How to use plob.uk/news
Local, national and world news on one page, gathered from free news sites. Stories that several outlets report are grouped together and moved up.
Your location
Your location decides the Local column, which country the National column covers, and the weather, clock and calendar holidays at the top of the page.
On your first visit it is worked out roughly from your internet connection, so it can be a nearby town rather than yours. To change it:
- Press the location button (the pin with your town's name) at the top right.
- Type a town or city in the search box.
- Click the place's name in the results. That place is now your location: the Local column, National column, weather and calendar all switch to it.
Or press Use my current location to let your browser say exactly where you are (it will ask your permission first).
Saving places to the bar
You can keep up to six extra places, for example where family live or where you work, as links in the bar under the title, next to Local:
- Press the location button and search for the place.
- Press the + button at the right of the result (not the name). It turns into ✓ and the place appears in the bar.
Click a saved place in the bar to see its news: its local news, its country's national news and world news, with its own weather, local time and calendar. Your location stays as it was.
Clicking a place's name changes your location. Pressing + only saves it to the bar.
Easy to mix up: if your Local news suddenly shows somewhere else, you clicked the name instead of the +. Search for your own town and click its name to put it back.
Click the name
Sets your location.
Changes the Local column, the National country, the weather, the clock and the holidays everywhere on the page.
You have one location.
Press +
Adds a saved place to the bar.
Changes nothing else. Click it in the bar whenever you want to look at that place.
You can save up to six.
To remove a saved place, press the location button and press × next to it under Saved places. Clicking a saved place's name there makes it your location.
The bar: Local, your places, National, World
- Local and the plob.uk/news title both take you back to the front page for your location.
- Your saved places show the same three columns for that place.
- National and World each show three columns: Now (the latest), Top 24 hours and Top this week, ranked by how many outlets covered each story. The week view built up from 15 October 2026, so it is fullest after its first week.
On a phone the three columns become tabs: tap them, or swipe left and right.
Weather and calendar
- Click (or tap) the weather in the top right corner for the full weather page: the conditions now, the next 24 hours and the next seven days (click a day for its details). It is for the place you are looking at, so open a saved place first to see its weather. Use ← Back to the news, the title or Local to return.
- On a computer, just point at the weather for a quick forecast card. Use ‹ › to step through the next seven days: rain, wind, UV, sunrise and sunset, and the day in three-hour steps.
- Point at (or tap) the date in the top left for a live clock and a month calendar. Red dates are public holidays (bank holidays in the UK and Ireland, federal holidays in the US, national public holidays in 30 other European countries; days that only some regions keep are green and name the region); green dates are other notable days, such as Halloween or Mother's Day. Use ‹ › to change month.
- When you are looking at a saved place, the weather, clock and calendar are that place's, so you can see its local time.
The stories
- Widely reported means several outlets have the story. Press +2 more (or All sources) under a story to see every outlet and read any of their versions.
- Read full article opens the story on the publisher's own site. Sites behind a paywall are left out, and so is any article a publisher marks as for subscribers only (some free sites, such as the Mirror, the Express and the Daily Mail, now have a few).
- ◔ after an outlet's name means it has a metered paywall: you can read a limited number of its articles free each month (usually 20 to 30), then it asks you to subscribe. Many local papers work this way. When another outlet has the same story, the headline links there instead.
- Summaries marked AI summary were written by AI from what the outlets report; the rest are the publishers' own.
- Each column shows 20 stories; Show more at the bottom shows the rest. The page refreshes itself every 10 minutes, or press the refresh button.
Where UK news comes from. The BBC (UK, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), ITV News, Sky News, Channel 4 News, the Guardian, the Independent, the i Paper, LBC and the Evening Standard, plus Google News's UK section. Tabloids and the nations' own sites (the Mirror, Daily Mail, Sun, Express, Daily Star, Metro, GB News, STV, Daily Record, WalesOnline, Belfast Live and Nation.Cymru) only back up stories others report: they count towards how widely a story is reported and appear in its list of outlets, but never put a story in the column on their own.
Europe. For a place in Ireland or one of 30 other European countries, the National column uses that country's English-language news (for example DW, RFI and France 24, ANSA, NL Times and DutchNews, Swissinfo, Notes from Poland, Radio Prague, ERR News, LSM, LRT and the Cyprus Mail), plus the BBC, Reuters, Guardian, Euronews and DW reporting on that country. Papers behind a paywall (such as The Local) and sites that turn away automated readers are left out, so countries with little English-language news, such as Slovakia and Denmark, show fewer stories. The Local column for a place in continental Europe is in the local language, from that country's own news and its local papers and radio (Google News has no Danish, Croatian or Icelandic edition, so those places get few local stories). The calendar shows each country's public holidays in red; days only some regions keep are green and name the region.
Settings and privacy
The settings button (next to refresh) switches between light and dark, and turns pictures off for a plainer page. Your location, saved places and settings are kept only in this browser. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.