BBC: World News & Stories Customer Service

It’s nice to have a news source that has a broader perspective. I can get a variety of articles on US news, as well as a wide range of world news that’s unavailable elsewhere. Some reviewers complained that the news is “left,” but they don’t get that the rest of the world sees the current administration for what it is! However... as others have mentioned, after reading most articles, the app doesn’t return you to where you left the main page; instead it takes you back to the top, and you have to scroll back down to find your place. Annoying!

Best source for to keep up with US news and news from around the world. American news sources are SO inordinately focused on domestic news and Trump-idiocy news as to be boring and repetitive. Thank you. Would normally give 5 stars, but for the frequent app crashes that have become the norm over the last few months. Multiple crashes during one viewing session of about 30-45 minutes. Suggestion: When a new version fails to work properly, go back to a previous version that DOES work. Introduce newer versions only when they’ve been properly vetted.

Well done for listening to your users. The reinstated search function is very welcome. And I really like the save story function too. This is a news app I used constantly. Since the last update the search function has been removed. I am unable to go back and read articles or share something interesting with a friend. I also do not have my topics section any more. The app is seriously paired down and is next to useless.

Like all sources of News, it has its god and bad but then again that’s just what makes news what it is.......I do prefer fact oriented news which saves the writers opinion for the OPINION PAGES and I firmly believe that it is a Editor’s Duty to enforce such a policy, however today’s Media Outlets are more interested in getting a story out rather than fact checking. This condition runs rampart in the US and continues to cause great to grief. In general, folks want factual news and not ACOSTA TYPE BIAS.......whether it be directed at the Left or the Right.

Not sure if it’s settings within my device, that I see no way of changing, but CC doesn’t show when videos are played in full screen. Wouldn’t be a huge problem except video automatically switches to full screen and won’t play any other way. Playback pauses if I click out if full screen. Clicking play pushes it back into full screen again. Terribly annoying bug. Other than that I still love BNC news. It’s my go-to source!

Tons of other reviews have touched on the pros and cons of this app, so I’ll skip right to my peeve. When I’m in an article and I swipe left to right, I want to go back to the list of articles (headlines), not the previous article in the list! I didn’t tap that article because I didn’t want to read it. I don’t want to have to tap the tiny little back arrow in the top left corner. I WANT TO SWIPE. This is a stupid design. Going article to article right to left, fine. But get me out of article hell left to right.

It seems like a change has resulted in any video within the app not being playable. This isn’t a geographic location issue as copying the link to story and opening it in Safari will result in that very same video being viewable. ETA. After a response from the app developer they indeed seem to have fixed this now. I have amended my rating to reflect this but have left the original issue posted for transparency purposes. Good job and thanks for the fix!

My “go to” News App! However I would ask that you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE go back to the older APP layout. This layout is terribly boring and difficult to see all the articles…paging and clicking takes forever. I would like to see a return to more choices by topics in settings, and it would be so excellent if the videos would play while traveling overseas ! Thank you for making Women’s Sports a Focus - especially women’s football!

Worthy Successor to Melvyn Bragg. Latest podcasts were very good. Mellow delivery and on point questioning. Quality of the guests continue to be top notch. For my own interests, will there be the addition time feature? This unstructured time filled many gaps and gave guests free rein. Also, many of the old programs begged follow ups. Top of my mind are the shows on paleontology and quantum electro dynamics. Certain guests also top my list including Frank Close, Mary Beard and Mike Benton. All is good in any case.

I have limited vision. I love your news service. The updated App really in NOT an improvement. Highlighted text to speech is un believably fast. Wile it's not on other apps. It locks up regularly. It's not as easy to use as the odd app. I don't like it! Why can't I just watch all the videos ? I also have trouble with the first page which is to be important news but it is very hard to us text to speech. Why do you refer to President Trump as. Trump. I don’t think it is proper educate. And shows a lack of respect. Not very British. James Gage

Finally I can claw free from the suffocating American news bubble! This is an app which readers can set to screen out the garbage which clutters so many other news feeds. There is a “My News” section where the reader can choose the topics they want. No more football! No more American partisan bickering! No more hype pushing one or another insane social agenda! No more climate hysteria! Just news from all over the world.

