Reviews for BBC: World News & Stories

Well engineered app, and easy to customize, so I get the news that interests me in an attractive format. Unfortunately, ads are getting increasingly obnoxious. They pop up mid-article, disrupting your reading and, lately, even jump you to a loud commercial that you cannot shut off. While we understand the need to pay for the service, how about reverting to a presentation that encourages one to view the ad favorably?

Not as good as the old version. The old version, you could select which genre of story interests you. For example, I love the BBC's reporting of Formula One, so I had that as favourite. This option no longer exists. The layout is now more in line with other big news apps, so there is nothing special about this app, and furthermore I find it hard to find stories that interest me. Many sub sections can no longer be read off-line (such as sports including F1). The website is much better.

Too much news in video format, without transcripts. But the biggest reason this gets a bad review is there are many articles that come up as 'There was a problem loading this content. Please try again later.' But trying later never works. And, the same articles are on the app day after day after day. Finally, too many dead animals in their Week in Wildlife photography series.

Great content, great articles. Over the years as they keep updating the app itself it just declines, the new layout has declined, it no longer works offline, it used to preload articles, it no longer does. Since the most recent update, it no longer works at all. Nothing loads, it just tells me content not available. The more they meddle with it the worse it gets.

I used to like using this app, but I will be deleting it after writing this review. The thumbnails are way too big. The worst part is that I can no longer see all the news categories available on BBC. For example, I can no longer view Africa news or Space and Exploration stories, unless it's a top story that appears. It is no longer possible to search these categories, as well as many others. It has become much too simplified. Nice try, BBC, it's getting deleted.

EDIT: As with everyone else, the app no longer works. Upon opening, it closes within 2-3 seconds without fail. Extremely frustrating. Untill they fix this, changing to 1 star. Great news app, really no complaints except one - I really wish it wouldn't automatically put "I saw this on the BBC and though you should see it" text whenever I share an article through the app.

I can no longer get the radio "world news" to work anymore. Deleted the app and reinstalled, still does not work. Just loads and loads and loads. (Update). It works now, but the radio seems to be on a 10 minute timer. Shuts off every 10 minutes and I have to push the play button again, to get it going. Very annoying and can't figure out what to adjust in settings to not get the radio from stopping.

I feel resigned to leave a review because of the latest update made to this app. As many others have stated, the "my news" feature is gone, but what's worse is that the number of accessible articles has been severely limited. I could go onto "my news" and read articles posted just minutes before, but now the "explore" section is featuring articles that are over two days old. This app in previous versions was arguably the best all-around news app on the store.

Up until last week, I thought this was a five-star app and had been using it for a number of years without any problems. However, last week and up to now it is suddenly closing as soon as I open it. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app, cleared its cache, and rebooted my phone. But the app keeps closing. I like the BBC News very much and would like to continue using its app.

BBC was one of my top news apps. But then they got rid of great stuff like my news. That was bad enough but then as of the most recent updates reminds up to sign up for a free account everytime the app is opened. Every. Single. Time. Sure I can skip it by pressing the option below. But the reminder and the step required to skip happens every single time. Every. Single. Time. If the forced reminder does not go away I am just going to uninstall the app. Stop trying to make us sign up for stuff!

I use BBC Sounds to get podcasts, the BBC seems determined to keep that from happening. Sounds wasn't fantastic, somehow this app is worse. At least with Sounds I had a feed I could go into and see what the new episodes are (even if the "queue" got worse with each update). Now there seems to be no queue and I have to go into each podcast I'm following to see if there are new episodes, and then I have to manually download them to get them to show up. Sort it out, this isn't difficult to fix.

like many others, I'm struggling to use the BBC app as a replacement for the BBC sounds app which worked very well. I'm not sure why but every time I try to listen to a podcast it cuts out after a few minutes and I have to reload what I'm trying to listen to to get even just a few more minutes worth of listening. I have tried it on Wi-Fi and on data on my mobile device, to no avail. I don't think it's a device download issue either; it seems to be that the app can't handle the load.

Not great, because I didn't understand for 3months why I couldn't play broadcasts (live or podcasts) and leave the app while the sound still plays in the background, which feels like early Internet. I had to do picture-in-picture (PIP) which is difficult and always in the way. Then I realized that ratherthan going to 'Live,' I had to go to 'Audio' then BBC World Service to be able to play the audio even while not on the app or in PIP. Completely unintuitive.

A real pain to use. I'm only interested in podcasts but they're hidden behind two menu clicks. When you switch out of the app it has to relaunch. There's no option to cast podcasts, meaning that I have to use headphones or carry my phone around with me. And it doesn't remember any of my play history from BBC Sounds, so I now have to go through and mark a bunch of my podcasts as played. Bring back BBC Sounds. This thing is so awful that I'm likely to just give up on BBC content because of it.

Total dumster fire of an app. I get why non-licence fee users overseas might not get everything uk residents are able to access but really? This app is absolutely horrendous. I just want to continue following and listening to a bunch of podcasts I enjoy and it's now an afterthought via a tiny section at the absolute bottom of the audio section. No way to cue up podcasts, 'latest' just seems to mean some randomly arranged 8 podcasts that don't update once you've listened to them, total hot mess.

This replacement for BBC Sounds is no good. It needs to include the same features if it's to be a replacement, as of now there is no way to just play most recent podcast feeds, it's a pain to have to manual dig through each show to find the next episode to play. and the list of your followed content isn't intuitive enough to find unless you dig more. Poor design features all around.

Awful, awful, awful. No 'play next episode automatically' option. When a user saves what they think is a podcast series to their saved items, it's actually just the episode of the podcast they were listening to. Finding an old radio show or podcast is nigh on impossible unless it happens to be near the top of the search results. Going back to an unfinished podcast means the Play button won't work, so you have to force close the app and navigate back to what you were listening to. I could go on.

The search button is hard to find, hidden in the three dots menu. when you tap the "See all episodes" link in the window for any given podcast, it shows you literally every episode of literally every podcast, and to find the episodes you're interested in you have to keep scrolling down until you find them. I love the BBC's content, but to quote the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the people who designed its app will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Never updates dramas and other shows. Same shows for the last month. Hard to find them to begin with. None of the mystery or detective shows. After a long search I found a link that connects to 4 extra and other stations...but it constantly stops so unusable. Not a replacement for access to BBC Sounds at all. Difficult to use and doesn't work well.

This app is a mess, or is simply not built for accessing the content I am after: radio dramas, something that BBC continued to do well, long after American radio gave up the idea. On BBC Sounds they were navigable. Now some of them are still here, but at the bottom of the app under unclear category names and invisible to search. I look for the series, "Spores" and get sports scores!