12 unexpected ways to get the most out of the Breaking News app

Even we’re surprised by how some users put Breaking News to work

Most people use the Breaking News app to show them what’s happening around the world in real-time, vetted by our editors. Others rely on its lightning-fast, custom notifications to give them a jump on the news.

But with 60,000+ topics to follow, lots of locations to explore and a few hidden features, there are unexpected ways people are using the app to discover breaking stories that matter to them — or just have a little fun:

1. Was that an earthquake?!

Did you feel the ground shake? Open the Breaking News app and tap over to the “nearby” tab. We made a bot that automatically publishes earthquake data the moment USGS makes it available for any quake 2.5M or greater.

These are visible to people who are physically near the epicenter, but if it’s a large quake, we’ll publish it on our main “now” feed, as well.

2. Teleport to any location

Here’s a hidden gem. Using the map in the “nearby” feed, you can teleport to any location around the world to take a peek at what’s happening there.

Go to nearby, tap the map view and then press-hold to drop a pin on the map. Tap the location name that appears, and you’ll see the latest breaking stories nearby. Use the range slider to adjust the radius from 1–100 miles.

Speaking of earthquakes, try teleporting to the Oklahoma City area:

3. Keep an eye on your hometown

If you have friends or family who still live in your hometown, it’s nice to know when something big happens there. At the very least, it gives you something to talk about on your weekly call with the parents.

Just search for the city or town from the “following” tab, tap the “+” button to follow it and opt into receiving a notification when significant news breaks.

4. Keep tabs on client companies

A lot of PR, communications and legal professionals use Breaking News for this one. You can receive a notification the moment news breaks about a major company — even your own company, which can come in handy.

This is reserved for breaking news — not just keyword mentions in a story — so it’s a higher bar and much faster than Google Alerts. Just like with locations above, search from the “following” tab. If you want to turn off a notification, just tap the red alert icon to the left of each topic:

5. Revisit a timeline of events

We’ve covered every major breaking story over the last several years, and those minute-to-minute updates are frozen in time. It can be a sobering historical journey to scroll back to see how these stories evolved from the earliest stages. It can also be a useful resource for reporters revisiting a story.

A recent example is the story of the Fox Lake, Ill., officer who was shot, sparking a large manhunt. It was later determined that he had killed himself. Here’s the story scrolled back all the way to the beginning:

6. Map stories over time

If a story involves a location, you can plot it on a map. For example, search for “shootings” and tap the topic to view the feed of updates. Then tap the globe at the top of the tap to see them plotted on a map.

The more stories you show in the feed, the more show on the map. Here are all the stories published about shootings over a 24-hour period in the US:

7. Never miss a change in an important issue

We’ve seen reporters, policymakers and other pros use the app to stay on top of particular issues in the news — or as a backstop, to ensure they never miss an important development. There are many issues in Breaking News you can follow and receive a notification whenever there’s breaking news about them.

For example: campaign finance, cybersecurity, ridesharing & taxis, gambling, contraception, insider trading, capital punishment, same-sex marriage, privacy, and LGBT rights, just to name a few.

8. Make your own custom feed

Once you’ve followed all these issues, companies, locations and other topics, you can see all those updates in your own custom feed. Visit the “following” tab and tap “all followed topics” near the top to see it.

Why is this a little hard to find? Good question. This is so handy, it may become it a prominent feature in a later design.

Here’s the custom feed for all those social media companies we followed:

9. Follow your alma mater

That’s right, most college and universities are available to follow, which means you can receive an alert whenever there’s significant breaking news about your alma mater.

10. Monitor the world without scrolling up

We’ve heard from lots of newsrooms, government agencies and companies that have the Breaking News app propped up next to their workspace (many more have BreakingNews.com up on a monitor wall). That’s why we created the “always stay at top” feature in the app so updates appear automatically and always in view.

You can find the setting in the “me” tab.

11. Geek out with the weather

Want to know whenever there’s breaking news about a volcano? Avalanche? Sinkhole? You can set the Breaking News app to ping you whenever there’s a breaking story about various weather phenomena around the world.

This is also an interesting one to map back in time. Tap into the “tornadoes” topic, switch over to map view, and it looks like this for the last few weeks:

12. Inject some randomness into your life

Out of all those topics, there are bound to be some random ones that will jazz up your notification center. One of our favorites at Breaking News is following the “animals” topic for notifications about (often surprising) breaking news about animals:

“Art” and “archeaology” are fun, infrequent topics that yield the occasional surprises. “Elon Musk” is always interesting. “Space” is a personal favorite of mine, and it comes with the added bonus of alerting you whenever there’s live video of a rocket launch in the app.

Have any other unexpected uses of Breaking News to share? Just some feedback? Drop us a note. If you don’t have the app, download it here.

(By Cory Bergman)