I have loved this app for awhile now. I live in the USA and trying to find a news app that is NOT trying to push their own agenda is impossible so I went to outside news sites and fell in love with this app, I get news from around the world so I feel informed. Then you changed the layout now the only stories I can read are the ones you choose, now it just feels like US news apps. I’m so very upset.

Pratique et utile toujours à jour sur l'information fournie.

The BBC news is more up to date with many North American news events over the North American press as it doesn't have all the biases that they have Very reliable

BBC has the advantage of being a mature news service that evolved due to it’s exposure as the representative of a very global empire. Lately the app jerked a lot whilst scrolling. I just reinstalled and that seemed to help.

I monitor BBC for up to date news , world wide, and Russia, as most other media do not post sufficient detail on their website. Gary B

This is the most wonderful app in existence.

Recently updated application quite precise and amaze users with customization in functionality. There is issue in app or they might have removed the feature of selecting text to view more or other options that were their in the earlier model. Rest is thumbs up!

Where are my news ? How do I choose topics I used to read. Red version was perfect

Bad user experience now. Popups like “login” or adds detract from reading news. Some articles impose a new scroll dynamic, where there is higher resistance/dampening and the scroll slows down to a halt much faster. If all of iOS scrolls at the same speed, we get used to it. This app should not feel like it has the right to scroll differently. All of these add to experiences that make you realize you don’t like the app instead of integrating the user seamlessly to the app’s content. I’ve tried it again after uninstalling it a year ago after the layout changes, popups, and scrolling irked me and it’s still the same. Be predictable and let us interface with your content. Stop imposing your own way to use our devices that’s different from the other 99% of the time we use our devices. You used to be able to open the app, tap a news article, swipe left or right to go to different articles, and be done. Now it’s open app, decline to log in, pick an article, close the ad, wait for the page to shift around as a webpage is opened within the app and styling changes, now you can scroll, now you recognize it scrolls weird…and now I’m ranting. This used to be my only news app and now have to move to others, and I still haven’t found a better one than what this was a few years ago. :(

The app updated about a month ago to the new “modernized” format, and since then I have spent significantly less time on the app because of how poorly designed it has become. I’m not against changing the app if it would result in improvements to the user experience. However, I don’t believe that is the case. Issues I have with the current version are as follows: -The “My News” section no long appears, and none of the five tabs (“Top News”, “Topics”, “Popular”, “Videos”, “Live”) replace that functionality, making finding news in specific categories (e.g. “Gaming,” which used to have its own category) frustrating. -No way to set the topics of the topics tab, as far as I’m aware. -No search functionality, as far as I can tell after about a month. -The popular tab lists the top 10 most read articles, and it used to label them 1-10, now it does not, even though there is still always exactly 10. -Popular tab has the articles spaced much wider, only allowing me to view about half of them on one screen. -Popular tab used to display the category of the news article along with the time since last update, now it only displays the time. The only improvements to the app after the update are the addition of the “time to read” metric at the top of each article, and the fact that the overall look of the articles didn’t change too severely.

I have used this app for close to 10 years now! This used to be my preferred way of seeing the events throughout the world. But not anymore! The last two updates, one in Nov last year and the last just this week are terrible in user experience! For iOS, the latest update isn’t user friendly at all. It opens the web pages within the app on a click, which makes it less friendly to navigate back (on iPhone, you can slide from left to right to go back to the previous window). This used to be a feature for “live” updates and stories, but not to the published stories. This app became click here and there — with no ease of navigation like an iPhone app. It also nags you to login on every opening of the app; which is unnecessary! Then comes the layout, omg, it became worse! Previously, there used to be a feature to configure your interest areas and 2 latest news per topic would be displayed in one window: which makes it easy to skim through them quickly (and I believe that increases the chance of a frequent visit to the app!) But now, you have to click on every topic to get the full list of news. I feel bad to be pushed away from my favorite news app. I also heard the same complaints from my younger brother and friends. So, it’s not me alone!

