De-News shortcut

Use Apple Shortcuts to fetch the original web URL for an Apple News article.

This shortcut receives an Apple News link from the Share Sheet or the clipboard and converts it to a link to the original article on the web. Upon completion, it offers to copy the web URL to the clipboard or share it with the share sheet.

If it doesn’t work, the shortcut will notify you if the original URL is not an Apple News link.

Notice: As of iOS 17.1, the ‘Share’ action appears to hang and then fail silently. Hopefully, Apple will fix that bug in a future update. For now, I recommend copying the web URL instead.

This shortcut was adapted from actions learned from Jason Snell’s original De-news shortcut.

The origin and methodology of this shortcut are documented in this blog post.

Download the shortcut ↓

Run This Shortcut

You can run this shortcut from its URL (such as from within a note, calendar event, or to-do item):

shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=De-News

Latest Release Notes

Version 2.3 - October 30, 2023

  • Due to a bug with the ‘Share’ action hanging and then silently failing, I added a new menu at the end to choose to either copy the article’s web URL or share it with the share sheet. I recommend ‘Copy’ option until Apple fixes the ‘Share’ action. (Thanks @rdelrossi!)
  • Download version 2.3
Version History

Version 2.2 - July 4, 2023, 8:30pm

  • Added Description and About ‘Comment’ actions to explain what the shortcut does, who made it, and how to get the latest version.
  • Added ‘Comment’ action explaining the Regex pattern matching action.
  • Re-enabled showing the shortcut in the Share Sheet.
  • Capitalized the title “De-News” to better communicate that it’s working on links from the News app.
  • Download version 2.2

Version 2.1 - Feb. 3, 2022, 1:29pm

  • Fixed the sharing mechanism which sometimes tried to share a text file rather than the URL.
  • Download version 2.1

Version 2.0 (iOS 15)

  • Remade using actions inspired by Jason Snell’s original De-news shortcut
  • Added a check for non-Apple News URLs
  • Added the RoutineHub link so users can find the latest version of this shortcut
  • Download version 2.0

Version 1.0 (iOS 15)

Thanks for checking out this shortcut! It’s part of the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library. If you’re sharing my shortcuts or modifying them (or see a bug or have a feature request), I’d love to hear from you — please give me a shout! And maybe consider a donation if you find this shortcut fun or useful. Thank you. ✌️