The Sydney Morning Herald User Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
Fairfax Digital Australia & New Zealand Pty Limited

What users say

Top reviews

Login required for access

Continuation of my online subscription is getting untenable because of the inconvenience of having to login EVERY time I access my copy.
If I accessed the SMH and read the entire paper in one go, I would only need to login ONCE, but I like to dip into the SMH at least a few times a day and every time I have to login.
And there are the usual annoyances involved with logging in, like, in the middle of trying to do this, a flashing demand, “change your password”, comes up and I have to insist No and start all over again.

I enjoy not just the articles in the SMH, but the range of articles as well but it’s becoming too tedious for this 84 year old to continue her subscription.
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Functional, clean app

My only complaint with the SMH app, is the comments section for articles does not appear in the app. This is disappointing because it means I switch back to the web browser just to read the comments. I hope the app developers are working on this.

Paid for news, still get ads

Holy sell out, we ain’t 90 year olds reading a paper news paper with ads slapped all over. It costs almost nothing to host digital content, there’s no reason for paid digital content to run ads

Keeps getting better

Love the new modern look

Excellent

New subscriber here, really enjoying the app

App Logo

Update your app logo you silly geese.

Storage pig

Have no idea why this needs to consume 2gb storage on my phone

App fixed - but why the Olympic rings on the icon?

It seems the glitchy scrolling bug has been fixed. I don’t think I’ve noticed it in some time. Great work!

The app otherwise works well. I much prefer the layout over other news app. Though I’m not all that big on the short videos. And I can’t stand the click bait headlines - it’s a real turn off for something paid
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Ok

Not the greatest quality - quite where it’s bias lies and editorials and opinions aren’t crisp or very insightful

Sharing App

It is impossible to share this app with my family

Severe memory problems

This app continues to have 'memory problems' and the condition is getting worse. Now, if you click on a headline the story may or may not come up. If you click on body text the story may or may not come up. And, seemingly randomly, the app takes you back to page one when you try to 'return' from reading body text to the two-page display (iPad). This problem has just got worse in recent times. Somehow newspapers like the New York Times can produce a product that functions normally, but the SMH app just behaves like it has lost its mind. How hard can it be to correct this software problem which has been going on for years?
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Buggy application

The newspaper is good but the app is frustratingly buggy. I’m a subscriber but get regularly logged out. When I try to log in the login page flashes for a second and then disappears. Tried to restart the app but no difference. Total waste of time when something so basic doesn’t work reliably.

Real News

SMH has actual news and gives a neutral view, unlike Uncle Rupert’s publications and his self serving agenda.

Good, but the search function is hopeless

Decent app, but nothing radically different in experience than via the website. It does go dark at night time, handy for reading in bed without waking your partner. But there’s no way to adjust the font size in the app (unlike the website). And the search function… it never returns anything remotely relevant to what I look for. How can that be?
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Printed version

If it weren’t for the ‘print version’ I wouldn’t bother. New version needs ability to select downloaded content to delete and cleanup more easily

Crashes and freezes

Poor. This app is unstable and not worth the monthly subscription. SMH content has deteriorated over the years. I’ve been it reading since the 80’s.

Text to Voice

When are you going to enable subscribers to choose ANY content that they can, at their leisure, listen via their digital app. Long overdue.
I know you provide a partial selection but that is not freedom to select any story that I choose to listen to.
Giddy up…..
Thank you in advance.
It’s not that hard…. use the AI Luke!
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Each step forward is two steps back

I have used the app for years but the last 12 or so months have proven to be the most frustrating. I can only assume that any testing of the app before release has been abandoned. The ipad version continues to offer a wonderful 5-20 second screen freeze when the app becomes totally unresponsive. Fabulous way to read an article. The downloading of Todays paper is terrible and can take from 2-10 minutes if at all. It used to take about 5-20 seconds!! No doubt made worse by the downloading of every article twice - newspaper page format and text. Disappointing, frustrating and unreliable.
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Problem in target time game

Now after update 5.6.0 target time solution still appears on I phone x screen for just a few seconds before disappearing. Please fix this introduced bug.

Review

The SMH is a shadow of its traditional self, but still provides a balance of news better than its opposition. Sub-editing appears to be non-existent, and too many journalists don’t have a professional grasp of English.