Digital readers are in for a treat, as Google's popular Newsstand app just got significantly more aesthetically pleasing after the latest update.
Newsstand is not even a year old, but it's already shaping up to be a popular digital reading app designed to bring the "magazine reading experience" to smartphones. Google has now launched a redesign of the app, making the whole Newsstand reading experience a lot more stylish.
"It's been a little less than a year since we launched Google Play Newsstand, our news reading experience for Android and iOS devices, and we've already been serving billions of headlines to you every month," Google announced in a company blog post. "We're updating the Play Newsstand app for Android devices with a new look and a fresh reading experience for magazines."
"Play Newsstand brings together all of your favorite news sources in one reading experience, including everything from online newspapers, websites, blogs and your favorite print magazines. Today's redesign brings a new magazine reading experience on your phone. In the past, print magazines have been hard to read on a small screen, zooming in and out to skim an article. But now you'll see a list of articles from the magazine that you can toggle through and easily read with big images right on your phone."
As a reminder, Google Play Newsstand made its debut last November, aiming to offer access to digital versions of print magazines, in addition to an entire trove of Internet content on topics such as sports, science, entertainment, and more.
The newly-redesigned app makes everything more aesthetically pleasing, following Google's new Material Design guidelines with larger images and smoother transitions. Users will be able to navigate easily through the app, swiping left and right to switch topics, or up and down to read more on a particular topic.
Furthermore, Google also included some new topic cards in the explore section of the app, allowing users to subscribe to things they're interested in. Subscribing to a topic of interest will give users a personalized and up to date reading experience, according to the company.
"Play Newsstand puts the news you care about front and center with big images that jump off the screen," adds the blog post. In addition to the visual enhancements, Google also added some tweaks to improve the app's speed, noting that Newsstand should now run faster overall.
Google Play Newsstand is available in more than 40 countries worldwide and the latest version of the app will roll out to all users next week. If you don't want to wait for the rollout, however, you can download the updated app right away from Google Play at this link.
