SmartNews: News That Matters

Michael Nunn

1 year ago

Recently ads have started popping up over the top of articles. I can not close or move them so i can not read portions of the news article. 1-18-24 update, still two stars. The ad issue is fixed but now some articles won't open all the way. I can read a paragraph or two and the rest is scrollable blank space with an occasional ad. 4-2-24 update, down to one star. Latest app update did nothing to fix the problems with this app.

Laurie Wolford

1 year ago

05-2024 Still having problems with the app. Same issues as before along with it constantly freezing. Have removed and re-installed multiple times with no difference. Well we are back to the articles not loading again. Really frustrating Oh my God! Will you guys please fix these issues!!! Not one single article will load! It's been months that it's been like this and there are multiple complaints here in the reviews and you haven't don't anything! WTH!

Diana Mestre

1 year ago

As of yesterday, none of the articles I click on will load. Restarted my phone to see if it would help but it didn't. When I tap "retry", nothing happens. Will have to delete app if it's not fixed. Update: This apparently has to do with my cable provider. If I take it off wifi then the article will load. Apparently they have fixed it. The articles now load.

A Google user

1 year ago

The app really needs to be better at moderating what is news sources and what are blogs. Update: Disable all ad setting if possible. The worst ad update ever was released this app will now auto play ads even if the app is not open. I have had to force stop the app every single time. I've disabled auto play and it still autoplays even if the app is not open. The ads will also play over other apps and during phone calls.

Roger Weed

1 year ago

Way, way too many ads. They never stop and are very intrusive. 11-29-23 edit: Still too many ads that continually pop up, some that cannot be closed and all are useless to me (or at least the ones I am forced to look at). No change in the star rating. Another edit 4-22-2024. The ads have increased, and some are very hard to erase. Every time there is an update, it seems to increase the ads. No change in star rating.

Birk Binnard

1 year ago

They finally fixed it! 😊 I blasted this app for poor performance and the annoying way it blanked out articles while viewing them, but those problems seem to be fixed now. There are still a lot of ads, but they are manageable, don't cause problems, and I've gotten used to not really seeing them much at all. Overall this app works well and is my primary news source. Thanks to the development team for fixing it.

Raul Martinez

1 year ago

Great app for all your news in one place. Update: 3/4/2024 Went from five stars to one. App has become total garbage. Constant ads blocking the news you're trying to read. The video ads start playing in the background by themselves. The video ads are so powerful that sometimes I literally close the app and the video sound still plays in the background, even though I closed the app. Every advertisement has the close button right below the ad hyperlink so you can't close it. Have to click it.

David Eckberg

1 year ago

This app used to be great, with a wonderful selection of news from around the world. But now it is unusable. Stories fail to load, or only load partially, video clips don't play and more. I really wish they could get it back to the functional news app it used to be. Addendum. After several updates this app is now mostly back to being the great news source it used to be. I use it daily and enjoy its mix of stories from all over the world. It still occasionally hangs up, doesn't load completely or

amru khan

1 year ago

Update as of March 1st, 2024. They seemed to have fixed the problems mentioned below. This used to be a great app, but recently a few problems have persist. One is ads are playing automatically even when setting is set to never. Another problem when clicking on a subject, it will open once but there are problem with opening more articles. These problems have persisted for the last 3 months

Kathy Anderson

1 year ago

UPDATE: App updated and restarted while I was using it just now. Absolutely nothing loads now. It used to be my favorite and only news app. Then it started to freeze, unending ads, stories don't load, articles don't scroll, articles incomplete or blank, ads start audio in the middle of an article, and the list goes on. Finally, I deleted the app and will not install it again. Installed Google News. It's fantastic. The difference is like night and day.

Matthew St Onge

1 year ago

I love this app! A couple of things could be improved: 1. Sometimes ads play sounds or music. Many people need the app to be silent to respect others. Please, no sound ever. 2. Sometimes an article will keep repeating the same paragraphs. 3. Sometimes a story will only show pictures with no text. 4. Sometimes under the local tab a story from another part of the country will show up.

Sokudo Ningyou

1 year ago

Still no widgets, and while I appreciate free apps, I would rather pay a few bucks a month than deal with these intrusive, full size ads that were snuck into a recent update. More recent updates have gotten rid of specific areas of interest into one big mess of a tab. And if you want to copy a URL, it doesn't copy the actual website URL, it copies a Smart News specific one that leads back to the app, which is useless.

Calvin

1 year ago

Generally pretty good at providing news notifications and showing non biased reporting. However, it does push notifications as "breaking news" with stories that are not in any way breaking. Things like "The benefits of being lazy" I have no interest in, but still get notifications about because it was classified as "breaking." You could much easier just subscribe to a particular news source.

James Parks

11 months ago

Ads that play full volume no matter what (Specifically while trying to scroll the news feed). Articles that don't load. Articles that crash randomly. Articles that seem to reload and restart part way through reading them. Use to be a great app but it seems the updates are only making it worse, not better. Sad to see a good app decline so far.

Mark

11 months ago

I am upgrading my review to 4 stars. They have made some improvements in the last few months. It is still a little buggy (e.g. not downloading all of the stories and jumping around while reading), but it doesn't randomly play loud ads (I have a Galaxy S22 Ultra/Android). The app has great bones, but it still isn't as good as it once was. Despite the issues, SmartNews is still my favorite news app, but I hope that they continue to work on improving it.

Kim Wood

11 months ago

I use this app multiple times a day. I like having different sources in one app. It saves me time and keeps me informed. I'm often able to see how both sides are spinning a story and determine for myself if I need to dig deeper. The articles won't always load for me. This seems to be early morning hours and mid evening - high usage times. This happens once or twice a week and is frustrating with the limited amount of time I have, but it eventually starts loading the articles.

Cindy Garris

11 months ago

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!!!