I was originally using Apple News but then I decided I didn’t really want to pay an extra ten bucks a month when I can get all my day 2 day news from this app for FREE! I love how I can pick and choose the topics that interest me and get news feeds on it in real time. Don’t get me wrong I liked the idea of using Apple News as my main goal is to integrate all my stuff over to Apples ecosystem but I feel that 10 bucks a month for News nowadays is just asking a bit too much when people have so many other avenues they can go down which are either cheaper or in this case completely free. I will stick with my Google News for the time being as it gets the job done and it does it in style plus when someone is looking for anything what’s the term they tend to use??? Oh yeah! That’s right! They say “let me Google that” lol
Google stands astride our planet like a colossus, raking in billions of dollars per second, tracking each mouse click of every man, woman and child on the internet. So how is it they make an app that’s as lousy as this one is? First off, it’s a battery-killer. Don’t open Google News if you’re not near an electrical outlet or you’ll quickly be out of juice. Once it is open, expect the stories you click on to load very slowly. That’s if they load at all. There’s a one in three chance that the page won’t load and you’ll see that stupid Google ice cream cone that says this app won’t work because it’s lousy. Maybe it’ll wait until you’re halfway through the story when the app freezes, the page locks, and then gives up and decides not to work. You could copy the link and read the story in Chrome but, if you do that and come back to News, the app resets itself. That means that, if you were looking at the “For You” section, all those News stories you were looking at will be gone, so if there was something you’re interested in that you haven’t read yet, you’re out of luck. Those are just the major ways this app is lousy. There’s plenty of small things that it messes up, too. Google should be ashamed that, not only do they put out a stunningly awful app, they’ve done nothing to fix it for years now.
Ruining a perfectly good app with “new & improved”
Google, are you listening? We all came to love your services for their simplicity and focus. What was wrong with the Google News app which I’ve loved for years? Why are you dumping its simplicity for this over-engineered under-thought product? More and more you are rolling out offerings which feel more like products of Apple or Facebook. If I wanted dumbed-down, bloated apps that make decisions for me I would not be coming to Google for a solution. Why does this app not have a dark or night mode? Why are the articles with their pics so large I can only sew a couple or a few on my phone at a time —how hard would it be to add a menu option for a condensed headlines view? If I needed a Apple news app view, I would use the Apple News app. This is Google Reader all over again —killing off your most-beloved products in leu of something that integrates features your fan base don’t care about while dumping those that do. It would not be hard to add a traditional or classic view to this app for those users who prefer the layout they’ve been using for years with the prior Google News app. I just deleted this app, and I’m not returning to it until you at least provide a sensible, condensed view free of clutter and massive article photos.
The improvements are great. I had deleted the previous version because it was unreliable - some features would just randomly not work. Though the new version doesn’t seem to have that issue... I found myself waiting up to 30 seconds (or more) for an article to come up after I’d clicked on it. This is on a new phone, with the latest OS, often using WiFi at home. I tried with no other apps running - same thing. I’m surprised that no one else seems to mind the lag. Sometimes I only have 2 or 3 minutes to check the news. If I want to review more than 3 articles, It’s likely I’ll spend most of that time just standing there, staring at a processing icon. I don’t know about everyone else’s news reviewing habits, but to me, an app with this much lag time between articles is simply not useful. I’m better served using that time on email and waiting to do my news surfing on a computer. Or just using another app. The Apple news app does not have this problem at all. If the speeds were the same, I’d prefer the Google news app; content and customization features are better. However, as is, I just can’t justify making the switch, as much as I’d like to - can’t afford the downtime. I’ll check it out again in another 6 months or so.
This app has three behaviors I find incredibly annoying: 1) While reading your news feed, frequently, after you finish an article, it automatically scrolls you back to the top of your feed. Enjoy re-scrolling through the entire list again to find where you left off. It’s especially annoying when you had already spotted the article you intended to read next. 2) Often, after you finish reading an article and you press the ‘back’ button to return to your feed, you’ll discover that you didn’t really make it back to your feed at all. Instead, you’re at a list of articles from the same source as the last one, but disguised to look similar to your Google feed. You have to press ‘back’ a second time to actually return to your feed. Why does Google permit this deceptive behavior? 3) Some sources limit the number of articles you can read for free. Fair enough. Often, though, it’s a limit over a given period, such as three free articles per month. Google News never seems to honor these time limit resets. With those sources, as soon as you hit your limit once, you either subscribe or you may as well completely remove that source from your feed, because you’re never getting another free one.
This new version is pretty, but feels more like infotainment eye candy than a news portal. I used to go to the old Google news to quickly scan top stories, view a few alternative headlines to get a sense of different media perspectives, and then dive into stories of interest. It was usually easy to figure out which story was text versus only video so I could choose which to view. This new version of Google News is not designed for any of that. Instead, it’s a screen with giant quasi-animated images with moving titling that snare my attention even though the story has no interest to me. It’s distracting and the scrolling text makes me wonder whose editorial opinion I’m seeing, where the old summaries didn’t. It also takes longer to scan through than the old summaries. I can only see two or three stories at a time so have to scroll forever for even a small sample. It now starts in the Favorites section, which lists a weird combination of stories, many of which I do not find interesting but I don’t see an easy way to curate. Further, the fact that it automatically logs in with whatever account it finds, even on a shared device where a few of us have different gmail accounts, is annoying.
