How your feed works
Effective date: 8 October 2026 (2026-10-08) · Last updated: 8 October 2026
SwipelyNews has two Home feeds:
- For You is personalised. It ranks recent stories using what you do in the App.
- Latest is not personalised. It shows the newest stories in your language, newest first, minus only the topics, countries and outlets you've hidden or turned off.
Everything else (Discover, search, topic and outlet pages, Full coverage) isn't personalised either.
What shapes For You
For You picks from stories published in the last 30 days that are available in your app language. They're ranked using these main signals, roughly in order of importance:
- Your interests.
- Topics, tags, outlets and countries of stories you ❤️ love, save or share count the most.
- Stories you view and watch to the end count a little.
- Stories you mark Not interested push similar stories down.
- Topics and countries you boosted with "More of this", including the interests you picked when you started.
- Local news. We work out your country from your internet connection (IP address) and show a bit more news from it. You can turn this off.
- Freshness. Newer stories rank higher.
- What's popular. Reactions, saves and shares across all readers add a small boost.
Some things never change. Whatever the signals say:
- Hidden topics and hidden countries never appear in For You or Latest.
- Outlets you've turned off never appear in For You or Latest. You can still find them in Discover and search.
- You never see the same story twice. When several outlets cover the same event, you get one version, and the others are under Full coverage.
- Stories you've reported don't come back.
What doesn't shape your feed:
- your activity in other apps or websites;
- data from our ad partner;
- your age;
- anything you read on a publisher's website after you open an article;
- political viewpoint: we don't rank outlets or stories by political leaning;
- payment: no one can pay to place or boost a story. There are no sponsored stories;
- outlet criteria: we include outlets that meet viewpoint-neutral criteria (such as a public masthead, ownership disclosure and a corrections policy). These criteria decide only which outlets are included, never how stories are ranked.
SwipelyNews is independent and politically neutral, and isn't affiliated with any party, government, religious or interest group, or news outlet. Ranking is automated, so it can still produce an unbalanced mix at times. Use Full coverage to compare outlets, and Report if something seems wrong.
Reactions mean different things:
- ❤️ Love, save and share add the story's topics to your interests. They automatically "like" those topics, unless you've hidden them.
- The other reactions (💡 insightful, 😂 funny, 😮 wow, 😢 sad, 😡 angry) show interest in that story, but don't add its topics to your interests.
Your controls
| You want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| See more of a topic or country | On a story: ⋯ More › More of [topic] (or More from [country]); or Settings › Your feed › Interests / Countries |
| Never see a topic or country | ⋯ More › Hide [topic] / Hide [country]; or in Settings |
| See less like this story | ⋯ More › Not interested |
| Stop seeing an outlet | ⋯ More › Turn off [outlet], the outlet page's toggle, or Settings › News sources (every outlet is on by default; Turn all back on restores them) |
| Turn off local news | Settings › Your feed › Local news |
| See news without personalisation | Settings › Your feed › Personalized feed: off, or use the Latest tab |
| Start over | Profile › settings gear › Delete my data / Delete account (at the bottom of Settings) erases your interests and history |
| Let the feed scroll by itself | Auto scroll (off by default) in the ⋯ More sheet or Settings › Your feed |
How long signals last. Interest scores fade: each one expires 90 days after it was last updated (30 days for related stories). The list of stories already shown to you is kept for 31 days.
Switch personalisation off
Settings › Your feed › Personalized feed. When it's off:
- For You no longer uses your activity. It shows recent stories in your language, plus news from your country (if Local news is on);
- your interest profile and your boosted ("More of this") topics and countries are deleted, and we stop recording interest signals. Switching it back on starts from zero;
- topics, countries and outlets you've hidden still stay hidden, because they're filters you chose, not profiling.
You can switch it back on at any time. This is your right to object to profiling (Art. 21 GDPR).
Notifications
If you turn notifications on, we send at most a few a day about important stories:
- stories covered by several outlets, or getting a lot of engagement;
- chosen with the same interests, hidden topics and turned-off outlets as your feed;
- never during quiet hours (22:00 to 08:00 your time);
- never a story you've already seen;
- fewer if you ignore them.
You can turn them off in Settings or in your phone's settings.
Not a decision about you
Ranking only changes the order of news stories. It doesn't decide anything about you, your access to the App, or any price. Every story stays available in Latest, Discover and search. For the legal details (profiling, your right to object, data retention), see the Privacy Policy.
All language versions of this document are equally authoritative. If they differ, the interpretation most favourable to you applies.