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What this app does

You choose the sources. The app collects their articles, turns them into short spoken pieces, and plays them one after another — including in the car, hands-free.

Your sources Articles Spoken In the car

  • Nothing is chosen for you. There is no algorithm deciding what you see.
  • You can also just read on screen and never play a single sound.
  • The app doesn't host any news. It reads the feeds you point it at.

Add your first source

Paste any website address. The app looks for that site's feed and adds it — you don't need to know what RSS is or find a special link.

  1. Tap Add — From Home, or from an empty category.
  2. Paste the address — The homepage is enough — bbc.com, not a feed URL.
  3. Pick a category — Or create one. Two sources in a category unlock Radio.
  • You can also share a page into the app from Safari.
  • If a site has several feeds, you choose which one you want.
  • A source that stops working shows a warning next to its name.
FreeAdding sources by address is free and unlimited on every plan.

Coming from another reader

If you already use Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire or almost any other reader, export an OPML file from it and import it here. Your sources and folders arrive intact.

  1. Export from your old app — Look for OPML in its settings — every reader has it.
  2. Import here — Settings › Import. Pick the file you exported.
  3. Check your categories — Folders become categories. Rename or merge as you like.
  • Excel files work too, if you'd rather build your list in a spreadsheet.
  • Import never removes what you already have — it only adds.
  • You can export your own list the same way, any time. It's yours.
TipThis is the fastest way to set up the app. A hundred sources in about ten seconds.

Categories keep it manageable

A category is a group of sources — World, Sport, Local, anything you want. Categories are what Radio turns into stations, so they're worth a minute of thought.

  • Drag to reorder. Move a source between categories at any time.
  • A source can only live in one category, which keeps stations clean.
  • Two sources in a category is the minimum for a station.

Let the app suggest sources

Discover proposes publications you don't follow yet, checks that each one actually works, and lets you add them in a tap. It works from the very first day, before you've read anything.

  • Every suggestion is verified before it's shown — no dead links.
  • The more you read, the closer the suggestions get to your taste.
  • One session can set up several categories at once.
FreeTwo full Discover sessions are free on every plan. Use them once you know roughly what you want.
ProPro gets unlimited sessions, plus a deeper search for niche and international sources.

Add a source by name

Type a publication's name instead of its address, and the app searches for a matching source and adds its feed for you.

FreeFive free searches on every plan.
ProUnlimited with Pro.

Good to know

Visit the website

Explore the source directory on our website — browse feeds by topic, discover new publications, and see what others are reading. A good place to start if you're not sure which sources to add.

Open safeandinformed.com ↗

Kreel — our free feed finder

Kreel is a free browser extension from the same team. As you browse, it quietly finds the RSS feeds on the pages you visit — including hidden ones for YouTube, Reddit and GitHub — and exports them as an OPML or Excel file you can import straight into Safe & Informed.

TipSearch for "Kreel" in your browser's extension store — the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons, or Safari Extensions. It's 100% local: no account, no backend, and it sends none of your data anywhere.
TipYou don't need any extra add-on for the app itself: when Safe & Informed opens an article, it uses your device's own browser view, so the extensions you already have keep working.

What uses your voice credits

Only the natural AI voice costs credits. The robotic (system) voice, reading text, and translation are always free. Here's what each AI-voice action costs:

  • An article read in the AI voice — 1 credit.
  • Daily Briefing — 4 credits.
  • What's New — 2 credits.
  • Asking Siri a question — 1 credit.
  • Re-listening to something already generated — free, as long as it's still in the cache and you haven't cleared it.
  • An offline pack — charged once when you download it; playing it back is free.
TipPro includes 150 credits a month, and you can top up any time. Run out and playback simply switches to the free robotic voice — nothing stops.
TipIf AI generation ever fails, you're never charged — it falls back to the robotic voice for free.

