Leave a Review NPR
Quality content that’s hard to access
Much of the basic functionality of the previous app has been removed. I especially miss the ability to build a playlist. Now, you’re stuck listening to specific programs in the order they are presented. Finding programming is more annoying too. They have these little icons for each show in the On Demand section, and it’s hard to tell which is Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday because the icons are too small. (I figured that they are alphabetically ordered.)
More importantly, the app doesn’t interface with iOS controls nearly as well. I often finding myself having to log into the app to get it replaying after pausing it, instead of just pressing play from the Lock Screen. The app is extremely slow refreshing, sometimes not refreshing at all, so that I have to close it by hand and reopen in order to get the latest Newscast.
Please God stop with the advertisements for NPR One. I don’t want NPR One, I just want to make playlists myself.Show lessDhrknks
New update is terrible
I know people sometimes have trouble with change, but this isn’t one of those things. The new update is really slow, will stop playing often, does not seem to have any programming from more than a few days ago, and very important for me… they took away the ability to make playlists. I take public transport a lot, and having a playlist made helps. Also I love to fall asleep listening to this app, but now I can’t listen to anything other than just one show or one program. Yes it may look better than the old app, but it’s functionality is way worse. I’m really disappointed that NPR did this. This app used to be part of my day, but now I’m starting to use it less and less. And honestly...maybe there is a little bit of conspiracy theory here, but maybe they made this app worse to get people to use the NPR one app which is also bad, but not as bad as this is. NPR, please please please change this back, or improve the functionality, and for the love of God please add the ability to have playlist! Or just delete this in force everybody to use the NPR one app.Show lessDC KOP
Good at what it does, horrible for the features it left out.
The new app has a better media player, with great pause and fast forward and rewind features and overall is more stable and reliable. That’s the good news. The bad news- they totally did away with the playlist, making it absolutely impossible to save individual episodes and play them whenever you want to. You’re now limited to selecting the current days version of each program, if you don’t listen to the entire program before the next days program comes out, you’re totally screwed, there’s no way to go back and listen to The previous one. Also every time you exit the app and come back it completely forgets where you were in the list of episodes for the days program, you have to basically start all over and manually skip ahead. A lot of wasted of time skipping things I’ve already heard just to get back where I left off listening. It’s basically killed the enjoyment of the app for me and made it nothing but frustrating. I know you guys are trying to force people to listen to the local stations more in order to support them but this is ridiculous. I don’t know who sat down and designed this thing but it seems to have deliberately omitted the very best features of the previous app.Show lessUberFilmsLtd
Terrible update, delete app now
The best feature of the old NPR News app was the ability of the listener to create a personal playlist from a menu of stories from various NPR programs. They’ve taken that functionality away. This app is essentially useless to me now, and I’m deleting it.
EDIT: eight weeks later, and NPR is making qualified statements about they will “work on building a better queued listening experience for NPR in the months ahead.” Except NPR ALREADY HAD THAT SOLUTION and dumped it, presumably to force listeners to NPR One and local stations. As a result, my NPR listening has declined by 95%, and I did NOT renew my longstanding membership with my local affiliate. Bring back the playlist!
EDIT (JUNE 10): I see the developer responded to my earlier review. Refusing to renew my NPR membership is entirely in line with my objection to the removal of the playlist. Local affiliate fundraising provides stations with funds to pay for programming from national NPR, and moreover, one result of the removal of the playlist was to force listeners to the local stations instead of self-curating NPR content through the app. I recognize the importance of local stations, but local stations need to use their leverage to support listeners’ range of options, not reduce them. Until the playlist is restored, we should not contribute to NPR through its member stations.Show lessUserApp99
Developer Response
Edit 10/24: Hi there, We wanted to circle back and let you know that that the playlist has been restored in the NPR App as of our latest release, 4.2.0. Try it out and let us know what you think. We greatly appreciate all of your feedback and your support of NPR. ////////// Hi UserApp9, thanks for sending your feedback. We are reviewing all our playlisters' feedback, and we'll be using all of this information to evaluate how we can best help meet this need in future updates. We had the rebuild the app completely from scratch — it was 9 years old — so it wasn't possible to "move" the old playlist to the new app. We're not trying to force anyone to listen to NPR One, and we hope you won't take your frustration out on your local station. You can still listen to individual segments and whole episodes of shows like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and NPR and member station podcasts from the "On Demand" tab. While we understand this doesn't fit your playlist need, we appreciate your patience as we continue to evaluate all the playlist feedback to determine next steps.Nearly useless without NPR Programs & playlist
I'm crushed. I've been a heavy user of the NPR app for a long time. As an expat living six time zones away, it's a vital way for me to stay connected to the news from home. Recently the ability to access Featured NPR News programs and to choose segments from those programs to listen to has vanished. The app's only remaining utility for me is listening to the headline news. I was disappointed when you killed the playlist feature, but this is the final blow. NPR One is equally useless because it doesn't allow me to select and curate what I want to listen to. For the large number of devoted NPR listeners living overseas, being able to listen live to a particular station may not be of interest because of time differences and the fact that local news is less relevant. The latest app changes have significantly diminished my ability to access NPR News. Please please please bring back the ability to access ATC, Morning Edition, and other non-podcast news programs, and maybe even the playlist. How about it?Show lessmvalcour
NPR fixed sth that’s not broken
The new app is difficult to navigate, it doesn’t offer the playlist option anymore which was such a great feature. It crashes regularly. I wish I never had updated the app. I love NPR‘s reporting, though.JayLZee
PLAYLISTS or DEATH!!
