Leave a Review NPR
Redesign looks nice, but missing fratures
The new NPR app is prettier than the old app, but it is less usable:
# No search.
I hope this is added back soon, but the new app simply does not have any search functionality. I can't see why search is omitted.
In particular, this makes it impossible to listen to segments that are no longer currently listed in the latest installment of a program. For instance, I often like to
losten to "It's all politics" segments from Friday's All Things Considered. And this is now impossible, unless I listen on the day it airs.
# More menus/more navigation.
For me, and (I suspect) many other listeners, the most inportant page is the list of all programs. This is where I always start. It is now tucked away in a submenu under "On Demand". It's just a bit of additional scrolling + an additional tap, but I find myself doing this over and over again.
# Lower information density -> more scrolling.
Once within a list of stories/segmants, only 3 list items fit on the screen at once (on my iPhone X). This makes it harder to look over a list and choose which items you want to listen to. This change allowed for small excerpts to be displayed underneath segment titles, but these excerpts are often truncated first sentences which, in practice, don't actually help summarize what a segment is about.
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Taken together, I can no longer use this app to listen to NPR in the way I want to listen to it: picking individual segments to add to my playlist.Show lessjackson1372
Absolutely AWFUL redo that completely ruined WAS an amazing app
On what planet is the new NPR app considered an improvement???? This new app breaks my heart and only leads me to curse the change. Early and often. And then look for great audio content elsewhere. NPR went from being my favorite app that I loved and used multiple times a day to being one that feels like a useless annoying waste of space on my phone. You took away pretty much everything I loved about the NPR app - the playlist function, the easy search function, being able to search by show and find and select individual stories. Now I have to wade through a bunch of annoyingly messy “headlines” and try to figure out which stories actually have audio and hope they are things I actually want to listen to?? I can’t just go to my favorite shows and scroll through. It’s also awkward to try to share things. Everything about this new app absolutely stinks. Who were the idiots who actually thought this was a good idea?Show lessEmily722S
Awful, bad update. Give us back the old version
Please, please bring back the previous iOS app—it’s SO far superior to the updated version!! The previous version was great; easy to use and useful. A news app doesn’t need a fancy interface, it needs to quickly let users find content. But you’ve traded function for form in the new update, and it’s awful. I’ve used the app (and listened for hours per day, literally) since it launched in 2009, and I couldn’t be more disappointed. I have both an iPhone and a Samsung for work, and now I have to use my work phone to listen because it still has the old version. The previous app made it easy to scroll through stories, but this one has flashy headlines and more pictures substituted for the content users want. All the stories I’d loaded in my playlist to listen on the way to work vanished overnight, and I can’t even create a playlist!! The FOUR favorite stations id saved and listened to frequently are gone and it’s cumbersome to find a live stream. It’s also irritating and cumbersome to find favorite programs. You guys have broken something that didn’t need fixing. Please, please ditch this version and give your loyal users back the previous, actually useful one.Show lessKBdc80
Miss the old app
I don’t write reviews often, but the disparity between the recently revised NPR app and the old version is too great to ignore. The old app, while less ‘modern’ looking, felt less rigid, more customizable, and less cumbersome to use. The utility I miss the most was the ability to create playlists from stories from various NPR programs into one stream, and have that stream auto-play from one story to another. Now, if one plays an individual story in Morning Edition, for instance, it does not auto-play the next story; one has to go back into the app and manually play the next story or the entire program must be played in order for a “playlist” to be created. It’s cumbersome and sometimes dangerous, particularly while listening on the road. I can fathom that this system forces the listener to listen to 1) more ads (which seem to be auto-generated in between stories and could not be before with self-created playlists), and 2) more stories (forcing the listener to listen the entire program instead allowing the ability to choose). Please bring back the functionality of the old app. I have spent the better half of this morning searching for whether it is possible to reinstall old versions of apps in iTunes.Show lesssoarin3
best features all gone !!!
As many others say in their negative reviews, one star is too high a rating for this new version but it’s impossible to write a zero-star review.
