The Great Courses User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience39.7% of reviews
Neutral13.9% of reviews
Negative experience46.5% of reviews

~ Based on 310 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is The Great Courses Safe?

The Great Courses appears safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for The Great Courses is 96/100.

This assessment is based on 17,172 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.8/5.

Safety Analysis

95.9% of ratings point to a safe experience
1.5% of ratings suggest some concerns
2.6% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 17,172 App Store ratings for The Great Courses.

Is The Great Courses Legit?

The Great Courses appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for The Great Courses is 83/100.

Based on 83 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Cancel

You incomptents logged me out and now I can't log back in even after resetting my password.

Fantastic content terrible app

That is pretty much it. Great courses indeed. I have listened to/watched dozens and loved them. Selection and presentation is biased towards anglosphere, which however is to be expected, so no big complaint. The main issue is the app, which has a myriad of issues, from not opening sometimes to only playing video (not just audio) when not connected to wifi; a fairly odd but persistent issue. Since the app has been bad for years improvement seems unlikely. So if you are curious, love great content and are patient this app is for you.
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Sat unused and subscribed

I tried to sign back in to get some use of the last 14 days left after I cancelled and could not ‘restore’ the purchase in the app. Didn’t play well with passwords app.

New update sucks

Can’t get to my old purchases. Update is wonky. Will not use - lost a long time customer

Unfortunate software

Hopefully, this is an isolated incident. However, my personal experience shows otherwise. The courses are world class however the software is remarkably bad. Plan on multiple password resets in order to view your coursework. Each login requires multiple password resets. What a shame.

Limited Content if you dont get Plus

I got the Classics membership because there was a promo, then added a bunch of lectures to my watch list. I started several. Then when I log back in nearly every course I had saved is now only in the plus bundle, practically double the price. I will be canceling the membership immediately. There is no way they could have done this intentionally, but it felt very misleading.
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Suggestions for improvements

This is a great app, but I would use it more if it supported picture in picture. Consider adding that functionality!

Cant use on multiple devices without breaking your login credentials, making app completely unusable

After four years, it LOOKS LIKE they have finally made an app that is stable and functional... WRONG! Turns out if you try to use their service on a different device, like an android tablet or phone, once you login on the android device, it logs you out out of your iPhone app. And then, when you try to log back in on your iPhone, your username and password no longer works! It says email and password not a match. But I absolutely positively was using the correct password and email set. To "fix this" I had to reinstall the app, which deleted 100 GB of my off-line downloads! This kind of thing has happened so many times and I'm tired of having to waste my time re-downloading my off-line downloads. I love the service but the problems with the app is ridiculous. I think it's time to quit and go with a different service.
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Ok content, weak app

You can’t change the subtitle settings at all. It just always starts their horrible subtitles every video. They do not match the words and are all jumbled. Why this is forced on people I don’t know.

App Just Hangs

Tried to launch the app does not go to the login page.

Wonderful and frustrating

The content is WONDERFUL and has rececently gone through a major update and remastering (thank you!). Now, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make it easy to share a link to courses AND episodes. I have several friends who also have the subscription and it is hard to recommend and link up for watching and chatting on all the wonderful material. This is an emportant part of this subscription.
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Incredible content but the app has issues

I’ve been using the app for about 6 years almost everyday, through all its various incarnations. I’ve noticed the loading times have gotten slower and slower and the app has always been buggy but seems to be having more issues in the past 6 months. Is there a better place to report this kind of app specific stuff ?
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version 8 just released

Feb 19: Version 8 recently released, and so far so good! All working as it should.

Be prepared to be frustrated

The app is constantly unstable and unreliable. Your downloads disappear, settings are lost, you're forced to upgrade or logged out unexpectedly, etc. For somebody trying to listen while away from WiFi this will be a constant frustration.

In addition, the depth and challenge of the material seems dumbed down since the rebranding from The Teaching Company.

Still seems like the best choice for real educational material, but also a shame, given what it once was.
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Fantastic way to keep learning

There are so many different courses, the professors are fantastic and new courses are consistently being added- such a great way to continue learning! Highly recommend!

Great Courses, Inadequate App

My wife and I have long been fans of The Great Courses, even during the dark time when it temporarily abandoned its name; this review is for the app, not the content. It is flakey in its basic functionality, even after the supposedly major 8.0 upgrade:
• It often forgets the last lecture I played, resuming instead at the beginning of the previous lecture.
• It usually loses my place when switching from video to audio.
• It stops while playing in video mode when I lock the screen. This is a reasonable interface decision, though inappropriate for my usage in the gym. But it usually fails to resume when I press the Play button, either on the lock screen or on my headphones. I seem to have better luck if I pause the video before locking the screen.
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New forced app update won’t open!

My yearly subscription through apple isn’t being recognized by the app… plenty of other apps do this seemlessly, without kicking me out AND continue to recognize my subscription. Fix this ASAP!

v18 Breaks App Store Purchase

I was forced to update the app to the newest version. When trying to sign in by clicking “Restore Purchase” it throws up a load indicator, the does nothing.

Good content but terrible app

Asking for my apple password. Not going to input that.

Great Courses, Inadequate App

My wife and I have long been fans of The Great Courses, even during the dark time when it temporarily abandoned its name; this review is for the app, not the content. It is flakey in its basic functionality:
• It often forgets the last lecture I played, resuming instead at the beginning of the previous lecture.
• It usually loses my place when switching from video to audio.
• It stops while playing in video mode when I lock the screen. This is a reasonable interface decision, though inappropriate for my usage in the gym. But it usually fails to resume when I press the Play button, either on the lock screen or on my headphones. I seem to have better luck if I pause the video before locking the screen.
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