# The Mercury News for Mobile — user reviews > 81 indexed App Store user reviews of The Mercury News for Mobile by MediaNews Group, rated 4.60/5 from 866 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-mercury-news-for-mobile/id479955259/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-mercury-news-for-mobile/id479955259.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 666 · 4★ 117 · 3★ 40 · 2★ 16 · 1★ 27 ## What do users think of The Mercury News for Mobile? Overall sentiment: negative **Pros** - 👍 Enjoyable reading experience - 📰 Keeps users informed - 🗞️ Supports local news **Cons** - 🐛 Buggy and unstable app - 🔍 Poor search and navigation - 🔒 Login and account issues - 💰 Subscription and billing problems - 📱 Subpar mobile experience **Commonly reported bugs** - Frequent crashes and freezes - Inconsistent login and access - Unreliable content updates - Compatibility issues on tablets **Most requested features** - Restore previous app version - Improve layout and readability - Add landscape mode support - Enhance search and browsing - Streamline subscription management ## Newest reviews (15 of 81) ### 3/5 — Love the Merc but… *2025-12-05* I read the Mercury every day, and so much want to support local news sources, but the e-edition is cumbersome to navigate. Not intuitive at all ### 4/5 — Great paper *2025-05-16* Love the journalism. Hate the app forcing me to update. Just let the app update like every other app, don’t give me a dialog box forcing me to go to the App Store to update. ### 3/5 — Article text size cannot be adjusted *2024-10-05* Defective. ### 3/5 — Bring back landscape support! *2024-03-05* I’m not sure why they removed support for landscape orientation, it ruins the experience when using the iPad Smart Cover as a stand, which only props up the iPad horizontally. ### 2/5 — Good resource, if you can find stuff *2024-03-03* I like to bookmark things I find in the paper, but finding the content on the app is an adventure in using the right keywords in search. Would love to have a better search experience or maybe articles IDs to use in search (can’t believe I’m suggesting this: aol keywords) ### 3/5 — Billing *2023-10-19, version 7.6.3* Where is Billing? I can’t find it on this iPhone App. Also as a subscriber, the App must make it easy to manage account but it does not. Please update. Thanks! ### 4/5 — Worst news app ever! *2023-08-06, version 7.6.3* It’s impossible to find the most important news! ### 3/5 — low budget design yields so-so app *2022-12-24, version 7.6.3* i get email alerts but have to re-auth to read. i expect traditional paper layout but defaults to new article arrangement. headlines repeat over and again when i press next. all of the articles are read only so i can't copy text to send to friends. compared to nyt or atlantic - difficult to navigate. ### 1/5 — Difficult to sign in *2022-11-14, version 7.6.3* I have had difficulty signing in for several weeks now. I enter the correct email address and password and it doesn’t accept the password. What a waist of time! ### 1/5 — Worse than useless *2022-10-31, version 7.6.3* Longtime subscriber now unable to access Mercury News!!! ### 1/5 — Hate this app *2022-09-22, version 7.6.3* Your eMercury app is much better than this app. ### 1/5 — App is unusable. Impossible to connect to account. *2022-08-28, version 7.6.3* APP is unusable. Impossible to connect to account. ### 1/5 — Bad app *2022-08-20, version 7.6.3* Bring back the old app. This one is horrible. ### 1/5 — Worse app in history of apps *2022-07-25, version 7.6.3* Did they forget to finish building this app? Is this a joke? You can’t read an article on this app without logging in EVERY SINGLE TIME. I’ve spoke. To customer service who were incredibly arrogant and rude, and they didn’t even care in the slightest bit. Garbage app for a armpit of a towns newspaper. Losers! ### 1/5 — A forced tracking monster *2022-06-20, version 7.6.3* The new SJMerc app privacy policy is totally at odds with letting users chose what information we want to share. It smacks of Facebook’s approach to users, not as paying customers, but as products for SJMerc to resell. We pay SJMerc a subscription fee to use the app, and now they also want to force us to let them grab all our data. SJMerc, please explain. