Newsstand (software)

Features

The application is selected by screen and when opened is a visual shelf, directly on the home screen, similar in style to iBooks. It emulates a newsagent's shop with virtual shelves that hold and present each newspaper and magazine that has been downloaded in to view and read, in one place. The app icon updates with the latest front covers with a notification indicator of new editions.

There is a Store button in the lower right corner, to go directly to the Newsstand category in the App Store, where after a newspaper and magazine is downloaded for free, in-app subscriptions or per individual periodicals can be purchased with an iTunes account, to download and deliver in the background the most recent edition of news automatically.

The most popular and largest printed newspaper and magazine names now publish digital content specifically designed for mobile devices and tablet computers, often including interactive content that is unavailable in printed form.

Newspaper and magazine brands have the option to move their current iOS apps to be inside the Newsstand app. Previously, before the release of Apple Newsstand, many brands had released their own separate iOS apps, and this gives them an option to nest these apps within Newsstand instead of remaining outside it (although brands can optionally release new versions of their iOS app to achieve this instead), in order to be part of the official Newsstand category within the iOS App Store and to take advantage of various features of Apple Newsstand. One of the first apps to do this was The New York Times, who moved their previously external iOS app to be inside Newsstand, on initial release of the Newsstand app.

It is currently available on iOS devices since it was introduced on iOS 5 and works with iCloud, both for syncing and for re-downloading magazines and newspapers. Technically, Newsstand compatibility is determined by the boolean value "UINewsstandApp" in the app's info.plist file, which can be edited on jailbroken devices.

App vs. Folder

While Apple refers to Apple Newsstand as an app, it is actually a unique kind of folder, with individual apps of newspapers and magazines inside. Until iOS 7, it was impossible to place Newsstand inside another folder on any iOS devices, but that functionality is now enabled. Apple has expressed the intention to replace the file system with easier forms of knowing where documents are; iCloud is one example. In the iOS file system all documents remain within applications.

There has been some confusion about this from users who did not know it was already a folder, and thus found they could not easily add Newsstand into other folders they created on their devices, until many subsequently found a very specific folder creation method to bypass this deliberate limitation. However, as the operating system disallows this, doing so could cause possible minor technical failures on the devices concerned and the SpringBoard will crash.

Apple addressed this with the release of iOS 5.1, which removes this bypass method, so Newsstand is now completely unable to be nested inside other folders.

Many comments on Apple's own forums and many other technology websites show that users of iOS devices wish that the newsstand icon could be hidden or removed completely if they never intend to use it.

As of iOS 7, Newsstand can be placed into a folder. However, for the purposes of full-screen gestures, accessibility functions and app switching, it is still treated as a folder on the Springboard.

Prior to iOS 7, the folder appeared in the app switcher, despite being a folder instead of an app. However, the Newsstand folder has been removed from the app switcher in iOS 7.

Since iOS 9, the Newsstand app has been removed. It has been replaced by News where it has rolled out.