Canadian government takes over App Store’s ‘Today’ page to share COVID-19 app

If you open your iPhone’s App Store on April 4th, you may see a familiar message from Canada’s federal government: “Help flatten the curve.”

Essentially, it looks like the government took advantage of Apple’s 2017 App Store redesign, which saw the introduction of a curated ‘Today’ feed. That feed highlights apps and games to users, a helpful tool when navigating the vast number of apps on the platform.

On any given day, iPhone users will find an ‘App of the Day,’ ‘Game of the Day,’ and a couple of posts highlighting other things like Apple Arcade or a specific category of apps.

At the time of writing, the headlining App Store post was a public service announcement from the federal government about the COVID-19 outbreak. It highlights Canada’s new COVID-19 resource app, which launched earlier this week. Further, the App Store post includes a short video about how physical distancing works. The video is available in both English and French.

On top of that, the post links out to the government’s official COVID-19 resource website (again, in both languages).

Finally, there’s a link to the government’s free resource app so iPhone users can easily download the app.

Ultimately, it’s a smart use of the App Store to help get important COVID-19 resources and information into people’s hands. Currently, the Google Play Store doesn’t highlight Canada’s COVID-19 app in the same way. It does have a ‘Stay informed’ section on the ‘For You’ page that links to a few helpful apps, but none of them are official government resources.

The post Canadian government takes over App Store’s ‘Today’ page to share COVID-19 app appeared first on MobileSyrup.

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