Google News has been a great way for Android users to quickly check the top headlines in the morning. However, despite this function, the app felt a little clunky. However, that might all be about to change with the latest update on Android.
Google is pushing out a newly redesigned look for Google News on Android devices. The new design features a more prominent header titled ‘Your briefing’ with a weather widget in the corner. The rigid setup of the previous top five stories seems to be gone, giving way to a much smoother experience.
Something missing from the new design is the ‘Covid-19 News’ banner. With the pandemic seeming to draw to an end, users have been wondering when the news banner will be removed. With this latest release of Google News on Android, the answer is now.
The new Google News home screen reminds us of Apple news. It starts with showing larger content, and as you scroll down the content gets smaller until reaching normal size. The reason behind this is to make it more convenient to read the headlines after just waking up while your eyes are still adjusting. At the moment, you’ll still see your top five stories when using the Google News widget, but that might soon be removed and replaced with something more fitting to the new design of the app.
The ‘For you’ page looks a lot like it used to. Except now, there are new colored headings for ‘Local news’ and ‘Picks for you’ to make these sections easier to spot. Apart from this minor change, we didn’t see any other changes to the ‘For you’ page.
These are the only changes that have been made to the Google News app so far. While the changes that have been made, while mostly cosmetic, do improve the user experience, those who loved the app for the ‘Top five Stories’ feature may be disappointed to see it go. We look forward to seeing if Google will make any other changes once the public has a chance to respond.