Apple News has been available since iOS 9 was launched in 2015, but Google News has been around twice as long in one form or another. Which is the best news source to keep you up to date?

Google’s news app has been around for a long time, 12+ years according to the App Store, and it is a mature app that has seen many tweaks and updates. When I first looked at it, it was called Google Play Newsstand, but these days it is simply Google News.

In the five years since Apple News has been on our iPhones, it has changed a lot. It had quite a dull and unexciting design when it was first launched and it was functional, but a bit boring. A big redesign came with the addition of a subscription option for those that want even more news and the app looks very good today.

Design issues

Google News presents news stories in the style of social media posts, with a large image and title underneath. Sometimes a paragraph of text overlays the image to provide you with additional information so you can decide whether a story interests you or not. It uses dark or light mode depending on the system settings.

Apple News uses more of a newspaper style design and there is a big story at the top, then smaller items below that are full or half width. There are lists of trending stories. Whereas Google News looks all the same, there is a lot of variety in the size and layout of stories in Apple News, making it more interesting to look at.

A major irritation of Apple News for me is that as you swipe scroll up and read more of a news story, images fade into view, not becoming completely visible until they are half way up the screen. I really don't like this and the effect is even more pronounced on the iPad. You can end up with text in the top half of the screen and a faded half visible image in the bottom half. Please stop Apple!

News organization

Google News shows the five news stories it thinks is most relevant to you on the home tab, called For You. Mostly, you will spend your time on the Headlines tab and across the top of the page is a menu with Latest, World, Business, Technology, Entertainment, Sports, Science and other categories. Select one and you get the same news feed of large image with the title below.

Google News has an interesting way of showing stories and many of them are collections of stories all about the same topic. If some important event occurs, the story appears as a slider. You can swipe across the story in the news feed and see the same story from multiple publications. This means you can either choose to read it from your favorite news source or you can read several sources and compare how they treat the same story. You can get a more balanced view of the news by reading several sources.

Apple News organizes stories into sections and as you scroll down the news feed, the sections can be seen. You may get half a dozen stores in a section, then it moves on to the next section. Tapping a section header opens that section to reveal many more news stories on that topic. There is a personalized sections called For You and Your Briefing that shows stories that the app thinks are relevant to you.

Apple News looks good and is more visually attractive. It is like a newspaper or magazine in one long vertical format.

Which has the most news?

It looks like Apple News has much more news than Google, but it is deceptive. You can swipe and swipe and swipe in Apple News and the stories keep coming. You can then open sections like Health, Politics, Sport and swipe even more and see more stories. The content never seems to end.

However, the further down the news feed you go, the older the stories become. Swiping down to the bottom shows news stories that are two days old on my iPhone. Apple News on an iPad shows news stories that are a week old. I see a news story about an earthquake and think, not another one, it is only a week since the last one. Then realize the story is actually last week's.

Google News on the other hand, is more recent. Probably because it scrapes stories off the front page of news sites, which are constantly updated and changing, with most content only a few hours hold. There are fewer news stories, especially when you dig down into categories, but they are more recent. It is hard to find any that are over 24 hours old. Everything is fresh.

I suppose that if you only occasionally read the news and want to catch up, Apple News lets you do that by showing stories from the past few days. If you regularly read the news, you have to look at the date and time on each story to make sure you are not reading one that is days or even a week old. A week is a long time in some topics, like politics, and you could be seeing old information.

News feed customization

Both apps enable you to choose news sources and in Apple News, there are several ways to do this. On the right of topic and channel heading is a ... menu and tapping it enables you to follow it, block it, unfollow it or stop suggesting. You can also swipe right over a story image and tap a thumbs up to see more or stop seeing stories like it.

There are dozens of news sources in Apple News and you can choose which ones you want to see news from and you can search for anything, such as your favorite sport, and add the topic.

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Apple News vs Google News

Google News enables you to select topics to follow, and choose which sources provide news stories. There is a lot of overlap with Apple News sources, which isn't surprising. Any news site would want to be in both apps.

Google News has access to local news, which is an advantage and you can see what is happening in your town. The Newsstand section also provides access to newspapers, digital trends, cultural exchanges, local perspectives, and many more sources.

The best news app

It is difficult deciding which app is best because both Apple News and Google News are excellent apps at the top of their game. They good, the content is easy to access and the news sources are interesting. They are also slightly different and Google News is more personalized, whereas Apple News seems a bit less personal.

Both apps provide notifications of news stories, but Google News goes much further and provides detailed controls that enable you to choose the number of notifications and the type. Apple News provides barely any more than an on/off switch.

Fortunately, you don't have to choose between them and you can have them both because they are free. With these two apps, you have enough content to spend hours each day reading the news. There is overlap of course, but sometimes the sources are different and so you get a better perspective of a news event by seeing how different publications report it.

Both apps are excellent and slightly different in their presentation and content. I have both on my iPhone.