Church News

Review by eFreeware

Church News is the Android app for the publication of the same name, an official outlet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that is published jointly with the Deseret News. It is free, sits in the News & Magazines category, and carries a 4.8 average from 3,688 ratings after passing a million installs. The reason to consider it is simple: it gathers reporting on the church's growth and ministry into one place rather than leaving readers to piece coverage together from a website and social feeds.

The app arrived in August 2019 and has been kept current since, with an update in August 2026 that added support for edge-to-edge displays. That is housekeeping rather than a new feature, but it tells you the app is still being attended to. For anyone who follows Latter-day Saint news closely, this is the obvious first stop.

Reporting on a worldwide church

Stories focus on church members and leaders and the work they are engaged in around the world, which means the reporting is not confined to one region or one congregation. The publication describes itself as a living record of the Restoration, and that framing runs through what it publishes.

Beyond feature stories, the app covers the everyday side of church life: temple news, General Conference, callings and announcements from around the world. Those are the items members tend to check for regularly, and having them in the same app as the longer reads saves moving between sources.

The tone is devotional as much as journalistic. The content is written to support the doctrines, principles and practices of the church, which is worth knowing before you install. This is not neutral wire coverage of a religious institution; it is the institution's own publication, and it reads that way.

How the coverage is organized

Topics are grouped into sections such as Living Faith, Leaders & Ministry, History Revisited and Members, with more beyond those. That structure is the main reason the app works as a daily read rather than a search box: if you want a story about faith in practice, you go to one place, and if you want reporting on church leadership, you go to another.

The developer pitches the app as simple and easy to use, and the section layout is what that claim rests on. Browsing by topic is the intended path, so readers who know roughly what they want can get to it without scrolling through everything.

History Revisited is the section I would expect to have the widest appeal beyond the church's own membership, since archival and historical material tends to travel further than day-to-day announcements. Members, meanwhile, are likely to gravitate to Leaders & Ministry and to the conference and temple reporting.

A reading app, not a community one

What this app does is deliver articles and news items. It is an editorial product, so the experience is reading rather than posting, commenting or messaging. If you want to keep up with church news, that is enough; if you want discussion around it, this is not where that happens.

The app is rated for Everyone and the subject matter is news, so there is nothing here that needs age gating. It is the sort of thing you can hand to a teenager who follows church events without worrying about what else they will run into.

It also sits comfortably alongside the Deseret News side of the joint publication. Readers who already follow that outlet will recognize the overlap in coverage, though the app itself is built around the Church News side of the operation.

What you need to know before installing

The app is free to download and does not offer in-app purchases. It does contain ads. That is a normal arrangement for a free news app.

Because the app is a news product, expect it to be built around fresh articles. That is inherent to how this kind of app works rather than a quirk of this one.

The other consideration is editorial stance rather than anything technical. The publication is official, its content supports the church's doctrines and practices, and it is jointly produced with the Deseret News.

Suited to members and close followers

The app's section structure is built for that habit: check the latest announcements, read a story or two, come back when something happens.

It also works for readers with a scholarly or historical interest in the church, particularly through the History Revisited material and the reporting on its growth in different parts of the world. Someone researching how the church presents its own work will find the official account here in a convenient form.

The 4.8 average across 3,688 ratings suggests the people who use it are getting what they came for. With over a million installs, it is clearly reaching well beyond a niche, which is unsurprising for an app tied to a global institution.

A focused app that does its one job

Church News is a narrow app by design, and that is its strength. The August 2026 edge-to-edge update shows the developer is still tending to it.

I would suggest it to members who want church news without hunting across the web, and to anyone following the church's global growth and history from the inside. It is free, and the rating suggests readers are satisfied with what they get. It suits readers who want news presented from within the Church's own official publication.

What's new in version 1.15.0

Added support for edge-to-edge.