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Update? *2025-07-24* The app was working fine until this morning, when it forced an update. Now it won’t load. Can we go back to the previous version? ### 1/5 — Too many push notifications I didn’t ask for *2025-07-08* After downloading this app I was pleasantly surprised that I could include notifications for the local news only. After couple of days these “local” notifications randomly changed into Top SECOND HAND News about everything in the world. Suggestion to developers of the app. This is MERC, a SJC newspaper. Make it possible to select and receive notifications relevant to SJC. ### 1/5 — Bring Back Landscape Orientation! *2024-03-11* The decision to remove landscape orientation (for no apparent reason) was a mistake. Maybe at least tell us why this was necessary? I use Apple’s Magic Keyboard and that works only in landscape orientation. To use the SJMN app now, I have to disconnect from power, hold the tablet in my hands, and do without the keyboard. This is a bummer! ### 1/5 — TOTAL GARBAGE! *2023-11-07* The latest “update” in early November 2023 renders this app utterly unusable. Not only does it continually ask me to login to the app I am already logged into it overwhelms the user with ads, pop-ups, and other absolute visual garbage. I am actually considering canceling my hardcopy subscription to the newspaper because this app shows they care absolutely nothing for the readers of this paper, but only for the advertisers. ### 1/5 — To say the app is clunky understates how bad it is *2023-10-23, version 7.6.3* Dreading the cancellation process— very long hold time for that. ### 1/5 — Horrible app *2023-08-26, version 7.6.3* Poor app design and subscription and login problems. Second time I have tried to use this, like the paper but app is horrible. ### 1/5 — I’m canceling this mess *2023-05-13, version 7.6.3* App is inferior. No search. Not good. ### 1/5 — Please bring back the old app *2023-01-26, version 7.6.3* I would give it 0 stars if would let me, in one word it is terrible. The Wall Street Journal uses your old app. The differences are striking. ### 1/5 — No full page view is a serious drawback *2023-01-15, version 7.6.3* The app should have full page view. The app puts a border around the text crowding out the content. In landscape mode the text does not even fit in the window of you put text size in medium font. ### 1/5 — Miss the Local Articles, New Format Drove me to Cancel My Subscription *2022-12-25, version 7.6.3* Too frustrating/ difficult to read in the new format for me. Don’t want to wade through the ads and other articles I am not interested in to find the news. I am only interested in the Digital format, but constantly having to scroll the screen to read is a PIA. I could be enticed to re-subscribing if the format was returned to the old or better reading format… ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Indispensable *2026-08-14* Must read for longtime Silicon Valley residents ### 5/5 — John David Tech10 *2025-11-27* Love the news. By SJ Mercury keeps me informed! Thank You! ### 5/5 — Enjoying reading on my phone *2025-08-09* We have a daily subscription for the Mercury News under my husband‘s name but sometimes I like to read the news on my cell phone even though I have a hard copy. I do enjoy the Local Section, Sal’s report, Thursday’s Weekend section, Eat and Play on Sundays and just receiving the news on a regular basis. ### 5/5 — Total dissatisfaction. I was duped into subscription *2024-06-19, version 10.0.14* I saw the offer which was an interesting one $12.00 for two years. Very interesting that I can’t read articles unless I I get a free 30 day trial (?) I am a senior with limited computer knowledge. My complaint is that I can’t find a way to communicate with them to ask them what is going on. So I subscribe for two years and the only thing I’m getting from the subscription is two years of notifications telling me that I have read my allotment? Can someone please explain? I need help but there’s no place to navigate to for assistance or cancellations. ### 5/5 — Love the “Merc”! *2024-03-05* After 50 years in the Bay Area, still my favorite news source. ### 5/5 — Search functionality fails *2021-10-01, version 7.6.0* I can’t find any articles using the search icon ### 5/5 — アメリカの生でリアルな、英語 *2014-03-14* アメリカのニュースを、現地から、生でリアルな英語を、通して、触れられる。 ### 5/5 — Pretty good! *2013-10-29* I dunno why this app has such bad reviews, it actually works very well. This app could improve by giving readers the ability to close ads. Aside from that, I think it's a great way to get editorial content from one of my favorite newspapers. Oh and providing readers w a frys ad could make the mercury money and give us nerdy valley kids some eye candy haha. Recommended ### 5/5 — News *2013-09-27, version 4.6.0.0* The news app generally covers the same articles as the paper. Sports are pretty well covered. I always read the breaking news, which is should just be called 'top stories' because it is still delivered at a paper's pace. Overall, I'm pretty happy to use the app. ### 5/5 — Sharks news *2013-07-02* Great app to great all your sharks news here in Canada!!! Go sharks Go --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-02.*