[JKCalhoun]

I ignore Apple News these days. I had high hopes when Apple bought the company that eventually became their News app. Alas…

Of course I hate that I can't block ads, but at the same time, I wonder if the unblockable ads are not, in fact, a help for that "struggling industry".

[givinguflac]

You can definitely block ads- try NextDNS.

[mikestew]

I’ve tried blocking the ads with a pi-hole, to no avail. I suspect the ads come from the same servers that the articles do. I can’t find obvious ad servers in the query logs. If anyone has a hint on blocking Apple News ads at DNS, I’d love to hear it.

[skygazer]

1Blocker, with their in-app tracker blocking turned on, will block Apple News ads on iOS/iPadOS and will also block ads in Google News and free to play games. I guess you can’t block tracking without also blocking the ads. It installs a local VPN profile that blocks connections to hosts typically blocked with dns based ad blockers. They’ve increasingly hidden the feature in the app, for some reason.

[maxkfranz]

How is it on battery life to run the VPN continuously?

[skygazer]

I haven’t noticed it consume any additional battery. It doesn’t actually connect to a vpn server, or reencrypt traffic. It’s just a hack to deny select connections. I often do end up turning it off after a few days, though, because some times I need tracking redirects to work, and I’m too lazy to always whitelist.

[int_19h]

I'm using AdGuard running in Home Assistant and I don't see any ads in Apple News.

Looking at what gets blocked when I open the News apps, try going for these domains:

news.iadsdk.apple.com

news-app-events.apple.com

news-sports-events.apple.com

news-events.apple.com

[lotsofpulp]

90% of the content in the News+ app is itself an ad.