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.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