Listen

Radio: your own station

Radio takes a category and plays it as a continuous station. It keeps going on its own — no tapping, no choosing, no end of list.

  • One station per category. Or All Articles, for everything at once.
  • Duplicate stories from different sources are removed automatically.
  • Up to thirty articles per station, shuffled so it doesn't feel like a list.
  • Feed mode shows the same station as cards you swipe through instead.
NoteA category needs at least two sources before it can become a station.
FreeRadio itself is free. On Lite and No Ads it uses the built-in system voice; Pro replaces it with a natural voice reading short summaries.

The queue

Add articles to the queue and they play one after another. It's the manual version of Radio — you decide the running order.

  • Swipe an article to queue it from any list.
  • Reorder by dragging. Remove by swiping.
  • The queue survives closing the app and syncs to your other devices.

Swipe through the day

A full-screen view where each article is one card and you flick upwards for the next. Fast way to clear a backlog without opening anything.

  • Available from any article list, not just Radio.
  • Articles you pass are marked as seen so they don't come back.
  • Tap a card to open the full article, or to start playing it.

Two kinds of voice

The system voice is your phone's built-in speech. It's free, works offline, and reads the whole article. The natural voice is a real-sounding narrator that reads a short summary instead.

System voice Whole article Natural voice Short summary

  • The system voice needs no connection and costs nothing.
  • The natural voice needs a connection, because it's generated as you listen.
  • You can switch between them at any time in Settings.
ProThe natural voice and the summaries are part of Pro.

Speed, skip and sleep

Playback speed is remembered across sessions. The sleep timer stops playback after a set time or at the end of the current article.

  • Skip forward moves to the next article, not forward in seconds.
  • Skipping teaches the app what you're not interested in.
  • The sleep timer is in the player, under the more menu.

Listen without a connection

Download your queue before you leave and it plays anywhere — underground, in a tunnel, on a plane.

  • Downloads are kept until you remove them or the article ages out.
  • Quick Saves keeps a separate list of things you swiped to keep.
  • The system voice works offline without downloading anything.
TipWorth doing the night before a long drive. Downloaded audio starts instantly, with no waiting at the first junction.

In the car

CarPlay

The app appears on your car's screen as a full audio app, with six tabs. Everything is built from Apple's driving-safe controls — large targets, short lists, no typing.

  • Home for what's new, Radio for your stations, Queue for what's lined up.
  • Favourites and Recommended for the sources and stories you return to.
  • Weather shows conditions where you are, without leaving the app.
  • Steering-wheel controls and the car's Now Playing screen work as usual.
TipStart a station before you set off. Once it's playing you never have to touch the screen again.

Ask instead of tapping

Add the app's actions as Siri Shortcuts, then trigger them by voice — Siri starts playback, opens the briefing and controls what's playing, hands-free. You choose the wording; these are just the defaults.

  • "Play my briefing" — the day's stories, back to back.
  • "Read the news" — starts your last station.
  • "Open For You" — the recommendations built on this device.
  • "Next", "Pause", "Resume" — plain playback control.
TipAdd the shortcuts and set your own phrases in Settings › Siri Shortcuts.

Before you drive

Thirty seconds of setup makes the whole drive hands-free.

  1. Fill the queue — Or pick the station you want.
  2. Download it (optional) — Not needed if you'll have a connection — the AI voice streams live. But downloading a queue, a station or a whole category makes it start instantly and never cut out on a weak signal or in a tunnel.
  3. Press play — Then put the phone down and go.
NoteSet everything before you move. Driving safely is your responsibility, and no article is worth a glance at the road you didn't take.

Weather and traffic

If you allow location, the app shows the weather where you are and traffic conditions nearby. Location is used at that moment and never stored.

  • Approximate location is enough — the app doesn't need precise GPS.
  • Traffic is filtered to your area, so foreign incidents don't appear.
  • Decline the permission and everything else still works.

