WordPress App for Android Adds Better Support for Jetpack-Enabled Sites

Automattic’s mobile engineers released a major update to WordPress for Android this week. Last year the app’s users saw a growing disparity between the features available to self-hosted sites and those available to WordPress.com users. Not having the WP REST API in core was holding the app back from providing the same site management features that WordPress.com site owners already enjoy. The upcoming release narrows that gap with better support for Jetpack-enabled sites.

Self-hosted WordPress sites owners will now have access to People Management, Site Settings, and Site Icons in the app. A complete re-write of the app’s network layer brings more performance improvements to Stats and other features.

The Jetpack blog announced the release but doesn’t mention that these features are not yet available to all users. If you manage a self-hosted site on your mobile device, you’ll need to wait until version 7.0 hits the Google Play Store. According to Automattic mobile engineer Maxime Bias, version 7.0 is currently in staged rollout and not all users can update to get it yet. He said 7.0 should be fully rolled out soon but could not give an ETA.