I’ll start by saying the content here is great, and it’s written in clear and concise language, which makes it very readable. However, it feels like not much care has been taken in designing the app or in linking articles. The app itself is pretty bare bones and lacks many obvious QoL features. You can’t search favorited articles, even if you have hundreds, and you can’t add bookmarks in the middle of longer articles. For some inexplicable reason, saved and favorited articles are sorted in lexicographical rather than alphabetical order, such that all the articles with capitalized titles come before all of them with lowercase titles. I can live with that. What’s most frustrating is the number of broken links I’ve encountered in the few days I’ve been using the app, and worse, incorrectly linked articles. For instance, a link in a section of the Computer Science article discussing Apple Inc. takes you to an article on the fruit, and one in the gender dysphoria article links to the article on grammatical gender. It feels like the whole thing has been slapped together.
5 stars for content, one star for the app. No dark mode and you can’t even select article text to look up things (??). The paged reading is extremely annoying especially the page flip animations which can’t be turned off. Given the long article lengths you should be able to bookmark specific sections of an article and the app should remember where you left off. Pretty bad for something that costs 8 bucks a month.
Shame education and knowledge costs money. I understand there’s tons of work and upkeep and maintenance expenses yet, those free knowledge bases supply the usual information at a cost of being edited by omission, one sided views etc etc. as a big fan of those old thick hardcover shelf books, of which as a child i would peruse daily through, online isn’t that great of a desire. As curiosity of statue’s and other art gets erased from a young minds view, the books no longer collected , unavailable and dismissed due to online ventures such as social media, games and chatting with strangers, encyclopedias give way to a choice, an hurried, short learning curve, dumbed down populace. The sharing and influence imbued among actual People, other then the criminal minds has long ago become a cloudy opaque afterthought. Best regards Britannica , thank you for the adventures around the world many decades ago. Im still traveling in my imagination. For free.
I have used the encyclopedia Britannica books and before I read the books i used Wikipedia, until my teacher told me that Wikipedia can be edited by people and you don’t even need an account, so after that are used the complete set of Britannica that I bought the books from eBay there from 2004 and I did attempt to read all the books ALL 32 books and I use them for studying for school, but when I’m on the go I actually use this the encyclopedia Britannica app I really love it it’s actually better than Wikipedia, i would use it like Google but I won’t delete Google for this app but I give it a five star rating.
I just installed this app on three devices today. Even though it is advertised as a Family Sharing app you cannot share the yearly subscription which allows you full access to all Britannica online content. So I purchased three subscriptions, one for each device. After installing the app and adding the subscriptions which were validated on each device, none of the photos in the app under any articles would show up on the screen. The photos were an important reason that I purchased this app. If I had known that it would not work I would not have wasted so much money. I would have purchased an online subscription to the website for the year. For the record, the app store showed that this app would work on this device.
I love having access to the Encyclopedia Brittanica on my phone, and the price is very reasonable; but there is one feature that I feel is sorely missing: bookmarking. There are some articles that are so long that I don’t want to read through them in one sitting, and having to go and find the page that I left off on every time I close the app is tedious. I know I can add whole articles to my favorites and that is useful, but it would be nice to be able bookmark individual pages as well. Other than that, I think it’s great that I have such easy access to so much knowledge!
I'm upgrading by one star. New version doesn't crash, looks nicer. App still needs work (access to dictionary and other common reading app features). Getting better though. Since this app is pathetic I'm downgrading it to one star, reason being is that since I started using it a lot it crashes on certain pages of some articles and also because it has seldom been updated. Content is great and reasonable for fifteen bucks a year but the app is really bad - no access to the dictionary no book marks no customization. It looks alright and works well but is really lacking otherwise.
This app has two problems. The first is that there is not enough content on the “Events this Day” page. The second is that half of the content on the daily-events page is informing you that a specific person was born or died on that day. This is frustrating as they already have a “Born this Day” page. If I want to learn about birthdates, I will go to that page.
