Alternatives

Chinese News Reading Apps Are Banned in India, so Here Are Some Alternatives

By Bill Toulas / July 3, 2020

The Indian government has banned Newsdog, UC News, and QQ NewsFeed, along with another 56 apps form China, but this is merely a bruise in the field of news reading apps.

Surely, you didn’t want to rely solely on Chinese news apps anyway, as the control and censorship that go into the companies operating these news agencies don’t leave journalists much freedom to communicate or even promote all aspects of a story.

That said, if you’re in India, you should be looking at the following news readers instead:

The Times of India (Android, iOS)

This is the official app of one of the most highly regarded news agencies in the country, The Times of India. It is updated multiple times within the day, offers Live TV news, offline reading for when you’re away from home or office, and briefs for when you’re in a hurry. The app can also push notifications for news categories that were selected by the user. The Times of India offers news stories written in English and 13 Indian languages.

InShorts (Android, iOS)

InShorts is different from most news reading apps in the sense that it delivers 60-word summaries. This allows you to stay informed about the developments in a wide range of fields, by only checking the news for a couple of minutes each day. InShorts covers politics, exciting Bollywood stories, government policy news, and more, all narrowed down to the facts, leaving all opinions aside.

Google News (Android, iOS)

Google is covering the Indian market with top international and local news, plus the app also supports the iOS platform. Google may not be known for creating nicely designed user interfaces on its apps and platforms, but News is definitely an exception to that. It’s easy to navigate, offers top stories at your fingertips, and has well-thought-out segments. Finally, the newly landed dark mode looks good for nocturnal readers.

Business Insider (Android, iOS)

Here’s another app pointing to a widely-respected publication. The Business Insider India offers international and local stories, videos, breaking news alerts, and a powerful search engine. There’s also a subscription system that unlocks special featured stories and exclusive content in general. From a design perspective, the Business Insider app is clean and meant to help the reader focus on the written content.

Flipboard (Android, iOS)

Flipboard is a highly popular news-reading app that counts millions of users on both the Android and iOS platforms. People love it for the high-level of curation that goes on in the “top stories” feed, while the personalization options are leaving nothing to be desired. From business and tech news to sports, cooking, and travel, everything plays on Flipboard.

RELATED:



For a better user experience we recommend using a more modern browser. We support the latest version of the following browsers: For a better user experience we recommend using the latest version of the following browsers: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari