4 new Google News features will make news more accessible for everyone

The Google News app is available in over a hundred countries in dozens of languages. But no matter how many areas of the world the app services, it will be for naught if people don’t have phones that work with it or don’t have reliable access to the internet.

That’s why, today, Google announced the future rollout of four new Google News features that will help everyone everywhere have better, more reliable access to the news.

The four new features are mostly centered on the Android Go ecosystem and the areas of the world where those devices are popular. However, the new features will be helpful to everyone, even those of you who run $1,000 smartphones in cities that are completely blanketed in data service.

Here are the four new Google News features:

• Videos within Google News will open up in YouTube Go, when applicable.
• Newscasts will switch from image summaries to text summaries to save data when necessary.
• Videos and GIFs will not autoplay and images will load in a compressed format when necessary. If you want to play the video or GIF or view the image in full resolution during these times, just give it a tap.
• You can save articles in offline mode so you can read them later when you are connected.

The four new features above will automatically apply when the situation calls for them; there are no settings for you to tweak and you don’t have to worry about activating the features. All you have to do is wait for the next Google News app update that includes the new integration, which is rolling out “over the coming weeks.”

What do you think? Will this make your life easier when it comes to reading the news? Let us know in the comments!