now I've seen Calgary specific news on my proactive screen once or twice total. It's pretty much always just Canada wide news. Mostly eastern with some pacific west coast stuff mixed in. Just about never about Alberta or Calgary.
 

Sleaka J

macrumors regular
Mar 5, 2015
122
98
local for me, canada & winnipeg news. from canadian sites only.

It definitely seems to be country specific. I get Australian sites for my news.

It's also very political centric. That might be because we had a change in leadership recently, but I doubt it.
 

jlb295

macrumors newbie
Nov 24, 2015
1
5
Whenever I swipe left on the home screen where it displays search, Siri suggestions, nearby, and news, almost all of the news displayed is about politics, which is rather not see. I would rather customize it to display sports news rather than have Apple force feed me biased articles that I really don't care about anyway. I have changed the sources in the actual news app, but all the updates shown when I swipe left on the home screen are from CNN and The New York Times. How do I change this?
Agreed, there's clearly an agenda being pushed in the news feed.

Dear Apple,
Give me a good product but don't you dare force your agendas down my throat.
 

happykaty

macrumors newbie
Jun 1, 2016
1
2
So there is a new function that can keep the suggestions for apps and everything on your iPhone and just kill the news suggestions.

Settings > General > Spotlight search
In the list of apps, disactivate both Bing Web Results & Spotlight Suggestions

And presto, no more news but all the other suggestions from your iPhone such as recent contacts, recently used apps and some "nearby" icons.
 

Salvor Hardin

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2013
250
242
So there is a new function that can keep the suggestions for apps and everything on your iPhone and just kill the news suggestions.

Settings > General > Spotlight search
In the list of apps, disactivate both Bing Web Results & Spotlight Suggestions

And presto, no more news but all the other suggestions from your iPhone such as recent contacts, recently used apps and some "nearby" icons.
This has been the solution yet non solution if you want the other suggestions since day 1.
if iOS 10 doesn't change this then having spotlight news not be personalized in spite of everything else on that screen is either a clear design decision or a oversight that Apple knows about but won't deal with unless pressured to for obvious reasons.
 

DomC

macrumors 6502
Jul 28, 2010
454
174
What I want to know is why if you don't use any Spotlight suggestions, swiping left on the home screen brings up a blank screen? I would think that if you don't have anything suggested then maybe the swipe shouldn't happen? Having the result of seeing a blank screen seems like a bug (submitted). And yes, I could choose not to swipe to the left but it's just a natural action to keep swiping (at least for me).
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
What I want to know is why if you don't use any Spotlight suggestions, swiping left on the home screen brings up a blank screen? I would think that if you don't have anything suggested then maybe the swipe shouldn't happen? Having the result of seeing a blank screen seems like a bug (submitted). And yes, I could choose not to swipe to the left but it's just a natural action to keep swiping (at least for me).
There's still the basic spotlight search.
 

DomC

macrumors 6502
Jul 28, 2010
454
174
Which makes not using the suggestions and having the blank screen on swipe even weirder. All that's left on the screen without suggestions is the search bar at the top, which is the same as pulling down any screen.
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
Which makes not using the suggestions and having the blank screen on swipe even weirder. All that's left on the screen without suggestions is the search bar at the top, which is the same as pulling down any screen.
And what it was like in iOS for many versions prior to iOS 7, so not that weird essentially.
 

DomC

macrumors 6502
Jul 28, 2010
454
174
Yeah I know, but at least then it made more sense since we didn't have the pull down search in addition.
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
Yeah I know, but at least then it made more sense since we didn't have the pull down search in addition.
I guess I don't see having an extra place for it somehow being confusing or all that strange.
 

Dmich

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2016
1
1
Agreed, there's clearly an agenda being pushed in the news feed.

Dear Apple,
Give me a good product but don't you dare force your agendas down my throat.

I browse through the news daily, I click on 1 or 2 a day that might spark my interest but for the most part the articles are not of my interests.

But.. Today for the first time I clicked on a news story and when it brought me to the Globe and Mail page it required me to subscribe to their Premium service in order to view it. Seems to me Apple are selling this news space which would be why they are not allowing us to customize the news source. Hmmm
 
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Dave73

macrumors newbie
Sep 12, 2016
1
0
Whenever I swipe left on the home screen where it displays search, Siri suggestions, nearby, and news, almost all of the news displayed is about politics, which is rather not see. I would rather customize it to display sports news rather than have Apple force feed me biased articles that I really don't care about anyway. I have changed the sources in the actual news app, but all the updates shown when I swipe left on the home screen are from CNN and The New York Times. How do I change this?

I had this same issue, as I had previously lived in Hong Kong and could not get rid of the 'local' Hong Kong NEWS feed, despite having moved back to New Zealand. I noticed today that Google was also defaulting to the HK site, something I not noticed before. After some digging I found that region format was still set to HK, so I changed it to the correct setting, NZ. Hey presto, I'm now getting the NEWS feed for NZ.
Path: Setting > General > Language & Region > Region Format > Region
 

Salvor Hardin

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2013
250
242
There still doesn't seem to be way to change them on iOS 10 but at least you can remove the news widget without having to remove everything else thanks to the widget panel and spotlight search page being merged.
 
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