I have had this app for years. It WAS my favorite news app. I could control what I wanted to see with the My News section and focus on new information from Science, Technology, Europe, World, and of course my favorite football club. These options no longer exist and neither does this app on my phone. I am so disappointed in the new update. It was refreshing to be able to see news that gets lost in the usual repeating cycle that is mostly tragic news these days. Those options are gone. I can see everything on the new update that I see repeated on every other app or news channel. The update took away the most desirable and important part of the app; its ability to allow people to personalize it and see a variety of news and not just the headlines of the day. I live in the US and I used this app to connect with what was going on in the world as a whole.

I’ve had a lot of apps and a lot of updates, but this one really takes the cake as one of the worst. Literally every new feature manages to make the app worse and less user friendly. Having to scroll all the way down, rather than easily pan across, the various tabs/subcategories is not intuitive, but this is just one of far too many issues to list. All the negative reviews from the past few days are really telling: this “update” is a huge step backwards. I’m happily switching to another source for my news until it’s fixed. Edit: I have now deleted the app after giving it a second try. The inability to even SEARCH for news articles that are not those “selected” for you is atrocious. And why are there entire sections on particular sports and hardly any news at all about the rest of the world? What a mess.

This app used to allow you to choose your own news layout with articles arranged by topic in your preferred order. The new version has this feature removed, so now there’s just a feed of their top stories or by topics but with no way to hide or order the topics. Whoever is leading their app development should be demoted as removing useful features is not a way to serve people better. What in the world were they thinking?! (Heck just dismiss the project managers, I guarantee the developers desire to build an app they are proud of and would not remove their hard work for the sake of “stream lining” or whatever other buzzword the PM probably sold this useless vision on. I hope someone who cares reads this. You’re letting not only your journalists but your entire organization down by making poor choices.

This app focuses mostly on the distressing news throughout the world. It repeats it ad nauseum. There is so much news out there, it would be good for this app to broaden its horizons. It gives a bit of news from the most "noisy" places (repeatedly), but fails miserably in wider coverage. If it's not bad news, this app doesn't cover it. Except of course for the little Royals. Now that's cute. The main problem that I have with it is that if you want to read one of the stories and you happen to be way down in the column on the story, when you finish reading it and go back to the column it puts you all the way back up to the top of the column instead of where you were. That is extremely frustrating have to go all the way back down to the bottom of the column where you were!!!

Save yourself the hassle of downloading this app. I was hopeful that the recent update would fix the live stream problems, but nope. I get about 15 minutes of broadcast and then the app pauses the stream and then ultimately crashes or hangs there expecting you to unpause it every few minutes until it finally crashes. Strangely I have had the same crashing issue of World Service on other apps too, so it is not specific to this app, but more specific to their stream, which is now no longer worth trying to listen to due to how broken it is. I know that the world wants broken up news reports instead of a proper stream though.....oh wait. I have been having this issue for over six months and no amount of bug reports has seen improvements made. Others in the reviews report the same thing and the developers clearly aren’t capable of fixing it or don’t care.

Most people don’t like change; it usually doesn’t bother me. Admittedly, there’s always a few trade-offs or getting used to that happens with something new. This is NOT even close. I hate everything about it. The look, the login I can skip but still get Alex every single time, the colors, the lack of organization, the lack of content diversity, no personalization, same three to five stories that take a week to change sometimes. I can hardly find any other topics like science and art- just horror headlines. Used to feel like I got an international perspective - now it’s just the same feed as every other news outlet. Can’t view the images by clicking on them and there are far less of them. I know it costs money to create but how did it go so wrong overnight. Wished I didn’t have to have upgraded. So very disappointed, frustrated, and sad.

You used to make revenue from the ads I watched when I wanted to watch a video or the ads I clicked on, now you won’t make any ad revenue from me because you want to sell me news I can look up for free at other platforms. You definitely are not going quietly into the night. What? Did all of your scandals bankrupt you? Now you have to raise money to settle all of your lawsuits like a child selling lemonade? Oh wait, you need a license for that don’t you, you need a license for just about anything in the UK, and I bet that costs more money than you will make begging for subscriptions. You are no longer a reliable source for news, just greedy corporate media who only cares for the board and ceo, not the reporters who put their lives on the line daily to get you fair and impartial stories. Free news is dead, you killed it

When I finally took the last update it ruined the app for me. You removed ALL of my news personalization and I dont like 80% of the news topics you have chosen to present! I dont want most of the world news you push to the front. If I cant choose my topics to focus on this app isnt for me. I see you have a 'new format' coming in the waiting update which I wont be taking until you explain what exactly it is. Im sick of tweak updates that overhaul an app or add ads and pretend to be tweaking it to run better 'for me.' I haven't used this news app since personalization was removed. The news presented focuses on much that I'm not interested in vs what I would pick myself to read. Too bad, you are losing users.

