From international news sites to dedicated blogs, it's great to get information from a variety of sources. But bouncing from site to site can be tedious. Newsflow brings all of your favorite sites into one place and wraps them in a beautiful package. A recent update to Newsflow brought the implementation of Fluent Design, bringing the app up to date with the latest Windows 10 design.
In addition to looking great, Newsflow also brings offline support, notifications, search, and more.
Newsflow is available for free on Windows 10, HoloLens, and Windows 10 Mobile.
Bringing the news
While some websites have a nice layout, it's convenient to bring all the news you'd like to read into one place. Newsflow takes any RSS feeds you give it and organizes them in an easy-to-use interface. You can hop between sources or browse from story to story. On the feature side, you can mark articles as favorites, sync Newsflow between devices, and get notifications for news.
Where Newsflow goes beyond just presenting news from websites is in its support of offline reading. You can download all the news you'd like to read and store it locally. This is great for if you commute on a train or subway that doesn't have service or if you're on a plane and dont want to pay for WiFi. Similar to podcast players, Newsflow can download the content you want when you have a connection and then gives you the flexiblity to take it anywhere.
Newsflow also supports YouTube and HTML video playback directly within the app so you won't have to switch to your browser or another app even if an article has an embedded video.
Bringing the look
News apps and RSS readers are aplenty in the Microsoft Store. While they don't all have the exact same feature set, many of them are close enough that appearances become a bigger factor. Personally, I like the look of Newsflow with its round icons, acrylic backgrounds, and other Fluent Design elements. The developers have done a great job of bringing the modern look to their app and it's easy on the eyes.
While liking the design of an app is suggestive, I think Newsflow is one of the better looking apps in the Microsoft Store. It has a clean design that uses just enough transparency to look good without making entire windows transparent. Some apps just throw acrylic effects all over an app and it gets in the way of reading. Thankfully, this isn't the case with Newsflow.
Overall thoughts
Newsflow features an attractive design which became even better thanks to its recent update. The app's option to download content makes it easy to brings news stories with you where you don't have the web. Other little features such as search, categories, cross-device syncing and news notifications round out an impressive app that's easy to use.
The only real downside is that Newsflow can't work with Feedly or other RSS aggregator services; you have to enter in all of your sources manually. You also can't sync across platforms such as iOS and Android. There is a paid extension that's in preview that allows this so it seems like it will be available to everyone in a non-preview version eventually.
Newsflow was already a good app for keeping up to date with the latest news but the Fluent Design implimentation, including an excellent use of the reveal effect, pushes it to another level.
Pros
- Works with RSS feeds
- Features beautiful Fluent Design
- Has offline support
- Free
Cons
- Doesn't work with Feedly
