Reviews for SmartNews: Breaking News

Edit: 07/02/24: I've used the app for a few years now and generally enjoy it. However, it is often crashing, and I lose the article I'm reading. Additionally, many news stories come up as a title and blank white page--sending to a browser will usually work, though this is not very convenient. >>Good source of news, appears to present information of interest. A little heavy on advertising, but manageable.

I will uninstall if they keep having noisy ads. That's unacceptable. Otherwise the app is fine. I can't stand their ads anymore, have to wait too long even if not interested and then another ad comes up. I have neither the time or the patience for this. It is not hard to get news somewhere else. Will uninstall. Update 9/24 Getting worse every day. Focused on return, no longer on customer experience. Time to find alternative apps

When I first rated this app it was a 10 in my opinion but it has really gone downhill from then!!! Pages don't load and you could be reading an article and all of a sudden the screen turns black and what you were reading goes away!!! I know it's not my phone cause it's new and it also does it on my brand new phone so it's definitely the app. Otherwise the content is great if you can finish reading the article!!!

Still glitchy. Crashes a lot. Refreshes on it's own, even when you are in the middle of scrolling and it takes you back up to the beginning. Commercials volume sometimes plays on it's own, so if you are listening to music while you read, good luck getting music to stay on. Despite all this, it still has the best format and has the potential to be the best news app. Can you fix all these things that are ongoing issues or sprung up in the face of the lastest update??

Been using for years and always generally had a great experience. Super annoyed by the daily wrap...I just want evening notifications to display what I click on, but keep getting the wrap, over and over and over again. Also, I keep getting an ad paying in the background and I can't figure where it's coming from, it will also start multiple versions as if it's a round song.

07/2022: it has been freezing and then kicking me out of articles I am reading if it gets ready to update. When I go back in the article is gone. 09/2024: it has gotten worse. Articles take a long time to open, and when they do they only have the first couple of paragraphs and the rest is blank. Sometimes closing and reopening the article fixes it, sometimes not. Very disappointing.

I love the app because of what it provides. However, after the last few updates, I get frustrated reading because every time I start an article, the page jumps back to the top and freezes. If I try scrolling down on the same article, it jumps right back to the top. It's frustrating and upsetting because I like being able to read the news at anytime from anywhere but I can't now and Newsbreak doesn't hit the same.

It's great to have all your news in one spot, super convenient. That's where it stops. The app is very unstable, constantly crashes and freezes. After it crashes and you open it back up, the article you were reading is gone. Loading times for articles are very inconsistent, either lightning fast or not at all. Very frustrating. Great idea, just need some better engineering.

Now that I've found where to write this, here goes! New update has made things worse. Auto ad music, though, has not been as prevalent. That was horrible. No clue as to what ad,and turning it off was impossible. But now. I'm reading an article and it has closed 6 times. I changed article sources, and it didn't matter if it was Buzzfeed or local. It's shutting off, and then I can't find the previous article sometimes to finish. Used to be very reliable App. My main source of multiplatform info.

timed adverts keep me from using. I'd pay a small fee to avoid. alerts have me opening but as soon as the countdown clock hits on an advert I kill the app and use other apps for news. Thanks for your reply. Please let me know when I can pay for your app, until then I'm not reinstalling. It's a great app! I just remember clearly how much the adverts pissed me off.

Updated review. Most of my complaints seem to be fixed. My only issue that really bugs me are the ads that hijack the screen, some making it very difficult to get out of or worse yet, the ads that start playing LOUD video or sound that can't be stopped unless you quit. Seems to be getting worse. Most articles never load or are very slow to load. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not help. I used to use this app very frequently but lately I get so frustrated that I just use another news reader.

this app has become useless! click on an article and it may or may not load. or the page will freeze, or reload 3x while you're reading it. but most often you just get a blank screen. you can read 2-3 articles and then it's time for a 10 second ad. keeps feeding you a lot of fluff that you're not interested in, even when you tell it to stop. SmartNews... not that smart.

Good app for news, but when you can't even read half the article or they are unable to get you to the article that they linked, it's of no use! I'm deleting the app right now! 10/2021 Got a different phone and app got reinstalled. I gave it another chance and it's doing very nicely, thank you. update in June 2025. The one thing I have issue with this app is that it often updates right in the middle of reading an article and goes right back to the top. That's rather annoying.

It's an excellent aggregate news source. Occasional clickbait articles, but you get those everywhere. What I'd really like is the ability to hide any stories about motorsports since I follow those sports and can't always watch the races live - no matter how many times I try to hide F1 stories and results, it shows me a lot of them, frequently spoiling the results. Some sort of a "no spoiler stories" filter would be good, then I could browse the app more frequently without concern.

I installed the newest update hoping it would fix the problem with the app crashing, but now the app overheats my phone when I open it. What can I do? *edit: I restart all the time when this happens, it's only a temporary fix. My phone only heats up when I use this app. My point is, this isn't normal and began with that update. I had hoped for better than the IT go-to response of "Have you tried restarting it?"

I like this app because of its wide-spread sourcing of news. I can find out what else is going on around the world. 4TH UPDATE 5/25/2025: The last update, while it seems to have fixed the refresh problem, now causes pages to freeze when scrolling, and keeps unexpectedly closing the app after 3 or 4 articles have been opened. And with all the adverts and clickbait, the interruptions by the full-screen commercials is becoming a bridge too far for me, & I'm finding myself turning to other news apps

Ads are playing on thier own and you can't stop them. They are horribly echoing and so distracting I close the app. The new ads that started showing up in 2025 are now full screen and there is no way to close them out until they are done playing. only then can you find the smallest x that is almost off screen to close the ad. Several ads have caused me to close the app so I could get out of the ad. I am using this app less and less.

I spend as much time closing the app to get out of ads then reading the articles. it's gotten to the point when an ad comes up it's necessary to close the App otherwise you're sitting on an ad for longer than it takes to read an article. I don't mind ads it's how a free app makes money but when it's to this point we've got an advertisement app that sometimes has news. After you close the App to clear an ad good luck trying to find the article you wanted to read.

So piss poor anymore. It's the dumb little things...the app will automatically go to the top of an article as you are reading it. When you try to scroll past one of the infinite ads, it will stutter and pause and make it real easy to actually click on the ad. When you read an article and go back to the main page, it will autoscroll you to the top. Again, dumb little things. I'm done with it.

The reason I gave this low of a score is because of the ads. I buy nothing. I repeat nothing by what ads are shown on apps. I know when it's a free app they have to make money but they should not force you to stay on an app page for up to 5 seconds and won't let you go because they want to force you to see that app which again I don't pay attention too.