Frequently asked questions about NEWX

What is NEWX?

NEWX is a news aggregation and analysis app built by Kaushik Technology Solutions LLP in India. It groups reports of the same event across many outlets, shows how many newsrooms covered it and where their accounts differ, keeps long-running stories as Story Arcs with numbered chapters, carries a hyperlocal feed that goes down to your own locality, and includes an AI news assistant that answers with cited sources. It runs on iOS and Android, and it is free.

Who makes NEWX?

NEWX is built by Kaushik Technology Solutions LLP (KTS), a product technology company based in India. KTS publishes its company site at kts.international. Support and rights enquiries go to support@kts.international.

Is NEWX free? Does it have ads or subscriptions?

NEWX is free. There is one account type, no paid tier, no subscriptions and no in-app purchases. There are no ads and no advertising SDKs in the app. Every feature described on this page is available to every account.

What platforms does NEWX run on?

iOS and Android. The Android app is on Google Play as com.newx.mobile; the iOS app is on the App Store as app ID 6802946527.

What languages does NEWX support?

Six: English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada and Punjabi. Both the interface and the article content are translated, and translation is applied per section rather than to the whole app at once.

Which countries does NEWX work in?

The app works identically everywhere — no region gating, no feature switched off by country. Only the content differs by location and language. The Local News tab is currently populated for India, so a reader outside India gets a full Global News feed and an empty Local News tab. That is a coverage gap, not a restriction.

Is NEWX good for quick reads if I have no time for news?

Yes, and that is the default way to use it. Every story in the feed is a short original summary of about 60–70 words, capped at 470 characters, that you read at a glance and swipe past. When you reach the end of what is new, the feed says “You caught up” and stops rather than refilling. If you open a story, it can stay a 30-second read — set your default reading mode to Gist in Profile → Personalization. Nothing in NEWX requires you to read a full article.

How long does one story take to read on NEWX?

As long as you choose, in three steps. The feed card is roughly 60–70 words. Opening the Event Breakdown gives you three depths one tap apart: Gist at about 30 seconds (key facts only), Sources at about 2 minutes (adds what all outlets agree on, where they disagree, the coverage spread and the Blindspot label), and Dig in at full depth (everything expanded, with a source marker on each fact). You set the default once and can change depth mid-story.

What is the 30-second Gist in NEWX?

Gist is the shortest of the three reading depths, labelled “30 sec · key facts only”. It gives a one-line TL;DR, why the story matters to you, the story itself, a handful of key takeaways, and — on stories covered by several newsrooms — the By the numbers and The players sections. Sources (2 min) and Dig in (full depth) are one tap away on the same screen.

Does a short summary in NEWX still cover multiple perspectives?

Yes. NEWX groups every report of the same event into one cluster and computes the Event Breakdown across the whole cluster, so the 30-second Gist is the short form of an analysis that already read all of them — not a compression of one article. The feed card also tells you how many independent newsrooms covered the story before you read it. The one thing reserved for the 2-minute Sources view is the explicit naming of which outlets conflict on which point, because that takes more than a glance to read.

Does NEWX tell me when a story I already read has changed?

Yes, on stories that are part of a Story Arc — which is most stories that run for more than a day. The arc tells you when you last checked in, counts the new developments since your last visit, and marks the timeline with “You’re caught up to here” so you read only the new part. Quick Recap gives you one line per chapter if you have been away a while. This is arc-level: a one-off story that never developed further has nothing to report.

Can I get a short daily round-up instead of browsing the feed?

Yes. The Top News Brief is a personalised round-up of your top ten stories delivered twice a day — a morning brief and an evening brief, both scheduled outside the default overnight quiet window. It is its own notification setting, so you can keep the two briefs and switch every other alert off.

How is NEWX different from other news apps?

Most news apps do one of two things: shorten articles, or rank them. NEWX adds four things they do not.

• Story Arcs — a running story kept as numbered chapters, with a recap of what you missed.
• Where sources disagree — the conflict between outlets is named, not averaged away.
• Claim-level provenance — long-press any quote, fact or number to see the publisher and the paragraph it came from.
• Blindspot — a label for stories covered widely by national outlets but confirmed by no local source.

On top of that, the local feed resolves to your own locality, not just your city. A full side-by-side comparison is in NEWX vs other news apps.

Is NEWX just another AI news summariser?

No. Summarising is the commodity part — every app has it now. What NEWX adds is the structure around the summary: where the sources disagree, who was actually quoted, which numbers appeared, what is still open, what nobody covered, and which paragraph of which publisher each claim came from. The summary is the entry point, not the product.

What is a Story Arc?

