Brave News adds new features for customizing feeds, and support for more countries

tl;dr — Today Brave News introduced integrated RSS subscriptions, locally personalized suggestions, new sources and content channels powered by Brave Search, and other improvements. New supported regions include Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and the UK.

Big Tech controls the news ecosystem through centralized, Web 2.0-style news aggregation. But this control is waning, particularly as distributed models gain popularity. In many ways, RSS feeds and RSS readers (though not new) are an early instance of Web3-style decentralization. Our hope is that Brave News will make it obvious that a decentralized news ecosystem is far better for users and publishers than what Big Tech offers today.

Brave offers the capabilities users want in a news experience (such as content discovery, feed subscriptions, and personalized suggestions) directly in the browser. There’s no need to rely on centralized servers because all these Brave News features take place solely on your device. This update sets the stage for giving users more control over their news feed and relationships with publishers.

Today’s browser release (desktop version 1.46) includes several Brave News improvements that bring us closer to this vision of a fully decentralized, privacy-preserving news ecosystem, including:

• A Follow button in the browser for adding a site’s feed to Brave News
• New content Channels powered by Brave Search
• Personalized Suggestions made locally on your device
• Improved Source Management
• Availability in new regions including Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and the UK

Privacy-preserving personalization

Brave News can also use your browser history to personalize the content in your feed. But unlike other browser feeds (such as Google News), Brave’s content personalization happens exclusively in the browser, and none of your browsing data ever leaves your device.

Brave News ranks content you follow highest in your feed, and helps you discover new sources to Follow based on your browsing history and sources you already Follow. Brave identifies sources that are similar to each other and recommends suggestions privately in Settings, where you can choose to Follow and add them to your feed.

Note: Brave’s suggestions service is published as an open source project if you want to learn more about how it works.

Channels and new settings options

Many users have requested more controls for customizing Brave News. Today’s update improves the way users Follow and Unfollow sources, and we’ve introduced “channels” which are topics or areas of coverage such as Crypto News, Music, and the new Gaming channel. If you’re already a Brave News user, any customizations you’ve made in the previous version of Brave News will automatically appear in the new version, and you’ll also find a much simpler interface for managing sources.

Brave News around the world

Brave News is also expanding internationally thanks to Brave Search. By querying Brave Search for the most popular content sources around the world and identifying publishers with public RSS feeds, Brave News now supports language- and region-specific content. In addition to coverage in Japan and the US, new regions now include English for Canada and the UK; Spanish for both Mexico and Spain; and Portuguese for users in Brazil. More languages and regions will be added over the coming months.

Coming soon: Easily add content to your Brave News Feed

As you browse publishers’ websites in the Brave browser, you’ll find a new, one-click Follow button. The button is located in the browser address bar and will appear any time you visit a site that provides an RSS feed. Click Follow, and content from that publisher will then appear in Brave News automatically, updating each time your browser fetches the feed.

Note: The new Follow button in the browser address bar will be released later this month. Today’s release is available for desktop users, and iOS will be updated with the new Brave News features in its upcoming 1.46 version. Android will be updated with the new Brave News features soon thereafter.

What’s next for Brave News

Many users have requested alternative views of their Brave News feed, such as a more traditional, inbox-style RSS news reader, which we plan to work on soon. We also plan to introduce an ad-free version of Brave News, mobile alerts, cross-platform sync, more import/export options, and some useful integrations with other Brave products and features.

To give Brave News a try and enjoy news and content directly from your browser, simply open a new tab in the Brave browser, and scroll to get started. If you’re not using Brave yet, you can download it now at brave.com/download.