Facebook just launched Notify, its Twitter-rivaling news app

Facebook Notify

Facebook has announced Notify, an app that sends news-based notifications to your phone's lock screen based on your personal interests.

Finding the news you're looking for, whether you're on a smartphone or a computer, isn't as easy as it should be. Notify looks to change that. Users can hop onboard by checking out Notify's long list of categories, which each pull together the most recent news from sources selected based on your taste, interests or hobbies.

Once you customize your Notify experience by choosing either one or several categories, like "Business", "Food & Drink," among many others, you can go a level deeper and manually select which sources you want to hear from specifically on your lock screen.

Notify puts others on notice

At the heart of what Notify provides, it isn't all that different from services like Apple News or Twitter. It's the news, plain and simple. But how Notify delivers the content is what sets it apart. Bringing the news that you want to your lock screen removes the leg work of going to each of your favorite websites for news.

For some smartphone users, like myself, notifications tend to be an annoyance that I'd rather not deal with. But Notify just might convince me otherwise if it provides relevant, timely information I find informative and worthwhile.

Notify is now available for iOS users. Here's to hoping that the app makes its way over to Android at some point.

Cameron Faulkner

Cameron is a writer at The Verge, focused on reviews, deals coverage, and news. He wrote for magazines and websites such as The Verge, TechRadar, Practical Photoshop, Polygon, Eater and Al Bawaba.