SmartNews

Constantly freezes and crashes. Tired of the relentless video ads. Total garbage. And don't believe any of the "suggest less news like this" and "don't show news from this source" - none of it works. All of the things you ask not to be shown just keep showing up day after day in your news feed. Resource hog. Memory and storage requirements are ridiculous. Delete! Update 5-25-22: the forced 30 second ads are the end for me. Junk app.

I really do like this app the one problem I have with it is that When you are browsing through the headlines there is always a picture next to it for the most part, however, when you click on the headline And go to the actual article Many times there is no pictures whatsoever not even the one that was in the initial headline Which can be very frustrating And annoying.

Used to work well. Recent updates have been increasingly glitchy. The last few though, omgosh. Now it randomly opens the play store every 3rd or 4th article - huge pain; lags often; glitches going back to the article after looking at a photo & jumps back to the beginning of the main menu - now I have to find where I was 30 articles in, then find where I was in the article I was reading. Please to fix this nonsense.

***UPDATE May 2022*** Two things that annoy me about this app: 1) Clickbait thumbnails in the headline that are nowhere to be found in the actual article. Stop doing that. 2) The app refreshes articles before I have a chance to click. When finishing a read and going back to the home page, I may see an interesting headline but the page refreshes before I can open the story and it's lost forever. Sometimes I can google search and find it on another platform.

Will not allow you to choose SmartView as default mode. Will not allow you to use app only for local news, by forcing you to keep Top News tab as default, top tab. Do not want to see any national news from this app! It is actually less spammy to just use their website through a web browser than this app, accessed through a shortcut on your home screen.

This app worked perfectly when it was on my Samsung S10. I upgraded to the S22 Ultra and can't seem to get any app notifications on my new phone. Livid to say the least. Update: apparently it takes a while for an algorithm to kick in, based on what you're reading before notifications start showing up. Works fine now.

Love the app but the ads are outta control. Lot of the time they cover the content that your reading, when you stop scrolling an ad will move the content that your trying to read which is annoying, & some won't allow you to move or remove the ads. Understand the need for advertising but come on way distracting, etc. Might consider toning it down some...less is more sometimes. Otherwise, content, and everything else is really up to date, informative, and great thata why I kept it 5 stars!

5/9/22: Last straw with the full screen ads taking over your phone back button, trying to force you to watch it. UNINSTALLING ORIGINAL: Very basic. No ability to configure push alerts/notifications by topic and no ability to exclude particular news sources. Extreme quantity of ads within articles making it difficult without clicking one. Too many non-news click bait articles, and no ability to exclude these bogus sources.

Way too many ads. As you scroll down to browse the news article link previews, every fourth link is an ad. They are the same size as the articles previews. If you click on a news article to read, there are even more ads in the story, so you have to keep scrolling past the unwanted ad content just to read each story. Not good.

Advertisements take over the entire screen and never timeout. Only way out is to restart the phone. Also sources news from questionable sources you've never heard of. Do not recommend. Update... Still happening. You have not fixed the problem. Advertising takes over the screen with no way to exit but restarting the phone. Update 2: I've had to restart my phone 3 times today to fix your frozen ads. Love the app, but this problem is really becoming an issue.

I love this app with one exception. Recently there have been full screen ads that cannot be dismissed for a certain time period, usually about 10 seconds. Totally unacceptable! Newspapers used to run full page ads but you could turn the page at your discretion. I absolutely hate having my entire screen grabbed and held at the app's choice. I have started exiting the app when it happens. If it continues, I will seek a different app for news.

This app has potential, but the automatic update of the news feed is a deal-breaker for me. The feed auto refreshes if I click on a link to read, if a news alert comes in, if an ad plays, if I switch to another app and then return, and sometimes for no reason that I can see. Articles I see and want to read are lost this way, and it is stupid there's no way to adjust this. So-called support basically patted me on the head and sent me to my room. Easy fix... uninstall and try a different app.

This has been my main news app for a while now, but I am downgrading the rating due to the increasingly invasive ads. I accept the ads as they were, but this new type of ad, Gaurdio is one of them, that opens an ad, when you close it a new one opens, and another, and another. with the close button in a different place every time until you close the whole app has rendered it sometimes useless. I am currently hunting for a new news app.

This is my go-to news app. It does a very good job with the recommended stories and it always has new information but never feels intrusive or being distracting. The only reason that it is four stars instead of five is because sometimes when you see an article that you want to read but you click on another one because they were both interesting it can be difficult to find the one that you had skipped. Also, sharing can be difficult for recipients unless you open the article in a browser.

