Hello,

The beta of the next version (5.3.0) of the Wikipedia app for iOS is now available to beta testers on TestFlight. 

This beta includes a few significant improvements:

 - Support for simplified and other Chinese character preferences for zh Wikipedia

 - Major improvements in the loading and scrolling speed of the Explore feed, and use of the feed API developed by the Android team[1]

 - Support for widgets on iOS 9

 - In the News items from the Main page now included in the feed (see also Android)

 - Improved presentation of citations on iPad (phone coming in next beta)

 - Trending In the News push notification…

The iOS beta is also piloting a push notification[2] option for users. If the user is interested, the app will notify them of new In the news items from their primary language which meet a page view threshold. You can 3D press the notifications to see more info, or tap through to read more.

This kind of content notification is a new concept for the Wikipedia apps and we look forward to hearing from you and our users whether we should keep it, and how to make it better.

To sign up for the beta, please go here:
https://goo.gl/forms/ifUKBVGgXzkbNv4q1

If you are in the beta, your feedback about the notifications is very much requested here:

Thanks,

Josh

[1] See this blog post for more about the feed and API https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/07/28/wikipedia-android-redesign/

[2] See previous list announcement (https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2016-June/010254.html) and blog post (https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/06/17/wikipedia-mobile/) about the potential directions and plans for content notifications on apps