Google Play Newsstand gets redesigned home screen, bottom toolbar

Google Play Newsstand gets redesigned home screen, bottom toolbar

Google Play Newsstand is now better than ever.

Google has released a new version of Play Newsstand, its one-stop shop for news, magazines and other written content, with an updated home screen design and a bottom tab bar that replaces the left-side hamburger menu.

The design is definitely more personal, greeting you by name in a new tab titled "For You" along with a daily briefing that attempts to cull together written and video highlights from the past few hours based on sources and topics that you've previously shown interest in.

Like many of Google's recently-redesigned apps, this is not a radical reworking but a maturing.

Like many of Google's recently-redesigned apps, this is not a radical reworking of how Newsstand works, but a maturing of what has been happening within Google's design team for the last couple of years. The bottom tab makes new content easy to find, and appears — in the age of larger phones with bigger screens — a more appropriate way to separate parts of the app without forcing mobile users to dig into the increasingly disused left-side hamburger menu.

Google has also renamed a couple of the sections. "My Library" is now just "Library," while "Bookmarks" is the more realistic "Read Later." Finally, Google now lets you get a daily briefing notification each morning, which it hopes will increase time in the app.

Play Newsstand 4.0, which does away with its bright purple color scheme for more sedate darker purple accents, is rolling out slowly over the next few days.

What do you think? Do you even use Google Play Newsstand, or do you prefer another news app?