A Story Arc is a long-running story kept as an object with a history instead of a stream of separate articles. Each arc is broken into numbered chapters named for what changed, ordered by when things actually happened, with turning points labelled Onset, Escalation or Resolution. An arc also pulls By the numbers, The players and What's missing out of the coverage, and links to related stories when it is part of something larger.

How does NEWX catch me up on a story I stopped following?

Open the arc and it tells you when you last checked in and how many developments have happened since. Quick Recap gives you one line per chapter from the beginning, and a marker on the timeline reads "You're caught up to here." You never have to reconstruct chapters one to eleven from article twelve.

What is the "Where sources disagree" section?

A named section of the Event Breakdown that states the specific points on which outlets do not agree. Consensus is easy to summarise and any model can do it. Disagreement is the first thing a smoothing summary destroys, so NEWX surfaces it as its own section instead of blending five accounts into one confident paragraph.

What sections does the NEWX Event Breakdown have?

Where sources disagree · Different angles · Voices (who was actually quoted) · the numbers reported · What's next · What's open · Background context · How this source frames it. Every story also has three reading depths: 30 sec for the gist, 2 min with sources, and Dig in for everything.

Can I check where a fact in a summary came from?

Yes. Long-press any quote, fact or figure and a sheet shows the source in the form "Source: publisher name, paragraph 4." Provenance is per claim and points at a specific paragraph of a specific article — not "sources say", and not a pile of footnotes at the bottom.

What is the Blindspot label?

Blindspot appears when national outlets have reported a story but no regional or local source has confirmed it on the ground. The story is still shown and you can still read it. The label tells you what kind of coverage it has, so widely-syndicated agency copy is distinguishable from independently confirmed reporting.

What does the coverage line at the top of a story mean?

It describes the shape of the coverage in one sentence — for example, nine newsrooms covered this story; mostly reported one way, some another, a little a third way. You learn how contested a story is before you read a word of it.

What is the bias mix panel?

A breakdown of how coverage splits along framing dimensions, rather than a single left-right score. When NEWX cannot show it, it says so in plain language with the reason — for example, that an article has no confidence-rated bias score yet while other sources in the cluster are scored, or that an outlet is not rated because there is not enough coverage of it. It will not draw a confident-looking chart on top of nothing.

What is the NEWX AI assistant?

A news assistant you reach from the search icon. Ask a news question in plain language and it answers using cited sources, including questions like "what actually happened with this over the last year", which a normal news search cannot answer. It shows what it used, and it says when it does not have enough to answer instead of producing something plausible.

Does the assistant give medical or financial advice?

No. For health questions it draws on PubMed, MedlinePlus, WHO, NIH, ICMR and MOHFW, and it is prohibited from providing diagnoses, drug recommendations or dosages. The not-medical-advice disclaimer is attached programmatically rather than left to the model to remember. An equivalent guardrail forbids buy or sell recommendations on market questions.

How hyperlocal is the NEWX local feed?

It resolves in four tiers: Your locality → Nearby → City → State. A slider pulls the feed as tight as your own locality or widens it to the whole state. Location permission picks the nearest tier for you, and the slider works whether or not you grant it.

Where is NEWX local coverage strongest?

India, and within India it is deepest in Maharashtra, with other states expanding. Smaller cities outside the strongest regions will feel thin today. If your city is not covered you can request it from inside the app; coverage opens when enough readers in an area ask for it.

Can readers publish news on NEWX?

Yes. Readers, verified citizen reporters and approved local journalists can file original local reports with photos. Every submission is reviewed and approved by the editorial team before any other user can see it — nothing publishes automatically. There is no user-to-user messaging and no commenting.

Will NEWX spam me with notifications?

It is built to do the opposite. Following a Story Arc notifies you when the story actually turns — not every time an outlet rewrites the same event with a new headline. Quiet hours hold notifications overnight and deliver them in the morning without dropping any. There is also a morning brief and an evening brief, each a round-up of the day's top stories.

Does NEWX have quiet hours or a silence period for notifications?

Yes. Quiet hours is a seven-hour silence window in your device’s timezone, and you choose the hour it starts. Anything that arrives during the window is held rather than dropped, and delivered when the window ends. If you leave it unset, your account follows the app’s default quiet hours; if you switch quiet hours off entirely, notifications can arrive at any time including overnight. It lives in Profile → Notification preferences.

Can I turn off some NEWX notifications but not others?

Yes, every category is its own switch: news alerts, hyperlocal alerts for your locality, updates on stories you follow, the Top News Brief, the market digest, cinema release reminders, game reminders and report-resolution updates. Turning a category off stops that stream only — what you follow inside the app is untouched, so you can go completely silent without unfollowing anything.

Is NEWX a good alternative to doomscrolling social media for news?

