Apple News Audio Expands Beyond US Borders
Toggle Dark Mode
It’s been five years since Apple debuted Apple News+ Audio, a new feature that lets subscribers to its news aggregation service listen to the day’s top stories. Like many other Apple services, this one initially rolled out in the US, but also never expanded beyond those borders.
However, the good news is that this may finally be changing. While Apple has yet to make an official announcement, and its feature availability page still only lists the United States, Apple News Audio appears to be available for Apple News+ subscribers in Canada, Australia, and the UK.
MacRumors reported on the expansion earlier today. It hasn’t cited any official sources for this, but I can confirm that it’s live in Canada, at least.
Early iOS 26 betas hinted that the feature might be arriving soon, as the “Audio” tab showed up in the Apple News app after I installed the first developer beta in June. However, the lack of content on that tab led me to view this as a beta glitch rather than anything to get my hopes up.
Nevertheless, one or two stories in my main feed did show audio versions for the first time, and they landed in an “Up Next” section in the Audio tab after I started listening to them, although they were the only things there at the time. However, as of today, the Audio tab has now been populated with a selection of editors’ picks and recommended content.
This expansion now means that Apple News Audio is available in all the same countries as the main Apple News experience. While Apple has reportedly been considering an expansion of Apple News to more countries, so far it remains limited to the predominantly English-speaking regions: the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. That’s almost certainly a language issue, as Apple News didn’t reach Canada until iOS 12.2 was released in 2019, nearly four years after it launched in the other three. This was undoubtedly due to Apple’s need to provide a bilingual service for the French-speaking Canadians who make up over one-fifth of the country’s population.
Apple News Audio needed to deal not only with these types of language issues but also ensure local publications were on board with providing narrated spoken-word versions of their articles. It’s probably telling that the majority of the content showing up in Apple News Audio in Canada is still from US publications like Esquire and The New Yorker. Still, the section is also headlined with an editor’s pick from The Toronto Star.
There still doesn’t appear to be a way to search for Apple News Audio stories, so you’ll only be able to find them if they’re recommended in the Audio tab or you stumble across them in the main news feed. Select stories are also available on the Apple News channel on Apple Podcasts.
Listening to an Apple News Audio story works similarly to a podcast or audiobook. Once you begin playing the story, an in-app player allows you to pause, skip back 15 seconds, and adjust the playback speed. There’s also support for AirPlay, and the Apple News app will now show up on the CarPlay Dashboard for users in Canada, the UK, and Australia.
Most of the audio stories require an Apple News+ subscription, which costs $12.99 per month on its own, or is included in the $37.95 Apple One Premier plan that folds in nearly every one of Apple’s other services, from Apple Music and TV to Apple Fitness+ and an iCloud+ plan with 2 TB of storage. However, free Apple News users can listen to previews of stories and enjoy a daily News Today that recaps the day’s headlines.
Last week, Apple also debuted Emoji Game, joining Crosswords, Quartiles, and Sudoku for Apple News+ subscribers in the US and Canada. This feature also first appeared in the iOS 26 betas before being expanded to all iPhones with iOS 18.4 or later.