This app is going to get someone KILLED. I’m serious. Bring back the PLAYLISTS! Without the ability to play selected stories and shows for a long period makes this app DANGEROUS on the road, if not DEADLY. I’m not sure how to make it any clearer. The new design of the app is horrible. Not only did they get rid of the best feature, but it erased my playlist of stories that I had accumulated over several months, many of which I would share with others long after hearing them myself. In my market, there’s more than one station, so now I have to change the home station every time I want to hear a different one. And those in other markets? Too bad! And where’s the list of shows? HORRIBLE app. HORRIFIC update. It seems the people who did the npr One app (also terrible) have infected Npr News app as well. Please AVOID using this app in the car. It’s just not safe. Even better, just avoid it altogether and definitely DO NOT UPDATE YOUR OLD VERSION!!Show lessnewzer1
Hate the new update!!!
Hey NPR, ever heard of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”. The new update is terrible! I used to be able to save several local NPR stations as favorites so that I could listen to a variety of programs since each local NPR station has different programming and schedules. Some have original programs unique only to that local station. By being able to have a list of favorite stations, I could easily & quickly stream the local NPR that I want & then be able to listen that station within a few seconds. If I didn’t like what I was listening to then l could easily switch to a different station on my favorites list. The new update only allows one station to be saved as primary when you go to “Live Radio”. I know I’m not the only one who is very unhappy the app changed. In fact, I’m among the many of the unhappy!! Please developers of this app, l advise and beseech you to listen & heed my review and the other reviews from other dissatisfied users so you can reincorporate the old features of the app that made it great!Show lessLogicGameLover
Updated review: better
So I’m leaving my previous review at the bottom so people know what I’m talking about. I received a developer response asking me to provide them some more info, and I just kept forgetting to respond to it so I never actually gave them additional feedback. But the primary station and crashing issues I gripes about below seem to have been resolved. It’s still not the most intuitive interface, but now I like it better than the old app. It’s been working pretty reliably well for the past week or so. Not my fave app, but solid for my use (which is just listening to my local station in the AM while I get ready for work).
Newest version is crazy buggy. I’ve had to search for and set my primary station pretty much daily. Sometimes the search function decides not to work and I need to close and reopen the app. Sometimes the whole deal just freezes and I need to close and reopen the app.
Pausing causes it to crash. Dropping the signal causes it to crash. Navigating through the app causes it to crash. Fix them bugs!!Show lessOctopüff
Developer Response
Hi there, We're sorry to hear that you've been experiencing some technical problems when trying out the new app, specifically around your primary station not saving and crashing. We definitely want to help investigate these issues more and help resolve them ASAP. Would you be able to reach out to us here to provide some additional details? https://n.pr/2EgAyyh. We appreciate you trying out the app and for reaching out to share these concerns as we try to build the best possible NPR App for our users.Very disappointing!
I rate NPR 5 stars but I rate this app one star. You took away the Playlist. I used to go to different programs and selectively add to my playlist and just have it all play at once. Great when driving long distance or when doing other things while listening. Now I can only listen to one story at a time then go browse again and listen to the next one. This is not practical and now time consuming especially in the morning when getting ready for work. You also took away the search option which was an Amazing feature to search by topic or name and then read or listen. Programs is now On Demand but in programs it was a quick scroll through to get to the program you want to read or listen to. I can get used to the new look and icons, and I understand you want to bring the app up to date, but please don’t take away the playlist and the search feature. I can get used to everything else. That being said I love and appreciate all what you do!Show lessPrytender
