The iPhone and iPad Blog by Simon

Smartphone users are always looking for new ways to interact with their devices.

One of the ways discovered in recent times was to have a conversation with your smartphone or make it read out something aloud.

Apple picked up the vibe with Siri, while Samsung, Google, and others followed suit later.

Then the developers released their own offerings in the form of applications, most of which fell short of native offerings by companies, reading out text in mechanical tone, and missing out on words.

Winston is an iOS application that aims to change all that. It creates customizable newscasts from Facebook, Twitter, and news websites, and then presents them in a pleasant human voice.

How to Use Winston for iOS

After downloading and installing the app on your phone, you’ll receive both written and spoken instructions about how to use the application. Select a few basic topics for a start; don’t worry about your selection, you can always change it later.

Once you’re familiar with all basic features, there is some content downloaded for offline use, so make sure you’re connected to a good network when using the app. The main page will display separate tiles for the selected topics, and there will be three extra ones by default. Two of them are for special media, and there is a third section called ‘Briefing’ at the top of the screen.

In the Briefing section, you’ll get a summary of all important stories from your selected topics and social networks, as well as weather details. The items will appear by the order of arrangement of the tiles; these positions can be altered by long-pressing anywhere on the main screen and dragging them around. This will let you arrange items according to your preferences.

Winston can also work offline by reading out downloaded parts of newscasts. You can also toggle on the ‘Download Full Newscasts’ option from the Settings menu to make the app save full newscasts instead of basic summaries. The same menu can be used to control voice speed and background music.

When listening to newscasts, Winston reads out stories if it’s from a source of news. It reads only the overview of the posts from social networks. Swiping across the screen lets you skip an item to the next one. You can tap the + icon to share any article.

Final thoughts

Winston is a great way to hear your favorite news and stories in a human voice. It also supports AirPlay, which enables users to stream newscasts over other iDevices. The app was recently updated for iOS 7 and now includes a designed Channel Catalog as well as the option to switch between light and dark themes. You can download the app via this direct iTunes link. Let us know in comments if you give this app a try.

Download Winston

This article, Winston App Tells You Stories From Social Feeds and News Sites, was originally published at simonblog.com.