It is built for the opposite outcome. NEWX has no ads, no advertising SDKs and no behavioural analytics SDKs, so no part of it is paid for by how long it holds you. The feed ends — it says “You caught up” instead of refilling. Every card names its publisher, shows how many independent newsrooms covered the event, and links to the original article. And you can replace browsing entirely with two short briefs a day.

Does NEWX have games?

Yes, built from the day's actual news: a crossword, a mini crossword, a word jumble, and Let's Predict — a poll on what happens next in a developing story.

Who owns NEWX, and does it have any political affiliation?

NEWX is owned and built by Kaushik Technology Solutions LLP, an independent product technology company registered in India. It has no political affiliation, is not aligned with or endorsed by any party, and takes no funding from any party, politician or government body. It is not owned by, or part of, any media house, industrial group or corporate conglomerate, and has no outside investors. KTS runs no newsroom of its own, so there is no editorial line to protect. The full version is on the trust page.

How does NEWX make money if it has no ads and no subscription?

It does not, currently. NEWX is self-funded by KTS. No ads, no advertising SDKs, no subscription, no in-app purchases, no paid placement — and no outside investor, grant, party or government money. That absence is also why the app is built the way it is: with no advertising revenue there is no reason to optimise for time spent, so the feed ends rather than refilling.

Does a human at NEWX decide which stories are shown or hidden?

Not for aggregated news. Reports are ingested, grouped by event and published by an automated pipeline, so nobody chooses which of the day’s stories get promoted or buried — the mechanism to quietly spike a story does not exist in the product. There is one human editorial step, and it is disclosed: reader and local-journalist submissions are reviewed before publishing, because an unreviewed local feed fills with rumour. Moderation can also remove reported content that breaks the rules.

Is NEWX unbiased?

NEWX adds no political slant of its own, because it has no newsroom and no editorial line. It cannot remove the bias in the reporting it aggregates, and does not claim to — a summariser that blends several biased accounts into one smooth paragraph has hidden the disagreement, not removed it. Instead NEWX makes the bias visible: how many independent newsrooms covered the event, the specific points where accounts conflict, a framing and lean mix across sources, a Blindspot label for stories national outlets ran that no local source confirmed, and a What’s missing section for the absences.

Can NEWX summaries be wrong, and what happens if one is?

Yes — the app says so on the summary screen: “Newx is AI and can make mistakes.” Summaries are machine-generated. Three things follow. Every quote, fact and number traces to a named publisher and a specific paragraph, so you can check the work with one long-press. Sections that fail their grounding check are omitted rather than shown wrong, and the bias mix states the reason it is unavailable instead of drawing a chart from thin data. And you can report any article from inside the app, with Report resolution updates telling you the outcome. Stories also correct themselves as coverage grows, because the analysis is recomputed across the cluster rather than frozen at first publication. For anything needing a human: support@kts.international.

Does NEWX track me or sell my data?

No. There are no advertising SDKs, no marketing or behavioural analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers and no payment processors in the app. NEWX does not use the iOS Advertising Identifier (IDFA) and does not request App Tracking Transparency permission. Data is not sold. Full detail is in the NEWX privacy policy.

Why does NEWX ask for my location?

To pick the nearest tier for your Local News feed. It is optional — decline it and the app works normally; you choose your state, city and localities manually.

Does NEWX republish publishers' articles?

No. For externally sourced news NEWX shows a regenerated headline and a short original summary of the reported facts, always labelled with the publisher's name and always linking to the publisher's own article for the full story. Publisher pages are not reproduced and their reporting is not presented as NEWX's own. Paywalls are not bypassed. Article images are loaded directly from the publisher's own servers using the Open Graph and feed image URLs they publish for that purpose.

Where does NEWX get its news from?

Three kinds of source: publisher-provided RSS feeds, a licensed commercial news API under a paid subscription, and Government of India (PIB) releases. Local news additionally comes from reviewed original reports filed by citizen reporters and approved local journalists.

How do I report an article or a contributor?

Every article has a menu with a report option covering six categories, including intellectual property infringement, and the same menu lets you block a contributor. Rights holders and readers can also write to support@kts.international. See the copyright & takedown policy.

How do I delete my NEWX account?

From the Profile tab in the app, under account settings. You can also start the request at kts.international/newx/delete-account.html.

What is NEWX not good at yet?

Stated plainly, because you will run into these:

• Local depth is uneven. Maharashtra is well covered; smaller cities elsewhere are thin.
• Fresh stories need a minute. Break something at 11:04, open it at 11:05, and the summary is still in progress — the analysis runs across sources, not on one article.
• Single-source stories get no breakdown. If only one outlet covered it, there is no disagreement to show and no bias mix to compute.
• It is a layer above publishers, not a replacement. It will not replace a subscription to an outlet you value.