I use my iPad Pro for note taking and research for fun, and this app is a great resource for topics of interest. However I wish this app could better support the split screen multitask, as apps hover over the Britannica articles instead of sharing the screen which can be cumbersome to move the apps across the screen while note taking. I hope maybe this can be an adjusted but overall I enjoy what this app has to offer!
Doesn’t have nearly as many articles as Wikipedia, but it’s much more family-friendly. It has an article for “Star Trek: The Original Series,” but the encyclopedia would be better with general articles for “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” It should be marked as having “in-app purchases”, because there’s a premium subscription. Next to the “get,” I should see small letters for “in-app purchases.”
I really like this app! About the quizzes though, I enjoy them but would like to be able to turn off the timer on them; it doesn’t need to be a race! I would like to be able to fully read and understand the questions before answering. I find that most of my wrong answers are the result of a misread question or hurried answer. My interest here is to learn, not to stress myself out! Please make the timer optional. Thanks!
I think the programming of this app have done well to function and for me, it doesn't crash. I predict that it would starting doing that if adding more features, such as bookmarking/page marking. It's a spectacular app! So much use of creativity put into this and other users need to start using their imagination to stay ahead! You're awesome!
Good information, better than 99% of the junk out in the world that “claim” to be of professional reference. Application not bringing up content properly. Tabs need to be updated and are slow in loading information
My 8yr old loves to read about things and learn. I had a Wikipedia app on his iPad but realized you could do a lot of inappropriate searches and get images and all sorts of stuff that is not kid safe. This app however is very clean and very scientific (if he wanted to try and search something out of curiosity) tons of content for free and really cool fun features. Keep it up guys!
A beautifully designed app with a universe of topics that are well-written, deeply researched, apolitical, and verified. Britannica cuts through the undergrowth of questionable online material and remains a dependable source of intelligently-presented content. With an impressively credentialled staff of experts who stand behind their work, Brittanica is still the best since December 10th, 1768.
As others have pointed out, this could really use a bookmark, place holder feature. After leaving the app there’s no way to return to where you left off. On the web/browser version in the help it talks about bookmarks but I’m unable to find that feature so decided to try the app but it’s the same - no way to mark progress. A dictionary would also be nice. In a browser it’s not so bad as I have a Chrome dictionary installed but I still have to manually lookup a lot of words. The app could really use it. Terrific content but frustrating to use.
I downloaded this to check out their quizzes. I have to force quit the app every minute because of pop up ads that cover the screen and cannot be closed in any way. The app is poorly designed and poorly coded. The quizzes also contain 10 questions and never randomize the content from any set larger than that same 10 (same questions every single time). It’s saddening that they would put this out as a product.
This is a fun app to download. It has a variety of stuff to read and learn about. However, when I tried to read an article about a U.S. President (e.g. Jefferson, Grant, Kennedy) it said “article downloading”. I waited for at least 5 minutes, but did not download. So is there some kind of technical issue? Perhaps some articles are updating?
The app is supposed to work on ipad, but the first article I tried to read had an unmovable graphic that prevented me from reading it. Looking at the version history, this is a terribly maintained app, especially an app that is supported by a paid subscription. The world does need a factual encyclopedia, and it should definitely not be free, but this app is terrible and I don't understand why.
I would like to take back everything bad I said about the Fabulous Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s just that I don’t think that I am smart enough to be reading such a Treasure Tome.
If only you had a spell check. I believe people would not use google and Wikipedia so much. To look for a word and know the correct spelling is hard for the average person. I would love to use your app because it is so much more accurate.
Be wary of any free online “pedia’s” out there. For $15 a year this is a great deal. Devs should be pushing this product more in our school systems and social media.
The main problem with this app is that there are ads EVERYWHERE but then also you have to pay for the majority of the content. I’m fine with one of the other but have both is extremely annoying.
This has always been a great encyclopedia. Smart people writing well researched and thoughtfully edited articles. With the content now available, it is a joy to explore.