Latest update ruins the app. The new format makes it harder to read and only shows the very top stories on main page. I used to at least browse headlines from all major regions/categories and click through a few articles a couple of times a day but now I don’t even open the app every day because the experience is so much worse. The developers really need to put the major categories back on the main screen or at least enable sideways swiping though categories instead of forcing a bunch of clicks to browse. Everything just loads and looks like a webpage instead of an app… if that’s what I wanted I’d go to the webpage. I hope the changes are reverted or I’ll have to find a new news source with a better app.

To be clear, this review is about the app and not the content. I’vd been using it over a decade because it was the only news app with credible content that organized the stories by continent. The old app also allowed you to customize the way the segments showed up and even allowed you to create custom segments based on keywords. With the new version the app has been completely butchered. Lacks any kind of customization and the stories are organized in a completely arbitrary way. I get the idea thar products need to evolve with the new users coming into the market but this pushing tried and true users… what an absolute shame. This app is now designed to work for people who want to mindlessly scroll for hours and kill time.

I feel sad for giving three stars to an app that I loved and relied on for many years. The stars are for the BBC’s content. The app itself lost a lot of its usefulness for me with its last update. The My News feature that was removed, used to give me the ability to select several topics that were of my interest and quickly check them in the morning. The curated Topics feature tries to feed me news that I may not be interested in. In fact, some of the topics that I had in my list don’t show at all. This combined with the lack of a search feature, made the app almost useless.

To more knowingly be able to assess the neutrality of news reporting (which should be the gold standard), this rating should have been after one has read the day’s articles with, perhaps, a more critical eye. Also, a simple 1 through five star system is ludicrous. In reading reviews, some focused on videos, some focused on bias, some focused on layout and presentation, some focused on breadth of coverage. It is easily possible to have perfect scores in one area, and atrocious in another. Does 3 stars mean great reporting, bad video? Or perhaps it means great video, poor reporting? What does the simple 3 star rating really mean, if anything?

The latest update removes the ability to search or personalize the app to highlight topics and regions relevant to the user. Half the topics are sport-related, and they’ve completely removed Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Asia as topics. It’s giving racism - prioritizing golf and rugby and Western countries over access to articles covering news on non-white majority continents. Where one used to be able to swipe through their preferred topics and quickly scroll headlines for a region or topic (economy, health, etc.), now the app lists all topics in one tab, it isn’t customizable, and you have to scroll through the topics in a predetermined order. Only two headlines are visible for each topic, and you have to click through to see more articles.

I loved the old app, using it on my iPads, 6th and 9th generation, for news world wide. However the newly revamped app is very frustrating. I have trouble scrolling and when I’m trying to scroll, the app thinks I’m clicking on something and when I try to get back, the back or close buttons don’t work well, and I have to tap them over and over to get back to where I was. Today the app froze and I had to reboot the iPad. This makes it time consuming to get my news and I might try the website, which is less convenient, but hopefully it will be a less aggravating experience.

While I love looking over the articles, the app has not been improved since its inception. It’s very annoying to scroll through the long list of available articles, find one to read, then when finished reading and going back to the list, the app takes you back to the beginning and forces you to scroll again through everything that has already been scrolled through and read. I wish the app would take you back to where you were on the list. There must be an algorithm for that, easily inserted into the app program.

While the content itself continues to be world class and trustworthy, the app itself is sluggish, often unresponsive, constantly jumping around as advertising content is slowly loaded, and frequently spontaneously crashes. Frankly, I find the app to be very frustrating. What I find to be deeply disappointing is that prior to signing up for a paid subscription, older versions of the app were much more reliable. I also find the two different scrolling experiences within the app, depending on whether content is loaded from a webpage or not, to further detract from the overall experience.