Read and keep

Reader view

Strips the page down to the article — no banners, no pop-ups, no cookie walls. Adjust the text size and it stays that way.

  • Works offline once the article has been fetched.
  • Share the original link at any time from the same screen.
  • If a site blocks it, the original page opens instead.

Archive: folders, tags, notes

The archive is what you deliberately keep. Organise it into folders, add tags, write notes on an article — it becomes your own reference library.

  • Rules can file new articles into folders automatically.
  • Archived articles keep their text, so they survive the source deleting them.
  • Play a whole folder as a station, like any category.

History or Archive?

History fills itself with everything you've opened or played. Archive holds only what you chose to keep. One is a record, the other is a decision.

  • History is capped and older entries fall off over time.
  • Archive is permanent until you delete it.
  • Both stay on your device.

Search

Searches the articles you've collected — titles and full text. Wikipedia results can be included if you want background on a subject.

  • Results are grouped by source so you can see who covered what.
  • Search works offline over anything already downloaded.

Smart search in the Archive

Finds related articles by meaning rather than by exact word — searching "elections" also surfaces pieces about voting and ballots.

ProPart of Pro.

Made for you

How recommendations work

The app watches what you open, finish and skip, and builds a picture of your interests. All of it happens on this device — nothing about your reading is sent anywhere.

What you read On this device Your topics For You

  • Finishing an article counts for more than opening it.
  • Skipping early counts against that topic and that source.
  • Clear the whole picture at any time in Settings.
FreeThis runs on every plan, free, offline, with no account and no server.

Tune it by hand

You don't have to wait for the app to learn. Choose the topics you care about, and how old an article can be before it stops appearing.

  • Preferred words push matching articles up.
  • Blocked words remove them entirely — useful for a story you're tired of.
  • Changes apply immediately, to lists and stations alike.

Fewer empty headlines

The app scores headlines for clickbait patterns and quietly pushes the worst offenders down. It's a filter on presentation, not on opinion or politics.

  • Nothing is deleted — a low-scoring article is still reachable.
  • The scoring happens on the device, using no network.

Breaking news alerts

The app checks your sources in the background and notifies you when something looks genuinely urgent.

  • Alerts are worked out on your device from your own sources.
  • There's no server pushing content at you.
  • Set how often it checks, or turn it off, in Settings.

Your other devices

Apple Watch

Control playback from your wrist, see what's playing, and pick up where you left off. Complications put it on your watch face.

  • Play, pause and skip without taking out your phone.
  • Shortcuts start your briefing straight from the watch.

Widgets and Live Activity

Pin a widget to your Home Screen or Lock Screen for the latest headlines. While something is playing, a Live Activity keeps the controls one glance away.

  • On iPhones with Dynamic Island, playback controls live there.
  • Widgets come in several sizes, from a single headline to a small list.

iPad and Mac

The same app runs on iPad and on Macs with Apple silicon, with a layout that uses the extra room.

  • One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac.
  • Spotlight can search your archive from outside the app.

Keeping devices in step

Your sources, categories, queue, archive and history sync through your own iCloud account, so a new device arrives already set up.

  • It uses your private iCloud database. We have no access to it.
  • Turn iCloud off and everything still works — just on one device.
  • Sync carries settings too, so your voice and speed follow you.

Plans and credits

Lite, No Ads and Pro

Most of the app is free forever. Pro adds the AI layer: a natural voice, short summaries and the daily briefing.

  • Lite is the whole app with a small banner ad. Never during audio or in the car.
  • No Ads removes the banner and changes nothing else.
  • Pro adds the natural voice, summaries, briefings and unlimited Discover.
FreeSources, categories, import and export, Radio, the queue, the archive, search, widgets, the Watch app, CarPlay and sync are free on every plan.

What a voice play is

Every article read in the natural voice uses one voice play. Pro includes 150 a month, and the count resets on the 1st.