I love the information this app provides. The one addition this app needs is a random topic button. It would be an excellent way to discover new topics to read about.
I’ve used the webpage a bit. The quiz content is much better than Alexa skills. I was on the verge of ordering a subscription when I installed the iPad app. The AppStore blurb states “we heard your feedback and fixed common issues”. 10 seconds later I’m banging on the broken choose quiz category link. Seriously?
The app feels abandoned in its current state, it has potential but it needs to me modernized and cleaned up. The screen size is a joke, and the popup ads are ridiculously annoying. There should be some sort of purchase able ad-free version, but make the app more user friendly first devs.
Great application and beautiful design But it would be better if I could go through it like a regular books Wanna read multiple articles but alway lose track after exiting article
The articles are great and well written but the app doesn’t have many features. There’s no continuous scrolling (or reading ruler) and the featured articles appear to be the same every year.
If you want to read a long article there is no way to keep your place. Otherwise the app works well and the content is much more readable than Wikipedia.
Apparently Britannica has forgotten it’s loyal customers and owe us an updated version at least compatible with newer iPhones screens. It has been over four years since the last update.
Great content. Please get rid of the persistent pop up box reminding me of the quiz feature. Please get rid of the slow animated page turns and permit continuous scrolling.
This app is old, really old. Pictures aren’t loading and pages are loading slowly. I’ve tried different devices, installing/reinstalling, different networks. Update this thing and let’s keep going. I’m a paying customer.
Frightful loading images at times. Frustrating searches. I am so disappointed. I just cancelled my subscription. Definitely not worth the $70+ yearly subscription.
BRITANNICA YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME AND THE MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE WHO USE YOU
BRITANNICA. you seriously need to UP YOUR GAME!!! britannica doesn’t even have answers for simple questions like “what did people eat in Northwest Territories in 1800s” Like cmon! My friend and I are doing a research project on Northwest Territories in 1800s and so far britannica has been USELESS. UP YOUR GAME BRITANNICA!!! AND MAKE BETTER WEBSITES!!!D
Tried it and seemed pretty good and then it popped up a “remember to take a quiz” popup and then the screen went black and began flashing in and out of the page. Seems too buggy for an app that wants to charge a subscription.
I cannot get in after paying for a years subscription because I don’t recall my password and there is no way to get a new one. Also, there is no way to get help.
This app needs to be updated. The list of the names of the Presidents isn’t current (it still has listed Donald Trump as the President, instead of Joe Biden,) and it’s the same for the the list of names for the Vice Presidents.
Yes, it would require a large file to have all the features off-line. But since Britannica doesn't care to offer this feature, I don't care to give it more than one start.
The complete Encyclopaedia Britannica - the world’s most trusted knowledge source, enhanced for your iPhone and iPad. “Especially for students, or anyone who values what Britannica has to offer, I found the new Britannica iPad app to be a pleasing, easy way to navigate through a large body of knowledge.” - Walt Mossberg, All Things Digital Features include: *Search & Browse: Over 100,000 articles – expertly written and thoroughly fact-checked – on everything from Astronomy to Zebras. Our contributors include more than a hundred Nobel laureates, five presidents of the United States, countless Pulitzer Prize winners, and many others of international renown. *View: Photographs, maps, charts, and graphs bring each topic to life. *Test Your Knowledge with Quizzes: Our app now features our popular quizzes testing your knowledge on history, pop-culture, literature, science, and more! *Make Connections: “LinkMap” lets you explore each article with a dynamic view of related topics. *Personalize: “My Britannica” keeps track of your favorite articles and more. Free to download. Over 65,000 articles are available for free and users can get access to 100% of the content in an ad-free experience for a $14.99 annual subscription. - Length of subscription: 1 Year - Price of subscription: $14.99 - Payment will be charged to iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase - Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period - Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period, and identify the cost of the renewal - Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user’s Account Settings after purchase - No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during active subscription period - Privacy Policy: https://corporate.britannica.com/privacy-policy/ - Terms of Use: https://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html - Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication.
