One of the smaller, but still significant, announcements out of WWDC last week was that of Newsstand, a new way to organize and display all of your news and magazine subscriptions from the App Store. So, for instance, if you subscribe to a magazine like Time, or a digital newspaper like The Daily, you will be able to view and manage all of these subscriptions in one place on your iOS device.

How It Works

When you download a magazine or newspaper subscription application (meaning that it supports the new iTunes subscription-based environment for purchasing and/or subscribing to content) from the App Store on iOS 5, the digital content application will be placed inside of the Newsstand folder on your iOS home screen. This folder works just like any other home screen folder, except you cannot place any other applications inside of it.

The UI of the Newsstand folder is similar to the iBooks book selector, allowing you to see the cover of the magazine or first page of the newspaper instead of the application icon that you are used to seeing.

Why It’s Useful

This Newsstand folder is specifically for holding iTunes subscription-based applications, and provides many new services specifically for these specific apps, including the ability to automatically download new subscription content when it becomes available. This means that if you are subscribed to a digital newspaper like The Daily, the newest issue will automatically get pushed out to your device as soon as it becomes available.

Other Features of Newsstand

Along with this new push feature comes two additional features: the ability for the application icon inside of Newsstand to automatically update with the first page of the new issue front and center, and the ability to read the issue offline after its been synced to your device. The latter feature is especially great for those that travel with a Wi-Fi-only iPad or iPod touch.

Newsstand will be a part of iOS 5 when it is released later this fall.

Follow this article’s author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.