Is There an App That Only Shows Good News?

Updated August 20, 2026 · 6 min read

Most people arrive at this question having already tried the obvious thing: muting topics in Apple News, unfollowing accounts, turning off alerts. It does not work, and there is a specific technical reason why. Here is what actually exists, how these apps differ from a filter, and how to choose one.

Fair warning: we make one of the apps listed here. We have tried to describe all of them accurately, including where ours is the wrong choice.

Why you cannot just filter the bad news out

The intuitive solution is to keep your existing news app and strip out the upsetting parts. In practice, the major apps do not give you the control you need.

Apple News lets you mute a channel or a topic, and lets you tell it to suggest less of something. What it does not have is a keyword blocklist. You cannot say "never show me stories containing this word," which is what most people are actually asking for. Apple's own support guidance on this has been consistent for years: there is no way to filter the feed by excluding keywords.

Google News and Google Discover are similar. You can hide a publisher and give feedback on stories, but there is no dependable negative-keyword filter, and the algorithm keeps optimizing for engagement, which historically favors the alarming.

That difference, filtering after the fact versus curating at the source, is the single most useful thing to understand here. Every app below curates at the source.

The apps that only show good news

A note on Goodable, which appears on most older lists: the company behind it has shifted its primary focus to a business product, an emotional-intelligence API called IRIS sold to large organizations, with its consumer app now positioned as a secondary demonstration of that technology. If you find it recommended elsewhere, check its current App Store listing before relying on it. Most roundups of these apps have not been updated in years, which is worth keeping in mind generally.

For a fuller breakdown of each one, see our comparison of the best good news apps. For the publishers behind them, see the best good news sources.

What "only good news" actually means

This is where expectations diverge, and where most disappointment comes from. "Only good news" means two quite different things to different people.

Version one: nothing heavy, ever

Some people want pure relief. Animal rescues, kindness, human interest, nothing that touches politics or tragedy at all. Apps leaning this way include Lapis News and much of the Good News Network feed.

Version two: real news, but the part that is going right

Others want to stay genuinely informed and simply stop absorbing only the worst of it. That means medical breakthroughs, environmental progress, scientific advances, and communities solving hard problems. This is constructive journalism, sometimes called solutions journalism, and it covers serious subjects. Squirrel News sits firmly here, and Uplifting News leans this way with lighter stories mixed in.

Neither is better. But if you pick the wrong one you will be annoyed within a week, either because the app feels trivial or because it raised a subject you were trying to avoid. Decide which version you want before you download anything.

The honest caveats

Three things worth knowing before you switch.

• A good news app is not a full news diet. It is a deliberate change of emphasis, not a replacement for knowing what is happening in your country. Most people use one alongside a short, bounded check of regular news rather than instead of it.
• "Positive" is not the same as "apolitical." Stories about climate progress, public health, or social change read as good news to some people and as political to others. If you are trying to escape politics specifically, that is a different requirement, and we wrote about it in finding news without politics.
• Check for ads and tracking. Several free good news apps are ad supported, which means the calm feed still carries the usual advertising and data collection. If the point is a quieter phone, read the App Store privacy label before installing.

How to choose in about a minute

1. Decide which "good news" you mean (pure relief, or real news that is going right). This eliminates half the list immediately.
2. Decide feed or digest. A feed gives you plenty to browse; a digest hands you a short finished list and lets you stop.
3. Check ads, tracking, and price. If a calmer phone is the goal, an ad-supported app undercuts it.
4. Install two, delete one after a week. They are nearly all free to try. Whichever one you actually opened on a bad day is the right one.

Frequently asked questions