Problem: News apps push the same headlines at everyone, hide good stories behind paywalls you only discover after tapping, and send your reading habits to a server to build a profile. Solution: Built Toilet Reads, a React Native / Expo news reader that pulls from Google News topic feeds plus optional Guardian and NewsData sources, then ranks the feed with a taste model that runs entirely on the phone. Likes, saves, and hides teach a term-based profile and per-publisher affinity, and a multi-armed bandit mixes in Discover stories from the edge of your interests so the feed does not close in on itself. Known paywalled publishers are labeled, learned paywalls are remembered, and a Free to read filter hides them. Each card says why it was picked, and a Taste screen shows what the app has learned, with a one-tap reset. Outcome: A three-tab For You, Saved, and Taste reader with the profile kept in local storage and no account, EAS-ready for iOS.
React Native, Expo, TypeScript, Expo Router, Zustand, AsyncStorage, Google News RSS, The Guardian API, NewsData API, EAS
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