Install Encyclopedia Brown
Free press, on your home screen. No App Store. No subscription.
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Open this page in your device's default browser
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Look for "Add to Home Screen" or "Install App" in the browser menu
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Follow the prompts to install
This app lives on your phone — not on our servers
Encyclopedia Brown does not create an account for you. It does not record what articles you read. Your ZIP codes, keywords, and preferences are stored only in your browser's local storage — on your device, nowhere else. We cannot see them.
The app fetches news headlines from public RSS feeds and passes them to you. Beyond that, there is no data pipeline. Keep your phone physically safe — that's the only security that applies here.
Protect your connection with a free VPN
While this app doesn't track you, your internet provider (ISP) can see which websites you visit. If you're reading sensitive news on public Wi-Fi or are concerned about surveillance, a VPN encrypts your connection so your browsing stays private.
We recommend Proton VPN— it's free as in beer (genuinely free tier with no data cap), open-source, and run by the same Swiss team behind ProtonMail. No logs. No selling your data. No upsell dark patterns.
Get Proton VPN free →Use Brave for full-page translation
Encyclopedia Brown translates article previewsinto your chosen language using a free, no-account translate service. But if you click through to read the full article, you'll see it in the original language.
Brave Browser(based on Chromium, like Chrome) has built-in full-page translation — just tap the translate icon in the address bar. It's also privacy-respecting by default: blocks trackers and ads, no Google telemetry, open-source.
Get Brave free →This is a Progressive Web App (PWA)— not a native iOS or Android app. That's a deliberate choice, and it's entirely in your interest.
No App Store. No gatekeepers.
Apple and Google control what gets into their App Stores and can remove apps without notice. A PWA lives on the open web — no $99/year developer fee, no approval queue, no removal risk. Install it directly from the browser.
Your phone, your data. Full stop.
A native app from the App Store can request access to your contacts, location, microphone, and browsing history. This app has none of those permissions. It fetches news and does nothing else. No company can see your reading habits because there's nothing to see.
Works offline. Reads from cache.
Once loaded, headlines are cached on your device by the service worker. If you lose your connection mid-read, the app keeps working. The news you loaded is yours until you refresh.
No 200MB download. No update prompts.
Native news apps can balloon to hundreds of megabytes. This is a progressive web app — it's just a smart bookmark that behaves like an app. Updates happen silently in the background the next time you open it. You're always current.
Same experience everywhere.
iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux — the same app works everywhere, looks the same, and keeps your settings via your browser's local storage. No fragmented native versions.
Runs on your device, not their cloud.
Your keywords, ZIP codes, language, and preferences are processed and stored locally. The server just fetches RSS feeds — it never knows who is asking. This is privacy by architecture, not by policy.
What you get — for free, forever
90+ free outlets across 8 world regions — no paywalls
Local news by ZIP code — city, regional, statewide
Funding transparency on every article
Keyword alerts — know when your topics hit the news
Works offline — cached news while you travel
No account. No ads. No tracking. Ever.
Encyclopedia Brown doesn't have a business model. That's by design. We're not trying to monetize your attention or sell you a subscription. We're trying to keep the news free.
If you install this app and use it, we're grateful. If you chip in a few dollars a month, you're joining a small group of people making independent press possible — the same way listeners have sustained public radio for fifty years.
Like public radio, we rely on readers — not advertisers.
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