Your homepage is a curated feed you can trust. 

It is a personalised feed that features publications and topics that you’re interested in – with none of the random people shouting on social media. The Sentinel learns your habits and customised your home to suit your habits. So if you typically video at night, The Sentinel will show you just that.

Home can also be customised with priority topics. These are things you always want to hear about first. For me, it would be climate change. For someone else, it could be healthcare or transport. Whatever your priority, when there’s news about it, it goes right to the top of Home.

Reading in the Sentinel is a joy. It is built to be high contrast and accessible with the choice to listen to articles. You can recommend quality articles to friends and share to other platforms. The Sentinel is also smart, and will surface well regarded articles on similar topics at the bottom.

Favourites collects all your favourite news sources and gives you the control.

Sometimes you want to explore the news without an algorithm getting in the way. Favourites is where you do that. When you follow a topic or publication, they go into Favourites. You can see all news from your favourites in chronological order, or visit specific sources like RNZ or topics like NASA. 

Publications and topics automatically adjust their colour scheme to match the publication or topic, too!

Friends is where you see recommendations from the people closest to you. 

Social media can be a great way to know what friends are interested in and recommending, but often the people you know are drowned out by strangers and brands. In the Friends tab, you’ll be able to see what articles, audio and video your friends are recommending. It is trustworthy and accountable because it is from people you really know, not accounts that are trying to increase your click through rate. 

The Sentinel is also completely customisable.

Providing customisation opportunities to people is a growing macro trend. The Sentinel has a full theming system to completely personalise the look and feel of the app. If you prefer your news in magenta, yellow, orange or a low contrast dark mode, the Sentinel can be changed to suit you.

The Sentinel is built to promote the best of journalism with curation and customisation.

Quality news is key for understanding and acting on the systemic issues of our time like climate change. This project was originally made in 2018, and since then we have seen how misinformation and mistrust in media has been taken to new levels on social media. By building a curated experience which prioritises control and building trust, news can focus more on speaking truth to power.