Leave a Review NPR
Hot mess but slowly improving
This app is unfortunately a hot mess. I’m a two decade NPR listener. I appreciate going through the daily news stories and building a playlist to listen to throughout the day. Unbelievably they merged the old NPR app which did this fairly well with the NPR One app which is a complete mess of shows, podcasts and ads, without key features like being able to manually sort the playlist. Thankfully that feature has now returned and slow improvements are being made (however if you listen to NPR podcasts I would highly recommend you do it in a dedicated podcast app rather than here).
Suggestions for future updates: 1) a Playlist button in the interface, not hidden 3-4 clicks away. There’s plenty of space at the bottom for one extra button and it’s very annoying to have to click multiple times just to get to it 2) the ability to turn off the annoying ticker at the bottom which shows what you watched previously. Just an X at the end would suffice. It is very annoying. 3) The ability to pin the shows that I like at the top of the Podcasts page instead of having them constantly change because you think you know what I want at different times of the day (which you don’t!) 4)Why do I get audio ads in my playlist? I’m a member of NPR/ PBSShow lessSh3lob
NPR no longer appears to function correctly on my iPad Pro
Even after removing app and after that deleting and reinstalling the NPR App, it seems to not function correctly. The App either freezes or show “oops” errors.
Regrettably, I have removed it permanently. I didn’t use it as much as other news Apps but I did enjoy it when I did. Tis a shame.Code2Australia
I miss the old NPR
The old app was better, and I see no improvements in this one. I wish there were easier ways to see articles in the basic heading (US news, intl news, arts, music,…), then look at listings. There is too much use of pictures and not enough use of text. I hate search, and I want to be able to look through articles. In general, I wish I could have a text-only option. I dislike the space and waste of pictures.
And then there is the inexplicable decline in content. Covid seems to have killed the brain cells of all NPR employees. I had to stop listening then. I only go for the few remaining islands of sanity, like Science Friday. The bias in subject choice and tone has become sad, unintellectual propaganda. Overall, NPR is embarrassingly bad now. I am not a conservative. I am a registered Democrat. It is too krazy-leftist for me. Some stories sound like Saturday Night Live skits, or right-wing memes. It hurts because I was more invested in NPR than I realized. I hope someone sane can right the ship. If they are too blind to that, they should probably seek out openly conservative hires for a few years just to something, anything that does not sound like it is coming from a 1960’s hippy commune.Show lessRealSkip
buggy, mostly ads
crashes and freezes constantly. in the rare instances it does work it’s 3-4 ads for every one news story, and often plays the same story on repeat. don’t want to listen to the same story again? 3-4 more ads. often the ads are for their own programs or for going “sponsor free” but it’s so buggy i can’t imagine giving them money.Show lessCharon96
Has played "black lives black truth" ads for 3 months straight
*Every* show, every news segment now plays the exact same advert for both it's intro and outro for the last six months. Am getting SICK of hearing it over and over. Ironically I feel anger at the subject every time I hear the title now, which is the exact OPPOSITE of why that podcast exists
Stop with the program adverts! All of them!Show lessWoodat
Still waiting for much better
My previous review of this app many years ago was that the stream of my local station would not play, usually after an iOS update. This was when the NPR app was the NPR app. Interestingly, my closing comment about it was that it was still far superior to the “NPR One” app which I would be bugged about trying. Long since that app and the NPR One app were merged. All the reasons I didn’t use it have continued to be here. I cannot curate a playlist and when I select something to listen to, it doesn’t end when my selection finishes, it just keeps playing forcing me to take action for no good reason. (BTW, there is a sleep timer which is not nearly as good as having the app go quiet when my selection is over!)
Navigating is not intuitive nor are the pages well designed so I find myself going back and forth. On the podcast page, at the top, there is a list of programs, however this is not a favorite list and the list changes arbitrarily.
Kindly, the developer contacted me recently to point out the new toggle switch to turn off “continuous play.”
Unfortunately, while I have toggled it off, continuous play, continues!Show lessRickF80
Developer Response
Hi RickF80, we do appreciate your feedback and have been working hard on a number of features to improve. Our recent iOS app update (v5.9.0) now includes a way to turn off continuous listening. If you don’t want to transition to your personalized listening mix after other audio ends, just turn off the “Continuous play” toggle in your Settings menu. We appreciate your feedback on this latest release of our app - feel free to send us a message at help.npr.org if you have additional comments.Can’t stream stations anymore
One used to be able to stream npr stations from all over the US, a HUGE feature of this app. Now that feature is completely gone, and it’s useless for me. That makes no sense. Bye, NPR.Peejaybeee
Developer Response
Hi Peejaybeee, thanks for writing in with your concerns. Streaming our member stations is definitely still possible! There's two ways to do this: 1. On MyNPR, select a primary news station that you have the most affinity for - and that station will always appear in your Live Radio module on the home tab. 2. Using the search button at the top of the app, you can search for any station and tap play to begin streaming it. Any station you've streamed in the last 30 days will also appear in the Recent Streams module on the MyNPR tab so you can easily toggle between them throughout the day. We hope this helps - please don't hesitate to reach out to us at help.npr.org if you need additional assistance.They’ve ruined it
The NPR app used to be really good. Not perfect, but good. This major overhaul has destroyed what it once was, and it’s so disappointing. It used to be an easy routine — every morning I’d wake up and before setting out on my drive, I’d quickly and easily be able to select the Morning Edition stories that sounded interesting and I’d be on my way. Now it requires thorough navigation and way more clicks. Nothing is intuitive anymore. The addition of the “interesting” button is useless — why would I click that? I just want to select my stories and be on my way. In addition, and perhaps the worst of it, is that it no longer remembers how much of a story I have listened to. I can’t tell you how many times now I get 6 minutes in on a 7 minute story, then have to stop it… so when I try to pick up on the story again, I have to start it all over. If I’m driving (which I am doing 95% of the time I am using the app), I can’t safely and easily scrub to find where I left off. So irritating! Also, if I listen to my stories and they end, let it just stop — don’t just auto-play what you think I want to hear! In all, this new revision might just get me to have to find a new source for my daily news. Sad.Show lessWhoopsieGoldberg
Developer Response
Hi - thank you for this detailed feedback - it really helps our team define which items to work on! For returning to items in progress: There's a "Finish Listening" module on the My NPR tab - and it's also there in CarPlay! Please give that a try and let us know if that helps. Also, our most recent iOS app update (v5.9.0) now includes a way to turn off continuous listening. If you don’t want to transition to your personalized listening mix after other audio ends, just turn off the “Continuous play” toggle in your Settings menu. We appreciate your feedback on this latest release of our app - feel free to send us a message at help.npr.org if you have additional comments or need some assistance.Very responsive to feedback.
I enjoy this app for being able to select the stories that interest me. I use it most on CarPlay during my commute to and from work. I felt that the CarPlay experience could use some improvement, so I gave some ideas of what I would find helpful, and some suggestions of how to implement those ideas. To my absolute delight, the latest update included a fantastic increase in CarPlay features and functionality. I understand it is egocentric of me to think that my suggestions are what lead to the improvements of the CarPlay experience. But given the otherwise highly coincidental timing, I prefer to think of this instance as an example that the developers genuinely take the feedback section of this app seriously. Even if there was another news radio app with fewer flaws and more features, I would still rate this one higher because of the development team’s demonstrated attention to honest feedback.Show lessM4D|M4X
Not happy
The old app was fine - clean and simple. This is a disorganized mess of features I don't want and don't use. Please restore the old one as an option.NPR supporter from Canada
