I normally read from the mobile site, so having an app seemed like a great option. Everything about the app seems clean, polished, and effective; however, for some reason the dark mode toggle doesn’t work properly.
I normally leave everything in dark mode, with the one exception of ebooks. I’d rather my book look like a book. In the app, I found the dark/light mode toggle in the settings, but for some reason, after toggling to light mode, the stories remain in dark mode. The multiple tabs and every other page was switched to light mode, but when I opened the story I wanted to read, it was still in dark mode. I tried restarting the app and even my phone, but it just doesn’t seem to work. For now I will stick to the website where I can read more easily.
I’ve been reading stories on Royal road for at least a year now, and within days of using the app I upgraded to premium. Ads were completely non-intrusive, but I wanted access to offline downloads as I frequently put my phone in airplane mode. There have been a few minor issues, as expected of a new app. Customer service answered my ticket promptly, and the developers have been putting out frequent updates with improvements and fixes.
Having unclosable ads with sound interrupt reading a story is not acceptable. I switched to the larger, occasional add because I was distracted by adds constantly blinking at me. My app has also crashed 3/4 of the time I use the next chapter button. The only bonus to the app is notifications of new chapters coming out.
I also tried the “you might like” story section but over 50% of the recommended stories have less than 20 chapters and were abandoned.
I uninstalled when the first minute long mobile app add started playing with volume.
I’ve been reading on RoyalRoad for a couple years now and can say that so far the app has been an improvement on the website in almost every way.
One problem though is with displaying in-chapter tables, which are currently formatted to take up only the center third of the page. This results in the words in tables to be split into small segments.
Other than that I’ve been having a great time reading on the app, and am looking forward to improvements during the months to come.
First complaint: A while ago the developers said they would get rid of the moving ads. Well, I continue to regularly get moving or flashing bright white ads on my black screen. It renders the ap completely useless. I can’t concentrate enough to read with all that happening at the top of the page. I turn the ap on and off to try to get rid of it and when I open it again the same or worse ads are on the page. Second complaint: The ap doesn’t remember where I stopped reading. Are you kidding me?! This is a reading application with no way to bookmark?! RR seems like nice people. These are two issues that need to be fixed asap.
As a reader and writer who’s been making use of Royal Road for months by now, the app is decent. If you only plan on using RR to read stories, it’s perfect. At the moment though, that’s the main thing it has going for it. It provides a better reading experience due to decreased lag, as long as you don’t mind a smaller screen.
If you want to try your hand at writing, or interact on the forums, you still have to use the website. For most users it probably won’t be an issue, but it would be nice to have access to RR’s writing tools from the app. It could also provide a nice safety net for authors that way: if you try to save a draft while you don’t have Wi-Fi, maybe a pop up could let you save the data to your device as a temporary measure.
All in all, I think it’s worth the download, especially since the devs are likely to polish it further and possibly implement more features as time goes on.
Royal Road is a great site. It’s got super robust filtering so you are likely to find a story you actually like very quickly. Best rated is the first place to look of course.
Also, the monetization scheme at the moment does not have annoying pop up ads. They have a system in place that allows authors to place internal ads, so you no longer have to stare at brightly colored capitalist abominations; instead you get bad memes with book recommendations.
Definitely my favorite site for original stories
I’ve been reading on this platform for years now on an almost daily basis, and sometimes I read on my phone because it’s easier or I’m not at my computer. While I used the internet to get the website up on safari, this app is much more convenient
Look, I love Royal Road. I’ve spent hundreds of hours if not thousands reading on that site over the last several years. So when I saw there was an app,I got really excited.
And I ended up uninstalling it in under an hour. Let’s list the problems:
- Persistent banner ad at the bottom. I get they have to make money, and deserve it. But this is just obnoxious, and objectively worse then that website.
- No font size, treatment, or otherwise options to control the look and feel of the text. Not to mention any other theme options. Again, objectively worse than the website.
- It’s… just the website inside the worlds shoddiest container? Again, say after me, objectively worse than the website.
I would _love_ a real app for Royal Road, as I fully agree that reading inside my browser isn’t the best experience in the world. But man, I hope the website doesn’t go away anytime soon, because as many hours of enjoyment as I’ve gotten, if this was the only option? Jesus, I think I’d rather never read anything ever again.
I’ve been reading on Royal Road for over a year now, and my experience has been amazing all-throughout. The website has been fantastic, and this app is looking to be even better. There are a couple problems with the app, but all of them have been minor, and can be easily fixed. Basically, Royal Road is an amazing website with amazing devs, and the app is definitely worth taking a shot at.
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