You used to be able to customize the topics you see on your home page. I really liked that. I could see things I actually cared about. Not anymore. And also, it would be GREAT if I could choose what type of breaking news I get notifications for. I don’t want constant notifications about Wimbledon or the World Cup or whatever. I want actual important news about wars and elections and assassination attempts. But instead I get constant news about sport scores and actor deaths. I do not care or want this. I don’t really use this app anymore and I used to read it nearly every day.

I loved the old format. In addition to the general news, I could select specific topics - archaeology, medicine, science, climate change, regional news for the UK and international and many more. Now I get a very basic selection, over emphasizing several sports I am not interested in. There is currently NO way to customize the topics to reflect my various interests . For example, after a significant search, I found a search button so I searched “archaeology” and got some uninteresting videos and various other links to things I can’t access in the USA None of the great stories about the latest UK and international discoveries that I enjoyed until this horrible new version was foisted on me.

I used to love this app. With the new update, I’m not able to personalize what newsfeed I am able to view immediately. I don’t want to read about dozens of topics I’m not interested in. The reason I downloaded this app was because the news was credible, and easy to view. Now I have to dig through information that I have no interest in just to find a few articles I want to read. Unfortunately, this app does not support my current needs in obtaining pertinent information to my needs. I hope you guys change this in the future, and maybe I’ll download it again

I loved this app it was simple, elegant and worked flawlessly. Then some corporate douchbag decided to ruin it. My favorite feature was that once a article was loaded you could access it even when you lost internet access which I though was very neat. Then they started adding ads which in some cases were 10x as long as the video you were trying to watch!!!! Absolutely bonkers. Then nothing worked without an active and fast internet access which shortly predated a wholly new app which is confusing, over engineered and unnecessary to the extreme. I rarely write reviews but I an passionate about this one

The app itself is fine, but the stories are mostly negative angles on events or just plain negative events. For example, vandalism, deadly accidents, murders, hate crimes, etc. Politics comes in for it too where there are no positive stories on what the various leaders or governments around the world are doing, only negative or neutral ones. Unless you have a bulletproof psyche, the written content will get you down. Best to stick to the one-minute news video and just get the headlines. No wonder young people don’t bother with the news because it’s so depressing if you only read it from this app.

This app used to be excellent and far above other news apps. I loved that you could continue to read stories offline. Swiping left and right to go between stories was convenient and cut down on clicks. The number of clicks and pages before you got to actual news was also minimal. Now, I have to indicate I don’t want to log in every time I open the app. The stories don’t download so I can’t read offline. No swiping left and right and instead swiping down exits the story (which means if you scroll too vigorously you’ll exit out of the story you’re reading). Why did you ruin a good thing?

Some of the best journalism available however the ad designs are the worst I’ve seen. They frequently upset the layout of news stories and when playing before a video prevent the actual news video from playing. Also please show the ‘content not available in your country’ message BEFORE the 30 second unskippable video ad. I’d happily pay for an ad free version to avoid this kind of nonsense as it really detracts from an otherwise great news service.

When scrolling through articles, they will stack on top of each other occasionally and make it nearly impossible to click an article. Even worse are the advertisements. Previously they just slowed down the app to almost unusable rates. Now videos will automatically open without me clicking them as soon as they are scrolled into view, which I’m sure is against some rules somewhere. I even checked my app options and I have videos set to NOT auto open and to NOT auto play. You all really need to figure out your advertising problems in the app.

Great reporting. This is my goto source, but I have some qualms. The biggest is the annoying tendency of the app to refresh to the top of the page whenever it wants as I’m scrolling through and reading various stories. By the time I get to the end I’ve had to find my place again several times. 2nd issue is that sometimes I come across articles that are a couple sentences long with no real plot or story. No video or links either. Just strange and somewhat frustrating when I start to read it because it sounds like an interesting topic.

When you read an article then go back to the home page, sometimes the app will go back to where you were on the home page. Other times when you read, and go back to the home page, it will scroll back to the very top; it’s very frustrating when you were reading an article near the bottom of the home page, and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom again to read the next article, and find where you left off on the home page.

