NewsNinja 3 · Guide 3
How to Customize Your Today Dashboard
Choose sections, arrange your dashboard, and set a catch-up window for your day.
Today brings recent content and information about your day into one place. You can give a favorite publication its own section, keep social accounts close at hand, check your calendar and weather, or explore world news and historical events.
You decide what belongs on the dashboard, how it looks, and which sections come first. This guide explains how to build a Today screen around your interests and daily routine.
Open Customize Today
Open Today and tap the Customize control. You can also find a customization shortcut at the bottom of the dashboard.
In Customize Today, you can choose the dashboard style, set the recent-content window, add or remove sections, rearrange them, and configure the Overview. Your choices are saved for future visits.
Choose between Detailed and Prominent
Today offers two styles:
- Detailed uses a denser presentation, with the Overview shown as summary lines.
- Prominent offers a more visual card presentation, with the Overview shown as tiles.
Try both with your own content. Detailed can suit quick scanning, while Prominent gives each piece of information more visual space.
These styles control the Today dashboard. The Compact, Card, and Magazine choices in Feeds control your reading lists separately.
Give your favorite content its own section
Tap Add Section to see what is available. Today can include broad collections and individual sources, so you can choose how much of your feed collection appears at a glance.
| Section | What you can bring into Today |
|---|---|
| Today Home | A mixed view of recent content from your Home sources. |
| Source collections | Content grouped by service, such as RSS, Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, or social feeds. |
| Specific feeds and accounts | A particular website, subreddit, YouTube channel, podcast, or followed social account. |
| Categories | A collection you have created around an interest, including a mix of feed types. |
| Starred | Saved articles and posts. |
| Weather | Current conditions and forecast from your configured weather integration. |
| Calendar | Your remaining calendar events for today. |
| Reminders | Tasks due today and overdue reminders. |
| Tickers | Crypto prices and changes for the coins you track. |
| Top News | A broader news view, including world news, beyond your personal subscriptions. |
| On This Day | Historical events that happened on today’s date in past years. |
| Overview | A snapshot of selected content types and daily integrations. |
Each of these can be a separate section. For example, you could have a favorite RSS publication, a particular Mastodon or Bluesky account, Calendar, Weather, Tickers, Top News, and On This Day on the same dashboard.
Calendar is the section for your events; you don’t need a separate events section. Weather, Calendar, Reminders, and Tickers each have their own dashboard section for their configured information.
The available feed and account sections come from sources you already follow. If a source is missing, add it through Feeds or Discover, then return to Add Section. Configure daily integrations through Feeds to make their sections available too.
Bring your categories into Today
Categories are useful when you want one section to cover an interest across several services.
For example, a Technology category could combine RSS publications, YouTube channels, a subreddit, podcasts, and social accounts. Add that category as a Today section to see its recent content together.
Create or edit the category in Manage Feeds, then select it in Customize Today → Add Section. You can keep both a category and a particularly important source from it on the dashboard if you want quick access to each.
Arrange sections around your routine
Use Edit in Customize Today to change the section order or remove sections you don’t need. On iPhone and iPad, use the drag handles to rearrange sections. On Mac, use the up and down controls while editing.
You might put Calendar and Weather first for a morning check-in, followed by Today Home and a favorite news category. Or put podcasts and individual creators first if you primarily use NewsNinja to follow their updates.
Removing a section changes the dashboard without deleting its source or integration from Feeds. You can add an available section again later through Add Section.
Keep, configure, or remove Overview
Overview gives you a quick snapshot of the content and daily information you choose to include. Open Overview in Customize Today to select the feed types and integrations that contribute to it.
Overview is optional. You can remove it using Edit, just like other sections, if you prefer to start directly with your feeds or integrations. To restore it later, choose Overview in Add Section.
With Overview present, its Briefing button lets NewsNinja+ users request an AI briefing based on the information available to Today.
Focus the dashboard with Overview
Overview also acts as a filter. In Prominent, tap a tile such as News, Social, or Weather to focus the dashboard on that kind of information. Tap the selected tile again to return to the complete dashboard, or tap a different tile to change the focus.
The same interaction works in Detailed: tap the corresponding summary line instead of a tile.
There is a useful distinction between content and integration filters. Choosing Weather focuses on the Weather section. Choosing a feed type such as News or Social shows matching content sections while keeping your daily integration sections visible. Today Home also narrows its displayed items to the selected feed type.
Filtering uses the sections you have added to Today. It doesn’t add a missing section automatically. If a kind of content isn’t represented on your dashboard, add a relevant section in Customize Today.
These Overview controls focus the dashboard. Tapping an article, post, or episode within a feed section opens that item instead.
Open a section for more detail
Tap a feed section’s title to open its dedicated browsing view. This lets you explore that collection beyond the cards currently visible on Today. Depending on the section and device, it opens as a separate list or a browser sheet; you stay within the Today experience.
Use the section’s collapse control when you want to hide its cards temporarily while leaving its heading on the dashboard. Expand it again when you’re ready to browse.
Integration cards have their own detail actions: tapping Weather, Calendar, Reminders, or Tickers opens the corresponding information. In Top News, select a story to open it. These sections don’t all share the feed-title navigation pattern.
Choose how recent your feed content should be
Under Show news from, select the last 8, 12, or 24 hours.
This is a rolling window, rather than a midnight cutoff. If you choose 24 hours, Today can include content published yesterday that is still within that window.
Use eight hours for frequent check-ins or 24 hours for a broader daily catch-up. The window applies to feed sections; daily integrations use information relevant to their purpose:
- Weather and crypto tickers show the latest available data.
- Calendar shows today’s remaining events.
- Reminders shows tasks due today and overdue tasks.
Top News and On This Day provide their own news and historical selections rather than using your personal feed window.
Pull down on Today to refresh when you want to catch up again.
Try a simple starting layout
For a balanced dashboard, start with Overview, Calendar, Weather, Today Home, one favorite category, and On This Day. Add Top News if you want a broader news perspective, or give a favorite social account or podcast its own section.
After a few days, move the sections you use most toward the top and remove the ones you skip. Your feeds remain available in Feeds, so Today can stay focused on the content and information you want at a glance.