# The School of Life — user reviews > 144 indexed App Store user reviews of The School of Life by The School of Life, rated 4.00/5 from 91 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-school-of-life/id1533269731/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-school-of-life/id1533269731.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 61 · 4★ 5 · 3★ 7 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 16 ## What do users think of The School of Life? Overall sentiment: mixed **Pros** - 💎 Exceptional content - 🧠 Helpful for self-growth and understanding - 👍 Well-designed app interface - 🕰️ Bite-size format for easy consumption - 🤗 Calming and grounding experience - 🧭 Useful for tracking progress **Cons** - 🔒 Paywall restricts access to content - 🐛 Frequent app crashes and bugs - 🔊 Poor audio quality and playback issues - 🔍 Difficult to navigate and find content - 💻 Lack of iPad support - 🔋 High battery consumption **Commonly reported bugs** - Consistent authentication problems - Podcast playback issues and app crashes - Inability to log in or reset password - Unreliable saving and syncing of progress - Compatibility issues with newer OS versions **Most requested features** - Add offline mode and download functionality - Implement a highlighting/note-taking feature - Improve search and filtering capabilities - Introduce a dark mode option - Add more audio and video content - Provide access to content on desktop/web ## Newest reviews (14 of 144) ### 4/5 — Pease fix audio issues *2026-07-11* Lots of interesting things here to keep you occupied as an alternative to you know what. Or as I do, to take a small break to relax a few and listen to something that usually gives new perspectives on life. But those breaks are best taken with eyes closed, or not, and just sound but the audio with its disturbing volume shifts from low to very high all of a sudden and back are in no way relaxing lol. Aware it’s a new feature, but please fix. ✌️ ### 4/5 — Invaluable intelligent insights you can work with *2026-06-23* The School of Life are a rare oasis of intelligence in a wellbeing ocean of blandness. The content is uniquely thought provoking in that it uses art, architecture and other sources with an injection of dry wit, to cut through to the heart of an issue, in such a well that one finds oneself inevitably recognising the matter in yourself, thereby forcing you to take ownership and resist pity. ### 5/5 — A Different Perspective *2026-06-23* I love this app! I’ve been a member for a while and I open the app whenever I feel beat down by scrolling or need a different perspective on mundane daily life. It always gives me something to think about, and usually results in more kindness and calm in my life. ### 5/5 — The best !!!! *2026-06-23* Everything about TSof Life is the best. I use just about all of their articles and videos to send to friends and even almost strangers. The info is clear, concise and inspiring. I was turned onto the books years ago, before so much online stuff. I was hooked as soon as I read them. Alain Boton is fabulous and I would love to do a retreat one day! Thank you for all your great work! **Developer response:** Thank you so much for your lovely message—it means the world to us. We’re so glad the content has been meaningful to you over the years, and it’s wonderful to hear you’re sharing it with others too. We’ll pass your kind words along to the team (and Alain!). We’d love to welcome you on a retreat one day! ### 5/5 — Incredible *2026-06-23* I love using this app! There are plenty of valuable information on psychology and philosophy that I have been able to use in my day to day life! ### 5/5 — A guide when you need one *2026-06-23* I love navigating around the app. It feels thoughtfully laid out with a new idea or topic or thought around every corner. The content, as always, is top notch. ### 4/5 — Quality of Life *2026-06-15* The content is incredibly insightful, the user Interface is very pretty and easy to navigate, however when listening to the articles will often result in the app crashing, and there is no option to drag the audio along, so you must restart entirely. Although most of these articles are only 3 or so minutes, I would still appreciate some sort of slider. Thanks :) ### 4/5 — Listening rather than just reading as the only option *2026-04-03* option to listen instead of only reading, for me it takes time to focus on just that. Will have to cancel ### 5/5 — Great app, but suddenly stopped working *2026-03-23* I can’t access app, something about error “network code500”. Is it going to be fixed? Thank you. ### 5/5 — Excellent Resource *2026-03-21* The content of this app is great and presented in an insightful manner. In the end, what matters is what you do with the information. Apply what you learn and you will progress. I had an issue with my account, I reached out to support and received immediate assistance. I appreciate the help! ### 2/5 — Not free *2025-10-31, version 1.20.1* This is not initially clear- you may not use this app for free. ### 5/5 — Indispensable wisdom *2025-09-13* Love the content and the bite-size app format. Have followed The School of Life for years and so much of the wisdom and worldview it delivers resonates deeply with me. I often find it’s the calming or grounding voice I didn’t know I needed. I will say I can’t comment much on the full set of app features or functionality, as I tend to largely read and listen to articles/topics. Hope to get around to using the wider features eventually. Keep being a voice of reason in a messy time - appreciate you. **Developer response:** Thank you for such a thoughtful and generous review. We’re deeply glad to know that our work continues to offer calm and perspective when it’s most needed. We hope you’ll enjoy exploring more of the app’s features in time — and we’re truly grateful for your long-standing support. ### 5/5 — Issues fixed *2025-08-30* . **Developer response:** We’re so glad to hear everything’s now working as it should. Thank you for your kind 5-star rating, it really means a lot to us. ### 5/5 — Add Highlight feature *2025-08-26* I absolutely adore this app! It has helped me better understand myself. The only suggestion I will make is to add a feature where one can highlight on the articles. While I’m reading the articles there’s always so many specific information I want to save. Although, I know that I can favorite different articles, highlighting an articles will help one save specific sentence(s) **Developer response:** Thank you for your generous review — we’re delighted the app is helping you understand yourself better. Highlighting specific lines in articles is a thoughtful suggestion; we’ve shared this with our product team for future updates. In the meantime, favouriting articles is a good way to return to pieces you value. