Real RSS headlines, grouped into your own topics
A personal news digest built entirely on free public RSS feeds - not a paid news API. Turn on the topics you care about (BBC's World, UK, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Entertainment, Politics and Sport feeds are built in, or add any RSS feed of your own), add local news for a country you pick, and see real headlines as a scannable, colour-coded card grid, grouped by topic.
Turn on any of nine built-in BBC News topic feeds - World, UK, Business, Technology, Science & Environment, Health, Entertainment & Arts, Politics, Sport - and your digest shows only what you've enabled, each as its own card section.
Not just the built-in UK topic - a Settings toggle adds your own country as a digest section, sourced from that country's free national broadcaster feed. Thirteen countries covered, guessed from your device's language but always editable.
Not limited to the built-in topics - paste any public RSS or Atom feed URL and give it a label to fetch it the same way, grouped as your own custom topic section.
Every topic gets its own colour, carried through to its section heading, its topic pills, and a quick-jump pill bar above the digest that scrolls straight to that topic's section - handy with five or six topics on.
The top story in every topic renders as a larger featured card, and every fourth card renders smaller and tighter, so the digest reads as a varied page. Articles you open dim slightly with a "Read" tag on your next visit.
A live search box filters your current digest by keyword across every enabled topic at once, matching against both headline and summary text.
Tap Save on any card to add it to a dedicated Saved tab, then export your saved list to CSV whenever you want a copy outside the app.
Each topic's headlines are cached locally for a freshness window you control (5 minutes to 1 hour), so switching tabs doesn't refetch everything - hit Refresh any time to force an immediate update.
If a topic's feed can't be reached, its card shows the last cached copy or a clear retry prompt - one broken feed never blanks out the rest of your digest.
Switch between a light or dark theme that remembers your choice, so the digest reads comfortably whatever the time of day.
Topic choices, custom feeds, saved articles and cached headlines all persist in local storage. No account, no server sync - only the feed fetches themselves go out over the internet.
Every headline comes from a publicly published RSS feed via the free rss2json.com bridge - not a metered or paywalled news API, so there's nothing to run out of.
The topbar, tabs and colour-coded quick-jump pills stay pinned as you scroll, so jumping between topics never loses your navigation. An "Aa" button on every topic lets you set that section's cards to comfortable, compact or spacious.
The single newest headline across all your enabled topics renders as a full-width hero banner above the digest, so the most current story is never buried.
Most people either use a general-purpose RSS reader app or just check a handful of news sites directly. Here's how a focused, topic-first digest compares.
| Feature | Metre2 News | A general RSS reader (e.g. Feedly free tier) | Checking news sites directly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free | Free tier capped at a small number of feeds, paid tiers beyond that | Free |
| Grouped by topic out of the box | ✓ (9 built-in BBC topics) | ✕ (you build folders/feeds yourself) | ✕ |
| Local news for a country you pick | ✓ (13 countries) | Varies by app, often paid-tier only | ✕ (you find the site yourself) |
| Add any custom RSS feed | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Save headlines + CSV export | ✓ | Varies by app, often paid-tier only | ✕ |
| One place instead of many tabs/apps | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
General comparison as of August 2026. Not affiliated with Feedly, BBC News, or rss2json.com.
Free, publicly published RSS feeds - BBC News's topic feeds are built in (World, UK, Business, Technology, Science & Environment, Health, Entertainment & Arts, Politics, Sport), and you can add any other public RSS or Atom feed URL as a custom topic. There's no paid news API involved.
Most RSS feeds don't send the CORS headers a web page needs to read them directly, so every feed is fetched through api.rss2json.com's free public bridge, which adds that header and hands back JSON - the same kind of free public service this portfolio already relies on for map tiles and routing in other apps.
Yes. Turn any of the built-in BBC topic feeds on or off, and add your own custom feed with any label and RSS/Atom URL - your digest only shows the topics you've enabled, grouped as their own card sections.
Yes. Tap Save on any headline to add it to a separate Saved tab, and export your saved list to CSV whenever you like.
No account and no cost - Metre2 News is a free app. Your topic choices, custom feeds, saved articles and cached headlines all stay on your device via local storage.
Each topic's headlines are cached locally for a freshness window you set (5 minutes to 1 hour), so switching tabs doesn't refetch everything. Hit Refresh any time to force an immediate update.
Yes. A Local news setting adds your own country as a digest section, sourced from that country's free national broadcaster feed - thirteen countries are covered including the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Germany, France, India, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand, Singapore and Italy alongside the UK. Your country is guessed from your device's language setting but always editable, and it stays off until you switch it on.