Widget-First News Digest
Dense text, many stories, no links. The iPhone news widget shows a complete digest, not a single headline. You read the news on your home screen without opening an app or a browser.
Dense: Rolling Micro News Digest Widget
A widget-first micro digest that rewrites as stories break, highlighting what changed so you can scan updates in seconds. Filter by impact and mood to surface what matters.
iPhone, iPad, and Mac
The Widget Is the Experience
Every iPhone news widget follows the same pattern: one headline, one thumbnail, one link. Tap the widget and you leave for Safari or an app. The widget is a billboard, not a destination.
Dense took a different approach. The news widget shows multiple stories compressed into ultra-short sentences. No links. No thumbnails. You read the news right there on your home screen. The news digest widget is the destination, not a pointer to somewhere else.
When stories break, the digest rewrites itself. Green highlights show what changed since your last read. You glance at the widget, see what is new, and put your phone down. That is the entire daily news digest experience.
How Dense Works
Pick a topic. Dense searches for fresh stories on the web, then uses AI to rank, deduplicate, and synthesize them into a short digest. The result is an AI news summary that fits in a widget: multiple stories in a few sentences, not a list of headlines you have to click through.
The digest is living. As stories develop, Dense rewrites the summary and highlights what changed in green. You see the news cycle evolve without refreshing a feed or opening an app. The daily news digest updates on a smart schedule that balances freshness with battery life.
Each story gets a Doom or Bloom score: an AI-assigned mood rating from negative to positive. Slide toward Bloom to surface good news. Slide toward Doom for gravity. The Story Explorer in the app lets you filter by mood and impact, so you control how much doom reaches your home screen.
What You Get
Change Highlighting
Green highlights show what is new since your last read. When a story develops or a new one breaks, you see exactly what changed without re-reading the whole digest.
Doom or Bloom Mood Filter
Every story gets an AI-assigned mood score. Slide toward Bloom for positive news, Doom for gravity. Filter your news diet by sentiment instead of letting an algorithm decide for you.
Story Explorer
Dig deeper in the app. Browse all stories across topics, filter by mood and impact, and see how stories evolved over time. The widget is the daily glance. The explorer is the deep dive.
iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Dense runs natively on all three platforms with widgets that adapt to each screen size. Set up your topics once and get the digest wherever you look first.
Smart Refresh, No Battery Drain
Digests refresh on a smart schedule that balances freshness with battery life. Cached digests mean the widget stays current without constant network requests or background processing.
Why I Built Dense
I was checking the news too often and getting nothing from it. Open the app, scroll headlines, close the app. Ten minutes later, do it again. The headlines were the same. The apps were designed to keep me scrolling, not to keep me informed.
I wanted something that fit on my home screen and told me what happened without pulling me into a feed. A daily news digest I could read in 10 seconds. If nothing changed, the widget would tell me that too, so I could stop checking.
I also wanted control over the mood of the news I saw. Not a "positive news only" filter that hides important stories, but a dial. Some days I want the full picture. Some days I want to see what is going well. The Doom or Bloom score gives me that control without pretending bad news does not exist.
Dense is the app I built to stop doom scrolling. The widget is the experience. The app is there when I want to explore. Most days, I just glance at the widget and move on.
See It in Action
Built by Peter. Bootstrapper in Beaverton.