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Deleting reviews on Apple now?🤬 *2026-09-01* Never noticed deleted reviews on the Apple App Store before. Can confirm they do now. Maybe it’s because I rarely leave reviews and never will again since it’s pointless now. I left a fairly descriptive four star review with an app suggestion for an audio fix that no longer exists. Here’s the other star you must’ve felt you deserved. ### 1/5 — Won’t give me a refund or respond to my emails *2026-04-11, version 1.21.7* I never write negative reviews, but I’m genuinely disappointed by how the school of life has dealt with my request for a refund. I have emailed a few times now, and when they’ve asked for more information, I have provided it, but then I’ve heard nothing back. I unsubscribed to the app yet was still charged. I explained this and that the money they had taken was money I could not afford to be charged. I did not at all want to be re subscribed and as such, this has caused me some distress. It’s disappointing to experience this service from an app and company I believed to be interested in supporting people and doing the right thing. It’s about money making, it seems, with no concern for the human impact of just taking someone’s money or discussing a situation relating to people’s money that they have. Even if there’s a tiny point in the initial subscription sign up that states having to go somewhere extremely specific to unsubscribe on the app, it is unethical that unsubscribing on the App Store might not transfer that information to the respective app. This is a long post but I felt it necessary to let people know before they sign up. It has made me lose faith in these services. ### 1/5 — Impossible to cancel subscription *2026-04-08, version 1.21.7* I have contacted the team within the 7 day trial to cancel the upcoming subscription and no response. There is no way to cancel the subscription through the app and they ask to reach out through contact support message box. I have have been charged and I am still waiting for them to reply and refund me. ### 1/5 — liars *2025-12-09* super dissapointed that they offered a 50% black friday discount but in fact it was only 20% something discount but they kept claiming it was 50%.. well, do not trust them! ### 1/5 — Unscrupulous Practices *2025-10-28, version 1.20.1* I cancelled the subscription one day after downloading the App. Then discovered 3 days later my Bank had been debited with £29.99 which they refuse to refund! Beware. ### 1/5 — Consistent authentication problems *2025-10-20* I've reported authentication problems with the app on iOS and iPadOS twice, months apart, and nothing appears to have been done to solve the problem. It's disappointing to be a subscriber and have this experience. I'm repeatedly logged out of the app, such that it's far more reliable to watch free School of Life content on YouTube than it is to use the subscription that I've paid for. On each occasion that I've contacted the support team, they didn't seem to take the issue seriously, placing the onus for the problem on me, advising me to ensure my phone's memory isn't full or out of space (it isn't) or that my phone's OS is up to date (it is). This isn't a minor problem, and there was no offer of a refund or of a free extension to my subscription, which would be warranted because the product is essentially faulty. The content is great, but the app is almost unusable. **Developer response:** Thank you for taking the time to share your experience — we’re very sorry to hear about the ongoing authentication issues you’ve faced. We completely understand how frustrating this must be, especially as a paying subscriber. Our team is actively investigating the root cause of the log-out problem affecting some iOS users, and we’re working to resolve it as a priority. We also appreciate your feedback about how the issue was handled by support — we’ll be reviewing this to ensure a more helpful and empathetic response in future. Thank you again for your patience and for your kind words about the content. ### 1/5 — Great content, frustrating to access *2025-04-04* The content available in this app is great; a huge volume of highly interesting and diverse articles, conversation/journal prompts, tools for increasing awareness and insight. However, the app itself is highly frustrating. When you want to listen to a podcast episode it just cuts out and the app closes. So you have to open it up and find your place again. Also it would be useful to have an option to have the articles read out the way you can on blinkest etc. as a busy working mum of a young child who doesn’t get to sit down and read often, I would be able to devour more of the content if there was an option to have the articles read out whilst hanging up the washing etc. obviously the glitch of it cutting out would need to be fixed for this to be useful though. **Developer response:** Thanks so much for your thoughtful message—we’re really glad you’re enjoying the content. We're sorry about the podcast crashes and totally get how frustrating that is. Our team’s working on a fix, and we’ve passed on your brilliant audio idea too. We really appreciate your patience! ### 1/5 — App cuts off while listening to podcast *2025-03-08* This app times out and cuts off while listening to a podcast. Worse than that, when I try to restart the episode, it does not restart where it timed out, so I have to forward through