I love the international coverage but the US coverage is very one sided. Recent example: The Trump administration have repeatable said his withdraw of troops is not a “Mission Accomplished” situation and the fight against ISIS has entered a new era. While I don’t like the decision, you keep saying he said they he said the fight is over. He said the caliphate ie the “country” of ISIS is defeated. His point is, and you know this is that they are going to be like Al Ciada, and the Taliban, still dangerous, but still there but a shadow of themselves, but you keep saying/implying Trump said it’s all over. You are misrepresenting, on purpose what he Said!

I used to love this app to get my latest news. But with recent upgrades I find there is not much news to read. The icons of news headlines are so big that only few news items compared to the old app. I used to check the app daily and will find the most recent news on top and get the most updated news. Now I don’t even bother to open the app because it doesn’t contain much news. Please go back to the older smaller icon display of news. The old layout is so much better. The new layout now is just big pictures with no real news. Very disappointing.

To say I loath your new app is to say the sun sheds a small amount of light. If I could rate it with negative numbers I would. You took away all the functionality of the old app to apply glitzy and bling instead. No way to select the areas I am interested in reading, virtually impossible to find regions on less you happen to stumble upon a story from that region. I could go on at length but will not bore you. Please off the option of the old format to those of us who like to read our news without glitz. Frankly you have ruined my favorite news app and I will most likely delete it.

I’ve had this app for many years and use it daily. But this new update is horrendous. For instance you can no longer listen to live news while reading news articles? Why the restriction to only sound OR articles?? This is clearly not usable and should be fixed. Additionally I live abroad and used to have a setting delivering news from home. This new update has removed all options for personalised news, meaning I constantly have to navigate multiple mandated grouping and subsections to find country specific news. Im now (sadly) looking for another news station.

I gave it awhile to try and get used to the new ui but it’s just worse. I mostly have just used my news and the tabs are terrible. I got so much information quickly by seeing very small pictures and headlines grouped by custom topic. Now I have to do so much more scrolling and swiping. Often my screen is consumed ENTIRELY BY 2 STORY PREVIEWS while scrolling through the latest news. I don’t need preview pictures that large! Lastly the ads always seem to render after the content has loaded and there is no placeholder for the unloaded ad, creating an obnoxious shift in content once the ad loads and takes up pixel space. Please do something

The new format just rolled out ruins what used to be my go-to news app. You can no longer customize the topics you see. You will now read what they want you to read in the order they want you to read it. I gave it two stars only because the football and cricket and sports news is relegated to the sports section where the old format sometimes had soccer as literally 15 of the top 20 stories. Deleting the app and searching for another news source. Thanks for ten good years of reliable news, but it’s time to move on.

I like the news stories and articles, but lately the ads just completely ruin the experience. The ads cover the articles that you’re reading and are very difficult, if not impossible to clear, leaving you with no choice but to close the app. This is very frustrating and I now question whether or not to just delete the app as it’s just too annoying to deal with. Video playback is very poor as well. Don’t bother with this app until they address these issues that i and many other users have been experiencing of late.

Each time they update the interface of this app, it is like a gut punch, as they always make it worse. You used to be able to see the top stories as soon as you open the app, and then organized buckets of stories below that. This new iteration is a bunch of largely unorganized stories that you could scroll through for days. I’m not looking to read a novels’ worth of material. I just want to know the most pressing issues in the world and a couple of focus areas. For the love of god please go back to the old design, or even better, the one you had 3 years ago.

The new update has ruined the UX of the app. Gone are the options of what topics to follow. There are also fewer and smaller photos and lots of white space. In the same area that used to maximize the number of articles and photos, there is now dead white space. Now it takes much more scrolling to find articles. Users are forced to scroll past many articles that may not be interesting (in my case all of the sports articles) instead of having choices like in the previous version. The app is now broken when it didn’t need any fixing. Sooo disappointing!

The ads that this brings up are so spooky that I had to delete the app after many years. The info it is using can only come from my personal email and google maps tracking where I’ve been. Enough! Not worth the intrusion into my personal life.

I love BBC content, but I really get frustrated with the update. Pictures cannot be maximize, text is not allowed to be selected and be looked up as before. What a disaster of upgrade ! Go back to the previous version!

