NPR

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This is an okay app, the redesign was fine for the most part. I wish that I could share stories more easily though- there is no easy share button at the top of an article. Also, unlike the old app, I can’t click on photos and see them in full screen. This ticks me off since on a mobile it is much harder to see a photo when you can’t make it bigger. Secondly, PLEASE allow some sort of system for keeping track of interesting stories, even when they’re old. A favorite, starred, or other system would be very helpful. I know you don’t have that on your website either, and in fact it’s very rare on most news sites, but not having it makes it extremely difficult to keep track of anything. Also, I would love it if I had the option to add on to my home tab with news from topics that I, THE USER, think are important/interesting. For example, there’s a “World” category- why can’t I ask the app to include those stories at the end of my home page? Or perhaps add a tab NEXT TO home that features News tailored to my interests? The current system means its much harder for me to stay up to date on topics I’m interested in, since I don’t want to have to go to each topic with several clicks. I just want ONE PLACE, ONE! where ALL the stories in the topics I’m interested in appear in a line, like on the home tab, or even in the home tab. Please include these changes. Thank you NPR.

I should have known better than to go with the new NPR app that replaced NPR News. There was so much to love about it. Although I do Support my local NPR Station, I also like to browse, including locally produced programs from other parts of the country, which are not carried by my local station. That was easy to do in the old app. I simply brought up the station, and chose an on-demand program. These shows were displayed alongside the live streams. In addition , I could create a Favorites list, and even add items to a playlist for later use. In the new version, all of these features are gone. Now, the only way to get on-demand material from other stations seems to involve changing one’s favorite station; and, even if you do that, you then have to go to a separate On-Demand tab to get such material, and there are fewer choices of podcasts and topics. For instance, on the old app, I could go to WUNC (not my local station), and listen to podcasts from The People’s Pharmacy. Now, even by making that station my favorite, I found very few choices—and The People’s Pharmacy wasn’t one of them. Then, I had to reset my favorite station; then, to get back to where I was (if it wasn’t my local station), I had to go to Recently Streamed, and _hope to find it there. I hope I will grow to like the new app better, but don’t count on it. The reason I even gave it 4 stars is that I’m a huge fan of NPR.

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The new NPR app seems designed like the NPR One app, which is really unfortunate. On the old NPR News app, I could create my own playlists, listening to these three stories but not that one. That functionality has all been removed from the new (and certainly not improved) NPR app. Sometimes I might want to listen to most of one day’s All Things Considered program, but would (for example) delete the sports stories because I just don’t care about them. With the change to this new NPR app, it’s not possible to curate my own NPR playlist. It’s frustrating that NPR’s “digital” department thinks that this is what their listeners want. The new NPR app is much less listener-friendly and makes it more difficult to seek out new/interesting content. It is still easy to find Morning Edition or All Things Considered—but it is very difficult to find the off-the-wall and obscure programs produced by smaller NPR member stations across the country. The old NPR News app was great for that. Ugh. I gave up on using NPR One years ago because I didn’t like how that program “decided” for me what it thought I would want to listen to. I was an active user of the NPR News app for years and years. I used the Playlist feature on a daily basis. It was a very frustrating morning to be forced into using this new NPR app that has taken away much of the functionality of the old NPR News app. Please bring the old NPR News app back!

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The latest release is a train wreck. We live for the news and I even used to work for an NPR affiliate, and the 4.0 update has destroyed our relationship with NPR in our home. The old app was crashy, slow and quirky but functional. We love NPR so much we put up with it. We used to listen constantly, curating our own playlist with a few taps on even a 5 year old phone and it worked fine. One day I hear cries from the shower, what happened to the NPR app? I find out there's an update, saw some bad reviews, rushed to turn off automatic updates on my iPhone, but not in time. The fact that the old version is gone without warning and replaced with something missing the only meaningful feature of the app is completely irresponsible. The new app seems to do basically one thing which is to stream some tiny subset of NPR content in a predetermined order without the ability to decide in advance what I listen to while showering, driving, running, etc. This is torture after getting accustomed to the playlist feature for the last several years. I have read every review here and this is basically the consensus about the 4.0 app. I have searched for an alternative, to find nothing. I may write one myself as my next side project. Until then, goodbye NPR, just when we need you most. I beg whoever is in charge to bring back the old app, immediately. Update: Just installed latest version and it crashed on startup. Deleted.

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I used to use the NPR app to listen to my favorite NPR programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition Saturday and Sunday. As of a few days ago, this is no longer possible. For some reason, NPR has disabled their own app, making it impossible for users to listen to these shows in their entirety. Instead, only four stories from each show are available, and the listener is directed to download a completely different app, NPR One, if you want to hear the rest. Why, NPR? Why would you do this to your listeners? Even if you do go along with this coercion and get the NPR One app, it is still impossible to use it to listen to full episodes of shows like All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Sunday, etc. This is because NPR One lacks a playlist function and only lets you play one story at a time before the app forces you to listen to some other random show or podcast that you have no interest in. NPR app team: please bring back the ability to listen to full episodes of our favorite shows on demand. Why would you do this to your listeners? No one is going to use the NPR One app until you make it possible for us to listen to entire episodes. No one wants “curated” (i.e. random) news, especially if there is no full episode option. Until you fix that terrible NPR One app, can you please restore the original NPR app back to functionality so that your listeners can continue to enjoy our favorite shows?