What's new — April 5, 2026

Smart Select picks your stories for you

The new Select Best button on the Compose page uses AI to automatically choose the most relevant stories for each section of your newsletter. It looks at your AI Writer's voice profile and section structure, then picks stories that fit each section best.

You can still hand-pick stories the old way. Smart Select is there for when you want a quick starting point.

AI Writers now have per-section story counts

Each section of your AI Writer can have its own story count: how many stories the AI should feature in that section. A "Top Stories" section might get 5, while a "Quick Hits" section gets 2. The AI respects these counts when generating your newsletter, so the output matches your intended structure without manual trimming.

Story counts are set during training and are adjustable anytime from the AI Writer details page.

What happens when your trial ends

If your 14-day trial ends without subscribing, your account pauses. Sources stop syncing (no new stories are collected), and newsletter generation is disabled. When you log in, you'll see a prompt to subscribe.

Your data stays exactly where you left it. Subscribe anytime to reactivate and pick up where you left off.

Dark mode on login and signup pages

The login, registration, email verification, and password reset pages now follow your dark mode preference. Previously, dark mode only kicked in after you logged in.

Newsletter opt-in at signup

The registration page now has a checkbox (on by default) to receive product tips and newsletter growth advice from HeyNews. Uncheck it if you'd rather not.

Chrome extension redesign

The HeyNews browser extension got a full visual refresh with updated branding. It's now listed on the Chrome Web Store.

Fixes

  • The welcome email is used to arrive at the same time as the verification email. Now the welcome email only sends after your first successful login, so you get the important sign-in link first.
  • Malformed login tokens could crash the app. Rare edge case with corrupted browser sessions. The app handles it gracefully now instead of showing an error.
  • AI drafts failed silently on certain model errors. If the AI model returned an access error, generation would just stop. Now it automatically retries with a backup model.