Tags

Tags are the engine behind filtering and smart groups. Understanding one thing up front will save you confusion:

A tag is a word or phrase Newsbin searches for inside your articles. It is not a label you stick on individual articles by hand.

When you create a tag like climate, Newsbin looks for that word across each article’s headline, summary, and the keywords it has scanned from the content. Articles that contain it “match” the tag. This happens automatically as articles arrive — there’s nothing to tag manually.

Tag states

This is the part that trips people up. Every tag is in one of three states, and the state decides what the tag does:

State	What it means
Included	Only show articles that match this tag. This is what actually filters.
Excluded	Hide articles that match this tag, even if they’d otherwise appear.
Off	The tag is ignored. It has no effect.

New tags start Off. A tag sitting in your list does nothing until you switch it to Included or Excluded. Tap a tag to cycle its state.

Key takeaway: if you want a tag to filter your reading or a smart group, it must be set to Included. A group with no Included tags has nothing to filter on, so it shows everything.

Matching: any tag vs. all tags

When more than one tag is Included, a setting controls how they combine:

• Match all tags — ON: an article must contain every Included tag (an AND match). Stricter — fewer results.
• Match all tags — OFF: an article that contains any one Included tag appears (an OR match). Looser — more results.

If a filter feels too empty, try turning Match all tags off. If it feels too broad, turn it on or reduce how many tags are Included.

Managing tags

• Create, rename, and set tag states from Manage Tags.
• Tags and their states sync across your devices through iCloud.
• Want to hide content outright, everywhere, all the time? That’s a blocklist, not a tag.

Ready to put tags to work? See Smart Groups.