the episode to try to find where it stopped playing. So frustrating that I’ve stopped listening to the podcasts. Waste of money, not because of the content but because of technical issues. **Developer response:** We’re really sorry for the trouble you’ve had—it’s completely understandable that this would be frustrating, especially when the content is something you want to enjoy. The podcast issue is something we’re actively working to fix, and we hope to have it resolved soon. Thank you for bearing with us—we truly appreciate your support and patience. ### 1/5 — Unusable… Constant App Crashing with Podcast *2025-02-04, version 1.15.3* The App crashes the podcast playback all the time, when the App is in the background, having to start the podcast all over… I remember downloading a version of the School of Life App around 10 years ago, it was programmed very badly. Fast forward to now, still crashing… Find a better App Development Team… Also the UI is very awkward and you can tell it is not using current App-Design patterns… Actually unacceptable for a Subscription model… ### 1/5 — Bad App, Worse Customer Service *2024-12-27, version 1.15.3* I anticipated this app would have a meaningful way of engaging with School of Life’s audio/video content. I often play their videos on YouTube in the background while I’m doing other activities, and was looking for a way of paying them directly for this content and (hopefully) doing the same within their native app. There is no such feature. This app is a glorified CMS, with videos essentially being treated as embedded videos on individual pages. There is no way to just watch/listen to an ongoing playlist of videos here. That’s all I want. Too much to ask? I opened the app once, found it lacking, and immediately emailed support because I was stupefied by the absence of this feature. Their customer service agent was not particularly courteous in later interactions. Tarnished my opinion of School of Life, which used to be quite high. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — My experience *2026-08-21* Give The School of Life a try and make up your own mind; it supports me brilliantly. Give it a go! ### 5/5 — Great. Few small issues *2026-08-10* I’ve been using the app for around 30 hours now and feel I’m starting to notice small changes in my thinking on certain topics that aré important to me. I find the writing to be very well structured with very focused and simple sentences that really connect with me and make complex feelings into quite straightforward ideas. For £5 or so a month I feel incredibly grateful to have access to all this thinking and just wish I had more time to get into it. I would say that there are a few improvements that would make a big difference: audio volume seems to have quite a large variation over the course of one lesson and this quite startling at times. Perhaps some compression on the audio would work? Secondly, whilst I understand that having Alain read every article would be quite punishing I do find the AI version of his voice quite off putting (the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors make some sentences jarring and confusing) and feel that with the amount of junior staff members there must be who, I imagine, would be very willing to be involved in the front end of the app why not have them read these? It would facilitate a much better connection with the listener. Finally, I agree with some other reviews that an audio scroll bar would be hugely convenient as the app does have a tendency to crash and being able to pick up where you leave off would be very useful. Consider starting the same 12 minute audio from the beginning 3 times. Not complaining at all as for the price this is an incredible resource but for what it’s worth. ### 5/5 — Emotional Education at its Best *2026-06-24* I’ve always been a huge admirer of the kind of knowledge The School of Life offers across different aspects of life. I believe The School of Life has been a great influence on me during my 20s and has shaped who I am today, as a person, partner, friend, and simply as a human being. The app could use a few refinements here and there for a better UI/UX experience, but that doesn’t feel like an excuse to miss out on the knowledge it has to offer. Thank you so much, always grateful :) ### 5/5 — Life lessons in one’s pocket *2026-06-24* I found the app easy to use and navigate. I love the bite size learning and meaningful daily quotes. My friends and I enjoyed the conversation cards. We have replaced ‘How are you?’ with ‘How have you been suffering lately (with humour)? x ### 5/5 — Self awareness and grit! *2026-06-24* Love this App it supports my self awareness and regulation. ### 5/5 — Amazing resource *2026-06-24* I would recommend to everyone, no matter who you are there’s resources helpful to anyone. ### 5/5 — Daily dose *2026-06-24* I’m a subscriber. I live the ability to launch my day with a snippet of insight into the myriad human experience. About myself or others, and our situations. I often share a relevant nugget with a loved one for their benefit… or my own. Short articles and videos create an illuminating discussion with my partner over our morning coffee. Much better than reading ‘the news’ first thing in the morning! ### 5/5 — On the button *2026-06-24* The School of Life provides a wealth of useful information on understanding ourselves and our relationships using words, video and games in a charming and original style ### 5/5 — The best kind of scrolling *2026-06-23* Want to be inspired in the morning rather than reading endless doom scrolling news? This is the app for you if you want inspiration, education, art, philosophy and psychology( it’s so good. I’ve gifted it to friends. It’s my go to every day and I highly recommend it. ### 5/5 — A different perspective *2026-06-23* I love this app! I often open it when I’m feeling beat down from endless scrolling or mundane daily life. It always gives me something to think about, a different perspective on things, and usually brings more kindness and calm into my life. --- *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 2026-09-05.*