Umbral iconUmbral

The AI news that matters to you.

Nine sources, read and scored on your iPhone. One short briefing a day — and a list of everything it held back.

Umbral's Today briefing, with a relevance bar under each story

What is Umbral?

Umbral is an AI-news reader for iPhone. It reads nine sources — Hacker News, arXiv, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, The Verge, Simon Willison and Hipertextual — scores every story against the topics you follow, and delivers the best of them as one short briefing, once a day. It exists because the problem with AI news is not finding it; it is that there is far too much of it.

The scoring happens on your phone. There is no account, there are no servers of ours, and nothing about you is collected or sent anywhere — on either plan. Umbral fetches the feeds directly, the same way your browser would, and everything it learns about your interests stays on the device.

Every story carries its score

Barely relatedA close match

The notch is your threshold — nothing to its left reaches your briefing. Move it, and the briefing changes. Nothing is hidden from you: the "All stories" screen lists every story Umbral held back, with the reason.

What it does

📥

One briefing a day

At the hour you pick, delivered quietly. Twelve topics to follow, and a threshold you control.

🔍

It shows its work

See what was held back and why, and the picture Umbral has built of your interests — as numbers you can check.

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Nothing leaves the phone

No account, no analytics, no tracking. The ranking, the notes and your archive all live on the device.

“Every story it held back, and why it held it back.”

— The screen no other news app has

Frequently asked

Is my data private?

Yes, and there is not much of it to be private about. Umbral has no account and no backend. It fetches public feeds directly from their publishers, scores stories on your device, and keeps your topics, your reading history and your archive on the phone. Nothing is collected, and nothing is sent to us — we have nowhere to send it. See the Privacy Policy.

How much does it cost?

Umbral is free: three topics, twenty saved stories, and three written notes a day. Umbral Pro is an auto-renewing subscription (monthly or yearly) that lifts all three — every topic, an archive with no ceiling, and unlimited written notes. There are no ads on either plan; Pro is what pays for the app.

Which sources does it read?

Nine, all public and keyless: Hacker News, arXiv, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, The Verge, Simon Willison and Hipertextual. You can see the list, and what each one contributed, inside the app.

Does it translate the news?

No. Umbral's own text — the interface, the briefing, the written notes — follows the language you choose. Headlines and excerpts are shown exactly as the publisher wrote them. Rewriting someone else's reporting is not our place, and a machine translation of a headline is a good way to change what it says.

Why is the written note missing on my iPhone?

The two-line note explaining why a story matters to you is written by Apple Intelligence, which needs an iPhone 15 Pro or later. On every other iPhone, Umbral shows a measured breakdown instead — which topics the story matched and how closely. That half runs on every iOS 26 device and is never limited by your plan.

How do I get support?

Email ing.campos.alejandro@gmail.com.

Need help?

Questions, a bug, or feedback? We're happy to help and typically reply within 1–2 business days. Email ing.campos.alejandro@gmail.com.

Enjoying Umbral?

★★★★★

A rating is the whole marketing budget of an app with no ads and no tracking. It takes a few seconds and it genuinely helps.

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