There seems to be an abundance of sensationally-headlined tabloid style clickbait. For instance, there is a source called "Express Online" that is nothing but clickbait, and it shows up at least 10 times more than any other source (including those that I chose). I've tried getting rid of it, but no luck so far. I'll keep trying to teach the app that I don't want clickbait and Express Online in particular, but if the app keeps pushing this junk, I'll delete it.

App is now impossible to use. It's constantly refreshing and constantly displaying ads. To make matters worse, it's now even refreshing while you're reading articles. Why watch ads when you can't even read the articles? Don't try opening an article in web view. If you make it through the article without refreshing, when you return to the list of articles it will always refresh!

This used to be the best news app and I've been using it for years, but it has gone way downhill recently. Multiple full screen ads one after another that you can't click out of for up to 15sec, and on top of that it has gotten extraordinarily glitchy as well. Very often articles will freeze and i won't be able to scroll, the bottom half of an article will be completely blank, embedded vids/photos won't load and random music from ads will start playing etc...

I'm re-writing this because it became too cluttered. What I like about this program is that I can read things offline. So like if I have a chance at a stop light and have a connection I can get the top headlines, but it doesn't always load the pictures which is annoying. The ad's on this are intrusive, they seem to fluctuate with every install. If you find your stories aren't loading, make sure you are logged in with facebook as they are the only ones that save the settings, uninstall it and install it again. But I still lost things so I still don't think it installed right. Also I would LOVE to see a way to control what news sources we see. Like I don't want junk news like OAN (that is not news), FOX and the rest of the losers. I also don't want random tabloid stuff filling it out. I want to be able to check off on a list what news items I want to see, or at least have a way to balance it to just the left or just the right, ON THE ENTIRE APP, not just the political page. I still like the app, but I don't like wading through the junk. If the right side wants to read nonsensical lies to support the lies they heard already, then they should only see the lies. I want to see the actual truth. This app wouldn't get so many 1 stars if they fix this one feature. Forget about being balanced and unbiased, let us decide what we want to see. Because I don't care about the junk the other side has to say because its not news. Its just a fantasy story. I'm leaving my rating at 3 stars. Because I do use it all the time, but it can be very much improved.

Abundant source of news from all sides of current issues. I could spend all day reading this app and probably not read it all. I would give it 5 stars but I have only one complaint. As I'm selecting one article and see another I'll read next, when I finish and go to get the other article, the darn app downloads new articles and the one I wanted to read goes away! This happens over and over all day long. IDEA !: Make the downloads available when I press a "select" button instead of automatic.

Constantly freezes, have to shut it down and reopen, usually loosing the article that you were reading. Still constantly freezes, just lost the article that I was reading and again can't get it back. Had to shut down the tablet to unfreeze. Seemed to improve for about 3-4 months now it's back to the same problems, only worse than ever.

Since updating, I've had loading issues with many of the articles/stories that I tap Doesn't matter if my wifi signal is as strong as Bruce Lee's fists, it will still have that "loading wheel" spinning for (what feels like) hours on end Also tapping on the "smartnews" arrow tab that appears "if you have a slow connection" will yield a separate screen with its own forever-spinning loading wheel. And not really digging the new layout of top stories either.

App hangs up & crashes. App has many intrusive ads. App does aggregate wide variety of news & information sources. It is disappointing to have to navigate so many advertising screens and application lockups Latest version includes many more ads some of which hijack your device with LOUD audio and terrible video. Ads play for long periods of in spite of application setting to block auto play. Down grading to 1 star.

crashes multiple times per day, getting old. Still crashes multiple times per day. As of 5/1/2020 it still crashes frequently and I was unable to Provide requested data. As of 8/30/2020 this thing gets hung and has to be restarted to temp work. Keeps getting worse.. And it happens on different phones. Maybe time to go backnto google news? Now the damned thing gets hung up frequently. You pick an item and it just spins forever. You have to shutdown and restart the app for it to work for a bit.

Too many articles from 3 weeks ago!!! The articles need a date/time stamp. Let me decide if I want to read a 3 week old article instead of trying to entice me with "new" titles that are merely CLICK BAIT!!! I can live with the current level of ads. I hate opening an article that appears to be "new" only to find content that has been "overcome by events."

I started using this app and loved it. It was filled with good info. and a variety of info. Then with each update there was more ads,requests for email addresses to read articles,having to sign up for subscriptions in order to read articles, and misc. blaring music while reading artcles. I hate to see where the next update will go.

The information provided offers pertinent and interesting news. The two things that are annoying are how the screen resets occasionally after an add losing the place you were and if you send an interesting link to a friend it forces that person to have the app installed to view it. Of course if a link to the source document is provided, the link can be sent from there.