BBC: World News & Stories

It was cool till the subscription articles started this past year. Now it is a mine field of paywall articles that caused me to delete after years of use. A shame. Either go pay or ads, this mix of the two is the worst. It really sucks to click an article to be told you have to pay to see this one. So, I stopped clicking anything or ever using the app again. Problem solved.

Used to be great. The ads have been so repetitive and invasive/distracting that I'm often closing the BBC app to go open up Guardian/etc in a browser instead. I'd pay for an ad-free experience, but it's just not worth it to deal with the app. And is it just me or are they getting pretty clickbait-y? Update: BBC no longer has free article access. I pay for some journalism, but given the app annoyances and other options, nah

The BBC decision to put all its articles in the app behind a subscription paywall is shocking to say the least. over the last 15 years I've made and produced several free-to-play and free games. I loved the BBC app and was loyal for 3 years. Now I find all the articles in the app require subscription. there's not even a free article daily or weekly limit. Shocking and sad decisions made by management for monetization.

Finally leaving after almost a decade of being my go-to for unbiased news and an outside perspective. I had a temporary workaround of reinstalling the app every couple days but it's just not worth it anymore. Extremely sad and will miss having this source of news. I put up with the insane slew of ads in every story to have a free place to read. Now, I can't recommend the app for casual news reading for the price they are asking. The rise of subscriptions for everything needs to stop.

The app has always been subpar. Crashes, videos infinitely loading, some articles opening as a webpage rather than in the app, ads appearing even if the content doesn't load, and other issues. Different iterations of the app have performed better than others, and I put up with it for years because I preferred BBC over any other news outlet. But now you have to subscribe to view any of the articles, and that's just a slap in the face on such a poorly optimized app.

PAYWALL. I have used this app for years daily, but uninstalled now. Over the past couple of years, the number of articles available already decreased, but I really appreciated the option to get US news from a source outside of the US for a different take on things. Now that it is no longer free, I'll be paring down my news sources. Again. Very disappointing.

BBC was one of my top news apps. But then they got rid of great stuff like my news. That was bad enough but then as of the most recent updates reminds up to sign up for a free account everytime the app is opened. Every. Single. Time. Sure I can skip it by pressing the option below. But the reminder and the step required to skip happens every single time. Every. Single. Time. If the forced reminder does not go away I am just going to uninstall the app. Stop trying to make us sign up for stuff!

Awful, awful, awful. No 'play next episode automatically' option. When a user saves what they think is a podcast series to their saved items, it's actually just the episode of the podcast they were listening to. Finding an old radio show or podcast is nigh on impossible unless it happens to be near the top of the search results. Going back to an unfinished podcast means the Play button won't work, so you have to force close the app and navigate back to what you were listening to. I could go on.

EDIT: As with everyone else, the app no longer works. Upon opening, it closes within 2-3 seconds without fail. Extremely frustrating. Untill they fix this, changing to 1 star. Great news app, really no complaints except one - I really wish it wouldn't automatically put "I saw this on the BBC and though you should see it" text whenever I share an article through the app.

I used to like using this app, but I will be deleting it after writing this review. The thumbnails are way too big. The worst part is that I can no longer see all the news categories available on BBC. For example, I can no longer view Africa news or Space and Exploration stories, unless it's a top story that appears. It is no longer possible to search these categories, as well as many others. It has become much too simplified. Nice try, BBC, it's getting deleted.

Too much news in video format, without transcripts. But the biggest reason this gets a bad review is there are many articles that come up as 'There was a problem loading this content. Please try again later.' But trying later never works. And, the same articles are on the app day after day after day. Finally, too many dead animals in their Week in Wildlife photography series.

Up until last week, I thought this was a five-star app and had been using it for a number of years without any problems. However, last week and up to now it is suddenly closing as soon as I open it. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app, cleared its cache, and rebooted my phone. But the app keeps closing. I like the BBC News very much and would like to continue using its app.

I can no longer get the radio "world news" to work anymore. Deleted the app and reinstalled, still does not work. Just loads and loads and loads. (Update). It works now, but the radio seems to be on a 10 minute timer. Shuts off every 10 minutes and I have to push the play button again, to get it going. Very annoying and can't figure out what to adjust in settings to not get the radio from stopping.

This app is a mess, or is simply not built for accessing the content I am after: radio dramas, something that BBC continued to do well, long after American radio gave up the idea. On BBC Sounds they were navigable. Now some of them are still here, but at the bottom of the app under unclear category names and invisible to search. I look for the series, "Spores" and get sports scores!

Well engineered app, and easy to customize, so I get the news that interests me in an attractive format. Unfortunately, ads are getting increasingly obnoxious. They pop up mid-article, disrupting your reading and, lately, even jump you to a loud commercial that you cannot shut off. While we understand the need to pay for the service, how about reverting to a presentation that encourages one to view the ad favorably?

Used to be easy to use but notifications have been broken for quite some time. Tapping a notification article dumps you onto a page filled with headlines and rarely brings you to the actual article. Who has time to hunt around like that? in addition, with a recent update the app tries to load for 30 seconds and then claims there's no internet connection which is of course not the case. uninstall reinstall does not resolve issue. since it doesn't work I can't even give it 2 stars.

The app works well but I have 2 gripes. First, they don't put a description for photos they include in articles and I find that super annoying. When I click on the photo and see it full screen I would like a little blurb telling me who is in the photo, whats it about, when it was taken. It is often not clear from the article what is shown in the image. Second is the shift to videos. When a story is reported with a video it would be nice if they also wrote an article to accompany it.

Not as good as the old version. The old version, you could select which genre of story interests you. For example, I love the BBC's reporting of Formula One, so I had that as favourite. This option no longer exists. The layout is now more in line with other big news apps, so there is nothing special about this app, and furthermore I find it hard to find stories that interest me. Many sub sections can no longer be read off-line (such as sports including F1). The website is much better.

Keeps crashing. Never happened before, last few days I haven't been able to get app to work at all. Just crashes as soon as I open it. Original rating was 5 stars, then 4 when they became a little more "click bait pandery." Though, they're still one of the highest quality news sites I've found for global/major news coverage (also, low key the best for US political coverage because they have less skin in the game). Will update when app works again.

You completely ruined the app. Of the many, MANY issues people have previously brought up in reviews probably the most infuriating to me is how often BBC will send me a head line, I click on the notification and then am taken to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ARTICLE! Even worse, half the time it's as though the article never existed in the first place! This app use to be great, I don't know what imbecile thought these changes would be in any way beneficial. It's a real shame. 👎