MSN News now lets everyone customize their media sources

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
last updated

Microsoft has begun rolling out a pretty big update to MSN News on Windows 10 and Mobile, bringing features that were recently only available to Fast ring Insiders. Now available to everyone, MSN News version 4.11.155.0 brings the ability to add specific news sources to different topics.

MSN News New

As we reported when this first hit the Fast ring, you can start using the new feature by heading to Interests in the sidebar. From there, you can sort through different categories like Music, Science, Politics and more to select your favorite news outlets for each.

The feature brings a bit of added customization to MSN News, which should be welcome by many users. If you'd like to check it out and start customizing your categories, you can grab the latest update from the Windows Store now.

Thanks to Scionluna for the tip!

Download MSN News from the Windows Store (opens in new tab)

QR: msnnews

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

26 Comments
  • a very welcome update :)
  • seriously. between overly partisan news, financial tabloids like Seeking Alpha and Motley Fool (they are the reason I no longer swing by the Yahoo Portal), and articles written by computers (You Dont Know Football, Quadrangle), I was losing my mind.  Or sites like autoomobile that review Lumia 950 literally every day against a new phone (MS always loses) before redirecting you to a fake tech support page simulating a BSOD and telling you to call some people pretending to be MS Tech Support. So happy to be able to only recieve legitamate objective news sources and tech and financial sources that I trust.
  • my problem is with a specific popular reality show in my country... and msn always shows it as main news, i hate it, dont watch it, and when i am reading news i want important news, nothing related to reality shows, famous lifestyle.... hope now i can filter this kind of "news"
  • EDIT: This update does absolutely NOTHING about the News app's problem: You still can't filter sources. The new "sources" section adds sources that you can include, but all the sources you didnt select (and many more) are still present on every tab (with the exception of the my sources tab). This is awful. Why is it so hard to add a feature to block specific news sources from our newsfeed?
  • I was beginning to think this was a US only feature because I couldn't find it anywhere... Oh well, theres always the brilliant Nexgen Reader to fall back on. Been using Nextgen for 3+ years now and it's still great
  • I'll have to give it a shot. I was under the impression NextGen was more of an RSS thing, and I don't need 1000+ un read alerts everyday. If its something where I can just select some news sources and only get info from them, that'd be wonderful.
  • Well it is a RSS thing, but you can choose all of the souces yourself
  • I am currently very happy with the Magnify news app. You can select from prelisted sources or add your own custom source. Article summaries are available offline as well. Give it a go.
  • Solid update. A tad off topic.  The MSN Sports app also updated last night will now tell you when your favorite team's game is starting up.  That is also a welcome update.
  • Even more off topic. Does anyone know why they can't have live sports scores on the tile? They put final scores on the tile but for live you have to open the app. Anyone know why?  
  • Because they don't really do anything with this app. No major updates and no great features ever. Would be nive to see a better app, a real sports app. Especially one a lot less US sports centric. Would love to have other sports to follow
  • I KNOW RIGHT I've sent two feedbacks for this through the windows feedback app and an app review MSN never listen..
  • I KNOW RIGHT I've sent two feedbacks for this through the windows feedback app and an app review MSN never listen..
  • I hope they bring back custom rss feeds like in the 8.1 app
  • This!
  • Also need to add ability to pin specific sections.
  • Finally! I'd like to see less random crashes too. Weird how MS removes stuff and put it back one year later as an update though...
  • Finally! I'd like to see less random crashes too. Weird how MS removes stuff and put it back one year later as an update though...
  • I haven't received any notifications from this app since several months... Am I the only one in this case? It used to work on my Lumia 930 running WP8.1. I don't know exactly when it stopped to receive notifications but it was on W10M. And now, no notifications at all on my new Lumia 950 either (notification toggle activated of course). So currently the app is almost useless for me, a news app has to give me news notifications... And it works with other apps. Thanks!
  • Fox News seems to be MIA in the Sources but you still get stuck with the news they want in the first column. I want it totally customizable. I hate Reuters with a passion.
  • Sorry about that! We have updated the Sources category list to include Fox News as well. You should now see Fox News listed under National & World News, and Politics categories. Thanks for the feedback!
  • A new UI element is when you hover your mouse cursor over the sidebar it changes to the theme color of the app. The same with the other MSN apps on PC.
     
  • Wow, they have The Blaze yet Fox News is left out. Love em or hate em (the rest of the MSM collectively lean to one side anyway) they bring in the highest ratings for a cable news network. I was suspicious so that was the first thing I searched for. Either there's a hiccup on Fox's end or MS is really that petty.  However, they do have Fox Business. 
  • Sorry about that! We have updated the Sources category list to include Fox News as well. You should now see Fox News  listed under National & World News, and Politics categories. Thanks for the feedback.
  • Nice hope fully I can rid my news feed of "automoomobile" sites constant bashing of windows phone.
    Way to many blogs if you enter in "Microsoft" or "Lumia" as a news interest and "automoomobile" re uses the same articles repeatedly, always anti windows phoen
  • It was updated again today twice in one day.