The current version is like a website rather than an app. Hard to read and hard to find what I am looking for. Poor user design. Still like the BBC articles but this poor design version makes me using other news app like CNN

The changes made to the BBC app have made me use it way less than before. The ongoing ask to register is the first barrier to how frequently I access news from the app, and the new look is less appealing and user friendly with. I’ve started using other news apps more 🤷🏼‍♀️

Can we give 0 stars? Your update ruined the whole experience. How was this approved? Used to be seamless and easy to navigate. Now bulky and less appealing. And always asking to sign in or create an account everytime you open the app? A bit excessive and agressive. Can I revert back to older app?

From hero to zero! Previous app was great. This one takes us back to the embryonic internet of the nineties and feels quite nostalgic, but for all the wrong reasons.

Every time you open the app it asks you to sign in/register or tap to continue without signing in. Why can't it remember my choice not to sign in or register for an account? I have no interest in signing up for an account just to read the news and the additional features are meaningless to me.

This new app update removed some important features including the interests tab. Please bring it back. The recent update killed the news. Deleted the app.

After the last ‘update’, we now have to set up an account. The data gathered can be sold to other companies. This news service just moved off of my ‘go-to apps’ for news events. On your bike, BBC; off you go.

No ability to chose topics of interest, or to find anything. Why can’t I choose the topics? Why no UK, burbling multiple other random topics? Why scroll to the very top for the menu and each and every time? Useless…

The latest update has taken away my personal news selections. Apparently the US & Canada section no longer exists. I may need to find a new source of news.

It did exactly what I needed until that last update. It seems I can no longer configure it to my interests. They make you read or filter through everything whereas before I had it set up to the topics relevant to me. Had, used and loved the app for years, but have uninstalled after the update. Utter rubbish and if I could give 0 stars I would. Please put it back to what it was

It’s frustrating to see news about Canada labeled under the category US & Canada. Canadians don’t consider ourselves American, and the chaos that ensues regularly in the US is not representative of Canada. It would be nice if our news stood on its own.

This app says you can stop data tracking but will not allow you to adjust your privacy settings. Everything else in the settings menu works except for “do not sell my data” It’s just a dead button

The pictures on the App Store have no even been updated to the new and definitely not improved version. ROLL IT BACK!

Journalists are supposed to be unbiased in their reporting.

Used to love Sounds. This app is hard to use and has a fraction of the content.

The full screen ads were the final straw. I have uninstalled the app.

The early 2025 versions worked fine. Then major changes were made and the app crashes often. The latest version is a bit more stable but still unfriendly to vpn and other apps running simultaneously. Please fix the latest fixes

The app has started crashing after playing audio for 1-2 minutes. It has become useless.

Consistently crashes upon opening, before anything appears on screen. iOS 26.3, iPhone 15 Pro. No error message. Has been happening for about a week now.

Constantly crashes. I assume it’s all the ads.

Once upon a time the BBC was a place for high standards of objective journalism. These days sadly the journalism has been replaced by activism with overbearing embellishments that support their preferred world view and not so subtle choices of language that paint views that aren’t radical left wing views in a poor light. Working class British people’s concerns are met with gaslighting, lack of interest or attempts to label rational concerns as far-right.

Here you have a national media outlet that British people have to pay a tax for and they hate British citizens.You can’t make this stuff up.They are the true enemy of the British.

The BBC’s coverage of Israel’s genocide is one of the great journalistic crimes of our time. If you meet someone employed there, let them know: ‘We know of and are disgusted by your complicity in Israel’s crimes against humanity. May you rot in hell along with them.’

After enjoying the BBC app for many years I recently chose to delete it after the ad for the new Apple Watch kept taking over the entire screen, not once, but three or four times as I scrolled through the article. I’ll be waiting for a subscription, ad-free version to become available in Canada before installing it again.

Advertising on a free app is fine. Advertising that blocks 100% of the content every 30 seconds is not. I hope this is a glitch because if there is a person gainfully employed by the BBC who genuinely thinks this is good UX then meritocracy is a myth.

Used to be a great app but. Now these Apple ads keep coming up, it’s so intrusive I am moving to a different service. Awful decision by the tech team at bbc

App is now unusable due to full screen pop up ad’s roughly every 30 seconds.

The bbc app is unusable in Canada starting in early November 2025. Every article has video ads for the Apple Watch that expand to occupy the whole screen and are difficult to dismiss. This happens 5-6 times per article as you scroll through. It’s too frustrating, so I will delete the app rather than allow myself to be angered.