All the features I used in the old app have been eliminated. I have a Primary Station, yes, but I browse to other stations on a regular basis for shows ‘my’ station doesn’t carry. The process of switching to another station is cumbersome and results in the former ‘Primary Station’ being replaced, so it has to be painstakingly re-selected when one wants to return it.
Additionally, the previous version listed all the streams of any selected station, making it simple to select HD1, HD2, etc. The new version makes it nearly as cumbersome to select a stream as it is to choose the Primary Station in the first place.
Needless to say, I have deleted the new NPR One app - it’s replaced by individual apps for the stations I listen to. Fortunately by now most individual stations have fine apps of their own. Not as convenient as the previous NPR One version, but a great improvement over the new version.Show lessTNpuzzlet
The things I loved are gone...
You moved/removed my cheese. I thought the previous versions were simple to navigate. I use the iPhone app every day and multiple times each day. Now I’m struggling to find the stories and programs I used to easily browse and either read or add in my playlist. However, the most frustrating loss is the inability to create a list of favorite radio stations that I could easily go to and select. As an example, If I missed Morning Edition in my time zone I could go to another NPR station in a time zone 3-6 hours away to listen there. Now I can only select and list a single radio station, no ability to create a quick to reference favorites list. So each time I want to switch I have to remember the station ID or city, search for it and then select it. This app is nearly useless to me now. I contribute to WAMU, WABE, WGBH AND KCRW every year because I frequently listen to each. Your app re-designer has failed people like me. I’ll be installing one of the internet radio apps and using it instead - BOOShow lessatlmacgeek
Bring the NPR News app back, please
The new NPR app seems designed like the NPR One app, which is really unfortunate. On the old NPR News app, I could create my own playlists, listening to these three stories but not that one. That functionality has all been removed from the new (and certainly not improved) NPR app. Sometimes I might want to listen to most of one day’s All Things Considered program, but would (for example) delete the sports stories because I just don’t care about them. With the change to this new NPR app, it’s not possible to curate my own NPR playlist. It’s frustrating that NPR’s “digital” department thinks that this is what their listeners want.
The new NPR app is much less listener-friendly and makes it more difficult to seek out new/interesting content. It is still easy to find Morning Edition or All Things Considered—but it is very difficult to find the off-the-wall and obscure programs produced by smaller NPR member stations across the country. The old NPR News app was great for that.
Ugh. I gave up on using NPR One years ago because I didn’t like how that program “decided” for me what it thought I would want to listen to. I was an active user of the NPR News app for years and years. I used the Playlist feature on a daily basis. It was a very frustrating morning to be forced into using this new NPR app that has taken away much of the functionality of the old NPR News app. Please bring the old NPR News app back!Show lessRyan9157384
Already miss the Old App
I should have known better than to go with the new NPR app that replaced NPR News. There was so much to love about it. Although I do Support my local NPR Station, I also like to browse, including locally produced programs from other parts of the country, which are not carried by my local station. That was easy to do in the old app. I simply brought up the station, and chose an on-demand program. These shows were displayed alongside the live streams. In addition , I could create a Favorites list, and even add items to a playlist for later use. In the new version, all of these features are gone. Now, the only way to get on-demand material from other stations seems to involve changing one’s favorite station; and, even if you do that, you then have to go to a separate On-Demand tab to get such material, and there are fewer choices of podcasts and topics. For instance, on the old app, I could go to WUNC (not my local station), and listen to podcasts from The People’s Pharmacy. Now, even by making that station my favorite, I found very few choices—and The People’s Pharmacy wasn’t one of them. Then, I had to reset my favorite station; then, to get back to where I was (if it wasn’t my local station), I had to go to Recently Streamed, and _hope to find it there. I hope I will grow to like the new app better, but don’t count on it. The reason I even gave it 4 stars is that I’m a huge fan of NPR.Show lessVoiceOver user.
It's great!
Exactly what I wanted. Access to hundreds of different radio stations. Great listens, and open ideas and opinions.Ummmm........z
Good stuff
Thanks for your extensive news reporting and docos. Glad to have the app!Aussie-Ensch
