News, rethought
News that actually
matters to you.
Ripple reads today's headlines and writes you a briefing that connects the dots to what you actually care about.
Try it yourself
See how the news ripples to you.
Tell us a little about yourself and we'll show you how today's biggest story connects to your life.
Be one of the first 250.
The first 250 people get Ripple Premium at $5.99/month instead of $9.99. That's 40% off, forever. Unlimited briefings, first access to new stuff, and you'd be helping an indie dev keep the lights on.
Download on the App Store3 free Ripples included with every download
How It Works
Here's how it works
Step 01
Tell us what you care about
Pick what you care about when you sign up. Sports, climate, tech, politics. Your feed shows those stories first.
Step 02
Browse the latest stories
Scroll through today’s stories from PBS NewsHour, BBC, The Guardian, Axios, ProPublica, and six more. Every story shows who reported it and links to the original.
Step 03
Generate your Ripple
Tap "See The Ripple" on any story. You get a briefing written for you: what happened, why you should care, and what to watch for next.
Features
What you get
Briefings written for you
Every Ripple factors in what you care about and where you live.
You always see who reported it
Every story keeps its outlet's name and a link to the original, so you can read the full thing yourself.
11 sources, 5 nonprofit
PBS NewsHour, BBC, The Guardian, Axios, The Hill, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, The Intercept, Drop Site News, The Appeal, The 19th.
Browse by category
14 categories from Politics to Entertainment, filter however you want.
Save for later
Bookmark any story and come back to it.
Push notifications
Get notified when new stories drop, on your schedule.
By the numbers
Key facts
11
Sources in your feed
PBS NewsHour, BBC, The Guardian, Axios, The Hill, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, The Intercept, Drop Site News, The Appeal, The 19th
5
Nonprofit or reader-funded newsrooms
ProPublica, The Intercept, Drop Site News, The Appeal, and The 19th. Investigative outlets most news apps skip.
8
Pulitzer Prizes won by ProPublica
Including Public Service in both 2024 and 2025 (Pulitzer Prize Board records)
4
Sections in every briefing
The Bottom Line, The Ripple Effect, Your Money, and What to Watch, tailored to each reader
14
News categories
Politics, Technology, Health, Environment, Education, Entertainment, and 8 more, filterable by interest
3
Free Ripples with every download
The app is free to read. Unlimited analysis runs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year.
Questions & Answers
Frequently asked questions
What is Ripple News?
Ripple News is an AI-powered iOS news app. It pulls headlines from 11 news sources (PBS NewsHour, BBC, The Guardian, Axios, The Hill, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, The Intercept, Drop Site News, The Appeal, and The 19th), rewrites each story as a short plain-language summary, and then generates a personalized briefing based on the reader's profession, location, and interests. Each briefing contains four sections: The Bottom Line (what happened), The Ripple Effect (why it matters broadly), Your Money (financial relevance), and What to Watch (what comes next). Every story keeps the name of the outlet that reported it and links to the original article. Ripple was created by independent developer James McKinney and launched in 2025.
Which news sources does Ripple use?
Ripple carries 11 feeds. Two are public broadcasters (PBS NewsHour and BBC). One is a legacy international daily owned by a trust rather than by shareholders (The Guardian, held by the Scott Trust since 1936). Two are digital-native outlets that cover Washington closely (Axios, owned by Cox Enterprises, and The Hill, owned by Nexstar). One is an international broadcaster funded by the government of Qatar (Al Jazeera). The remaining five are nonprofit or reader-funded investigative newsrooms: ProPublica, The Intercept, Drop Site News (launched in 2024 by former Intercept journalists), The Appeal (a worker-led nonprofit covering the criminal legal system), and The 19th (a nonprofit covering gender, politics, and policy). Ripple picks for range, which means the same story often shows up reported from more than one angle.
Does Ripple claim its sources are unbiased?
No. Several of these outlets have a declared point of view, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Ripple does not remove bias and does not describe its feed as neutral. What it does is narrower and checkable: it rewrites each story as a short summary in plain language, it prints the name of the reporting outlet on every single story, and it links straight to the original article so you can hold the summary up against the source. Five of the 11 feeds are nonprofit or reader-funded, so most of Ripple's investigative reporting comes from newsrooms that do not answer to advertisers.
Does personalizing the news put me in a filter bubble?
Ripple personalizes the explanation, not the selection. Every reader sees the same headlines from the same 11 sources. The AI layer explains why a specific story matters to a specific reader, for example how a trade policy lands differently for someone in manufacturing than for someone in healthcare, without changing the underlying facts. That is the opposite of an algorithmic feed, the kind Facebook and Google News run, which personalizes by choosing which stories you see at all. That selection step is what creates filter bubbles (Eli Pariser, "The Filter Bubble," Penguin Press, 2011).
Why does it matter where your news comes from?
A 2024 Gallup poll found that only 31% of Americans trust mass media to report the news "fully, accurately, and fairly," the second-lowest level since Gallup began tracking in 1972. The 2024 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, a research body and not one of Ripple's feeds, found that 39% of people across 47 countries actively avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017, citing effects on their mood and a sense that coverage is slanted. Knowing who reported a story, and who funds them, is part of judging it. That is why Ripple keeps the outlet name on every story instead of blending everything into one anonymous feed.
What are the best personalized news apps for iPhone in 2026?
The main options are Apple News (pre-installed, broad aggregation), Google News (algorithm-driven from thousands of publishers), and Ripple News (AI briefings from 11 sources). Ripple is different in two ways. Its source list is short and unusually weighted toward nonprofit and reader-funded investigative journalism, with 5 of its 11 feeds in that category. And its briefings connect a story to the reader's own profession, location, and interests instead of optimizing for time spent in the app. Ripple is free to download and free to read as a news app. Every download includes 3 free Ripples, and unlimited analysis is $9.99/month or $79.99/year, with a $5.99/month rate for the first 250 early adopters.
Early bird pricing ends at 250 users.
$5.99/month forever instead of $9.99. Don't miss it.