Recently the app has become unusable due to pop up adds. That will be the end of BBC news on my phone given the plethora of other news apps available.

Lots of news but no way to hide topics for which you have no interest.

I would have given a higher star rating if news reported in Canada were accurate. Instead when reporting on COVID-19 the BBC puts Canada in the same league as the USA. Canada has a 10th if the population of the US, it’s closed it’s borders with the US except for essential workers, and the US has 100 times the cases of COVID-19. Canada has done a great job in controlling this disease and is not seeing the increase in new cases now being experienced in America. Please BBC get the facts when you report about COVID-19 in the America’s!!

As suggested by many others, the new design will be seen as a mistake. The user experience has been downgraded overall and is incompatible with how many used the previous version of the app. The previous version allowed users to quickly glance through regional and world headlines via simple headlines and thumbnails, sorted intuitively. The new interface is the opposite. It is confusing and chaotic. The experience is poor from the start where the user has to determine the difference between the All and News tabs to find the best overview of articles. BBC, we ask you, please recognize this soon and reinstate the previous interface. Make it black, red, or green, we don’t care, just bring back the interface that made the BBC app the news app of choice for so many users.

I’ve used the BBC News app to keep up to date on current events for a decade. It was a good way to get snapshots of what’s going on, and it has a good spread of stories around the globe that other news sources don’t always match. But over the years that’s been made more difficult. I used to be able to see recent headlines and choose specific tags place for viewing in a bar above the app. Videos played properly through my vpn. Now that’s no longer an option, and they want you to create an account to even use the app. I don’t want an account. I don’t want social media functions. The app’s full of tracking cookies I want to avoid. The BBC used to offer services to circumvent censorship and surveillance around the globe, and yet now they’re trying to harvest my data themselves and share it with data brokers. I’m disappointed in them. Hopefully the app will get back to being a lightweight UI that makes things faster than accessing the website through a browser. Right now, that is no longer the case

It seems BBC UX designers got inspired by a few colourless apps that have changed their UI recently (e.g. Twitter/X). Here are a few points that I'd like to raise, being a long time BBC app user who's loved this app for more than 10 years:: - Color: red color was very iconic, vibrant, and distinct. The new black color scheme (I call it colorless) takes away that distinction and has made the look-n-feel more dull, bland, and lacking excitement. - Select a Word: I used to be able to highlight and select a word, and look it up in the system dictionary (iOS). But now one can't long-tap and select a word. I think that's a step backwards for the app. Don't understand what was the rationale behind it by the UX team. - Reduced Visual Appeal: the new layout of the news has reduced visual appeal and lacks attractiveness, and is less pleasing to the eye. Though I'd admit that there are now more news stories available at a glance. But that's at the cost of being less pleasing and a less satisfying overall visual appeal.

I used to quite like the BBC News app, but since the most recent update, it simply doesn’t work. I am sure the white blank screen with a loading icon in the middle has a certain minimalist charm, but it doesn’t make up for a total lack of news.

BBC was the first app I opened in the morning to get my news but the new update is garbage and I don’t even look at it anymore.

Used to love the ability to choose my news. New layout and lack of personalization make this app completely unappealing

I have used this app for over 10 years and always really liked it, but I just downloaded the most recent update and now it is garbage! The removal of the “My News” section has completely ruined this app. The app only wants to show me news that it thinks I should see, and no longer shows my news topics that I selected. I do not like this at all. As it is right now, it is completely useless to me. Please change it back!

Constantly runs in the background and you can’t turn that function off. Deleted it.

After using this BBC app as my main source of unbiased news for many years, the frequency of the same full screen UPS ad has got too annoying. Deleted!

This app used to be my #1 source for news. But recently it’s full of adds that obscure some content. Then in the latest update, they removed carousel view. I loved being able to quickly glance through many stories sorted by region. Now the story headers are larger & I can only see 4 or so on my screen at a time (plus ads, of course). It feels frustrating and claustrophobic. I sense I’ll miss a lot of content and be forced toward certain stories more than with the old view. This is no longer an enjoyable browsing experience, so I’m out.