  • Reading on screen, the system voice and everything else cost nothing.
  • Unused plays don't roll over — the count starts fresh on the 1st of each month.
  • The remaining count is shown in Settings.
  • When you run out, the app tells you. Switch to the system voice or add a top-up to carry on.

Buying more plays

If 150 isn't enough, top-up packs add more. They're one-off purchases, not a subscription, and they don't expire at the end of the month.

  • Top-ups stay until you use them — they don't expire on the 1st.
  • Buy as many as you like. They add to whatever is left.

Changing or cancelling

Subscriptions are managed by the App Store, not inside the app. Cancel any time and you keep the paid features until the period ends.

  • Settings app › your name › Subscriptions › Safe & Informed.
  • Cancel at least a day before renewal to avoid the next charge.
  • A purchase stays tied to the Apple ID that bought it. Use Restore Purchases to bring Pro back on this device — for example after reinstalling, or after signing in with that same Apple ID. Switching to a different Apple ID does not carry the subscription over.

Privacy

There is no account

You never register. There's no name, no email, no password, no profile — so there's no user database with you in it.

  • Your sources, history, archive and interests stay on the device.
  • Sync, if you use it, goes to your own iCloud, not to us.
  • Payment is handled by Apple. The app never sees your card.
FreeWe hold no personal data about you, because we never collect any.

What happens when you use the AI voice

The article's text is sent to our server, which passes it to the AI provider and returns the audio. The request carries no identifier — no name, no account, no advertising ID.

  • The server keeps the keys so they're never inside the app.
  • It doesn't store the article text or the audio it returns.
  • On Lite and No Ads, no text ever leaves your device for AI.

Anonymous statistics

You can choose to contribute anonymous usage figures. Both options are off unless you turn them on, and you can change your mind at any time.

  • What is sent: a topic category, a rough time of day, a country, a language.
  • What is never sent: article titles, links, source names, your location, any identifier.
  • Figures are grouped so no single person's use can be picked out.
  • The first option improves the app. The second may feed aggregate trend reports.
TipTurn both off and nothing at all is sent. The app behaves identically.

Permissions and why

The app asks for as little as it can, and each request has one purpose.

  • Location — weather and nearby traffic. Approximate, used live, never stored.
  • Notifications — breaking news you asked for. Worked out on the device.
  • Tracking — only if you keep personalised ads on Lite. Decline and ads become generic.
  • Decline any of them and the rest of the app is unaffected.

If something's wrong

A source stopped updating

Usually the publisher changed or retired their feed. Open the source and use Check feed — the app will re-test it and tell you what it found.

  • If the feed moved, re-adding the site address normally finds the new one.
  • Some sites publish only a few articles at a time. That's the source, not the app.
  • A source that fails repeatedly is marked so you can spot it in the list.

Audio won't start, or stops

Check the silent switch and the volume first — they catch almost everyone at least once.

  • The natural voice needs a connection. On a weak signal, download first.
  • If another app took over the audio, press play again.
  • Out of voice plays for this month? Switch to the system voice in Settings, or add a top-up.

It doesn't appear in CarPlay

Open the phone's Settings › General › CarPlay, choose your car, and make sure the app is in the visible list. Some cars hide new apps until you add them by hand.

  • Reconnecting the cable, or turning Bluetooth off and on, resolves most cases.
  • The app must be opened once on the phone after installing before the car sees it.

Radio says there's nothing to play

A station needs at least two sources in that category, and those sources need to have published something recently.

  • Add a second source to the category, or widen the article age in Settings.
  • Blocked words can empty a station if they're too broad.
  • Pull to refresh to fetch the latest articles first.

My subscription isn't recognised

Use Restore Purchases in Settings. Make sure you're signed in with the same Apple Account you bought it with.

  • A purchase covers all your devices on that account.
  • Family Sharing members need to restore on their own device.

Still stuck

Write to us. Say which device you're on and what you were doing — it makes the answer much faster.