Newssary was developed by Dr Eva Ng of the University of Hong Kong in an effort to promote innovative teaching and knowledge exchange in society. It contains up-to-date bilingual Chinese-English terms trending in the news, and has an intelligent search engine capable of recognizing traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and English misspelt words and spelling variations. Users can bookmark and export their own customized lists of terms by email, and choose to receive notification of new entries. They can also test their bilingual competency by playing the word game. This new version comes complete with the much sought-after trilingual pronunciation feature and an optional registration system that allows registered users to suggest new terms for inclusion, send feedback and make translation requests. Newssary is an indispensable toolkit for interpreters and translators, teachers, language learners and professionals from various sectors such as law, medicine and finance. It has won multiple awards, including the 2016 HKU Arts Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award, the 2017 HKU Teaching Innovation Award, as well as the 2018 Top Ten Healthy App Award in a public contest organised by the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA) of the HKSAR government.

The terms and their related news excerpts in this app are cited from various media sources, duly acknowledged and referenced with external links. Bilingual terms are selected based on the principle of equivalence, regardless of the political inclination of the media organizations.