Haystack News: Local TV News

Review by eFreeware

Haystack News is a news app for Android from the developer of the same name, and its pitch is simple: pull local stations, national networks and international coverage into one place instead of sending you to a handful of separate apps. It offers more than 400 channels, with a 4.2 average from over 33,000 ratings and more than 5 million installs since it arrived in early 2014.

What makes it worth a look is the mix. You get live channels, on-demand channels and a newscast assembled around the categories, sources and topics you pick, plus local weather for your area. The app is free to install, carries advertising and offers in-app purchases.

Local stations without a separate app

The local side is the part I would try first. The developer lists a long roster of regional stations, from CBS New York and News12 to WXYZ, KCRA and dozens of others across the country, and says this is the most local news available to stream anywhere. If you have moved away from a city and still want its newscasts, that lineup is the reason to keep the app around.

Local weather sits alongside it, tied to your neighborhood rather than a national forecast. For anyone who checks a station's website each morning just to see the school-closure crawl or the evening rundown, having those feeds in one app is the appeal.

The catch is that local coverage depends on which stations the app carries. Some markets are represented by several affiliates and others by fewer.

Live channels and breaking alerts

Live news channels are the second job the app covers, and breaking-news alerts can be pushed to your phone so you hear about major stories without opening anything. That combination suits people who want a channel running in the background while they cook, work or fold laundry, with a notification when something big happens.

The national and world partners are a recognizable group: ABC News Live, CBS News, Bloomberg, Reuters, CBC, Al Jazeera, Newsmax, The Hill and others. For a free app, that is a broad spread of sources, and it means you are not locked into a single network's framing of a story.

Alerts are only as useful as your tolerance for them. Since the app also carries advertising, a busy news day can mean a steady stream of interruptions, and the sensible move is to decide early which kinds of stories deserve a notification and which can wait until you open the app yourself.

Building a newscast around your interests

The personalized newscast is where the app differs from a plain channel list. You choose categories, sources and topics, and the app assembles a run of stories from them. The developer also provides dedicated channels that gather coverage of a single topic or trend from outlets around the world, which is a useful way to follow a story that no one network covers in depth.

On-demand channels include international news and entertainment news, so the app is not purely hard news. If you want a mix of world events, business updates and lighter coverage, you can shape that without switching apps.

How well the mix works will depend on how much you narrow it. A newscast built from a couple of topics and a handful of sources is likely to feel tighter than one left wide open, and the app rewards a bit of fiddling with the selection rather than accepting whatever it offers on first launch.

What you need before you start

There is not much to set up. You install the app, choose the categories, sources and topics you care about, and the newscast starts taking shape. Local weather needs your area to do its job.

The recent update is a small technical one: autologin for Onelink deep links. That suits viewers who want a single place to browse many channels rather than hunting across separate apps.

The developer keeps a feedback button on the main screen and an email address, [email protected], for suggestions. That is a reasonable sign for a free app, since it gives you a direct route to send suggestions.

Who gets the most from it

This fits viewers who want one app for both their city's stations and international coverage, and who are happy to spend a few minutes choosing sources. It also suits cord-cutters who have given up a cable package but still want a live channel running in the background.

It is a good match for people who follow a specific story across borders, since the topic channels pull together reporting from many outlets rather than one. Travelers and people living away from their hometown are another natural fit, given how much of the catalog is regional.

The app is rated for everyone 10 and up, and the content comes from established broadcasters and publishers rather than user posts. If your news habit is already spread across three or four apps, consolidating it here is the straightforward gain.

The trade-offs to weigh

Advertising is part of the deal on a free app, and Haystack News carries both ads and in-app purchases. I would treat that as the price of the breadth on offer rather than a flaw, but it is worth going in with the expectation that your viewing will be interrupted.

The other consideration is focus. This is a streaming news app built around channels, newscasts and alerts, so it is not a place for long-form written journalism or a reading-first experience. If your news diet is mostly articles, the video-first approach here will feel like a different habit.

Local coverage is only as good as the station list for your area.

A free way to consolidate your news

Haystack News works well as a free, broad aggregator of video news. The combination of local stations, live national channels, on-demand international and entertainment coverage, and a newscast you shape yourself covers a lot of ground for an app that costs nothing to install.

The 4.2 average from more than 33,000 ratings suggests a large audience has found it workable, and more than a decade on the store, with an update in September 2026, indicates it is still being worked on. The advertising and in-app purchases are the main things to accept going in.

I would suggest it to anyone who wants local headlines and world coverage in one app, and who prefers watching to reading. If you already have a live TV service you are happy with, the overlap may be larger than the benefit.

What's new

Added autologin for Onelink deeplinks