Kagi News on Android Media Page

reiou

Replace the default Google News with Kagi News when swiping left in Android systems and launchers. This will improve user experience by offering Kagi as a news source.

When swiping to the left on Samsung Galaxy Phones, there is a Media Page that shows Google News. Other launchers also have this same function. We should have the option to set Kagi News there, but currently all I see is Google News. It would be better for the entire world and the future of our generation and those to come if we could have Kagi News there instead.

RoxyRoxyRoxy

Hi, I'm not familiar with this feature (daily drive iOS and my one android device doesn't have this), is this something that's natively supported by launchers? That is, can you choose other new sources besides Google News (just not Kagi News)?

reiou

Yes, I can't speak to which launchers all support it, but I know Microsoft's does, and it is a feature in Samsung's One UI. In Samsung's you can choose the service. I only have Google listed by default.

I Samsung's One UI (I'm on One UI 8), after enabling, swiping to left to right to reach the leftmost page displays the news feed, Google, in this case:

Even if it's mainly a Samsung thing, I assume still value due to the number of Samsung devices out in the wild.

For my part I don't use the feature because Google default, but would definitely make use of a Kagi News version. Easy and habitual way to use Kagi News!

fxgn

From looking at code for things like NeoFeed, this is typically done by implementing com.android.launcher3.WINDOW_OVERLAY. However, it's also possible that Samsung launcher just hard codes google news and samsung news as only possible providers, or at least it seems that way from their docs.

khaleelsh

I don’t think we have control over that. Pixel devices (with Google’s default launcher), One UI, and most other launchers don’t allow users to choose apps or developers to support the left feed panel. Some third-party launchers do support it, but I don’t think the effort would be worth the result.
We are considering widgets which might be a more practical solution.

reiou

khaleelsh that's very strange. The settings section of my Samsung/Android seem to suggest services can be added instead of the default Google. Again, not sure if this is all Android settings or unique to Samsung, but screenshots below in case it leads to something:

And apologies for repeating myself, just trying to cover bases. If not possible, that's too bad. Thank you for looking into it.

khaleelsh

@reiou My apologies for late reply!
I believe you can only select Google Discover from that list, or Samsung News app on some devices. You can't as a user add other apps to be displayed in the media page. And there is no way as a developer I can build an app that can be shown in the media page there. I believe this is some kind of collaboration between Google and Samsung.