Ever since Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile came on to the scene people have been asking when will we redo our app.
Last week I gave you a sneak peek of where we were and today I can announce the public availability of the app to everyone!
This is a preview + UserVoice
First things first: myself and our developer, Daniel Gary, are still discussing some features and layouts that require some served-end changes. As a result, this app that you are downloading today is about 90% of where we want it to be, and there are still some rough edges.
We encourage everyone to take advantage the new Windows Central UserVoice page for app feedback, bug reporting, and feature requests: windowscentral.uservoice.com. Doing so (instead of telling us on Twitter) allows us to track things better and to prioritize, so we appreciate you using it.
Occasional app crashes and other quirks will undoubtedly arise as the team who tested this was very limited during development.
We expect over the next few weeks to release multiple updates to fix bugs, performance issues, and to add a few layout changes, so please take that into consideration if leaving a review! We're putting this app out there now due to the high-demand even though ideally we would take a few more weeks to get it perfect.
Re-Written for Windows 10
The new Windows Central App is re-written from the ground up for Windows 10. Therefore, it runs on Windows 10 for PCs, Windows 10 Mobile and supports Windows Continuum.
We suppose once Microsoft opens the Xbox One Store for submissions we can put it there too.
Since last week's sneak peek, we have done a lot of tidying up including smaller things like matching the title bar color to the theme.
Features
Our goal on the preview release was to get as many features in the app as possible to match the Windows Phone 8.1 version. This what you get:
- Live Tile with the latest stories
- Push notifications for new stories
- Actionable notifications to reply to comments
- Dark and Light theme
- Choose your accent color
- Log in to your Mobile Nations account
- Commenting + up/down votes
- Pull to refresh (and refresh button for desktop)
- Embedded video playback
- Share articles using the universal share picker
- Search the site
- Forums with full ability to log in, comment, quote and reply
- Download app and game button for easier navigation
- One-handed support with swipe for split-view menu or between articles
Other things include the ability to tip us on the news and browse our YouTube video channel directly. When trying to open a video, the app can hand off to third-party apps like myTube! and Tubecast.
Article formatting now reflects our full format on the web version including accessible hyperlinks, bullet points, quotes and more.
There are some other nifty additions like the Top button that lets you quick navigate to the first article and pull to refresh (on mobile) to keep the app up to date.
Push notifications for new articles, replies to comments and forum posts are also there, but these are still under development so your experience may vary!
Download Windows Central for Windows 10 and Mobile
Manage your notifications
As a side note, our site has a robust system for notifications on articles and comments. To configure yours for your account should you have trouble (or too many) please go to: www.windowscentral.com/follow when logged in to set it up. Thanks!
Thanks for your support
As a reminder, the new Windows Central App for Windows 10 is free and ad-free. We appreciate everyone patiently waiting for us to get this far, and we're very excited to continue refining this app this year.
If you are still on Windows Phone 8.1, you do not have to worry as we are keeping that app on the Store for legacy users going forward.