Google news app is a rare fail for google: uses way too much screen space you have to scroll endlessly. The stories are in random order: here’s a political story, here’s a human interest story, here’s a celebrity gossip story here’s a story about Trump here’s a story about food. Etcetera. Attempting to scroll frequently results in leaving the story altogether. It’s not possible to go back to the story: You have to scroll endlessly to find it again. The for you section has one of the worst story picking algorithms I’ve ever seen: If it feeds me one more celebrity gossip story I’m going to scream. Marking ‘show me fewer stories like this’ seems to have no effect whatsoever. Nor can one search effectively to find the story one just swiped out of while attempting to scroll. GOOGLE: FIX THIS APP! Update in 2023: there are so many pay walls and popovers and dead links on this app that it’s becoming almost not worth using. When I remember how this app used to be It’s really quite astounding how bad it’s become. And yet I still use it every day. I don’t know maybe this year I’ll finally get rid of it.
For example, options to filter out unwanted content fail. Personal preference is paramount. If I cannot customize my experience, I find it very difficult to continue using the App. Google should know me better by now. I provide enough feedback through the App for a proper algorithm, but it is like no matter how many times I tell Google NO about something, they tend to come back with a YES response, which is quite argumentative, rude and provocative. If I say I do not want to see a source, Google does nothing about it, other than gather data on my preferences. Gathering preference data and not implementing it to accommodate preference feels like being swindled. I gave you my preference, but instead of RESPECTING my preference, I am constantly DISRESPECTED every time Google ignores my preference data. A data-harvesting algorithm is useless if you drive users away with BAD DESIGN.
Whatever they use for algorithms does not work, which is odd because I thought google perfected those like 20 years ago. But content topics I don’t want to see still show up, specific articles I don’t want to see still hound me within a few hours of specifically asking not to see it. Often picture don’t align to what the article is about “Suzy seen out wearing a new purple skirt” is attached to a picture of Phil wearing a grey suit with no picture of Suzy in sight! A lot of articles “aren’t there”. I see something interesting I want to read, I click it, and it’s like less than 2 sentences from what seems like a good article. I don’t get it… then I go to my browser to try and find the mystery article from the content provider and find nothing. Finally the errors! Oh the errors! They make me crazy! I used to not have the problem but maybe within the last month I would say about 1/4 of the content I try to read quickly changes to say “error displaying content”. So annoying!
I'm leaving this review here because I couldn't find a way to report issues within the app. Every time that I am using the Google News app my iPhone starts overheating, so hot that it can burn my hand! This doesn't happen with any other app that I use, so it's super concerning and makes me worry that it's use is damaging my phone. I also keep having articles crash while reading them, just suddenly saying that it isn't available. This happens frequently enough for me to stop using Google News, and ALWAYS occurs if I attempt to navigate to any other content within the news provider's site. Quite frequently news stories that are HUGE don't show up at all under either recommended nor headlines. For example, on the day of the recent mass shooting at the Kansas City Superbowl celebration parade I had to search for articles about it because NONE were showing up on the app. So it's definitely not a very good source for breaking news.
A Mixed Bag of Rich Content and Frustrating Paywalls
Google News is a comprehensive and efficient news aggregator, offering a wide range of articles from various sources. As a user, I appreciate the diversity of content and perspectives it provides. However, one significant drawback is the prevalence of articles behind paywalls. It’s quite frustrating to click on an interesting headline only to find out it’s paid content. This issue interrupts the browsing experience and often leaves me feeling disappointed. Google News would greatly benefit from a feature that clearly marks which articles require a subscription, allowing users to make informed choices before clicking. This addition would enhance user satisfaction and streamline the news reading experience. Overall, Google News is a valuable resource, but this improvement would make it even more user-friendly and accessible.
Google News is my favorite aggregated news service!
Google News is my favorite aggregated news service! Many independant news services charge a monthly or annual subscription in order to read their articles. Luckily Google News offers multiple news outlets on the same news story so I can always find a news service to tell me something about the news worthy event I’m interested in learning about. I’d like to see Google News offer a multiple subscription service bundle to the leading news outletsNYT, Washington Post, that would allow me to read 25 to 50 articles per month from a variety news outlets. Although I would still be seeings ads, I feel this would allow me to become better informed without have to commit to multiple and costly subscriptions needlessly.
Updated review Nov. 2020: I have been able to customize so my preferred sources are more likely to appear first, but when I click on “Full Coverage”, I still see mostly stories from far-right garbage “news” sites. Guess if you pay them the $$$, your content gets on no matter if it’s totally false. To Google’s credit, they do have more stories from local news sources; that’s important for stories in specific cities and states. So I still give it 3 stars - useful to a point. ____________________________ Original review: I’m disappointed with this new iteration of Google News. It seems more focused on clickbait and less on topics I’m really interested in. And after carefully curating my news feed in the old version, it seems I’m back at square one and have to recreate my preferences. The old version is no longer available-a week or so ago, it deleted all my preferences, though it still showed news, so I reluctantly deleted it. As others have commented, I wish I could select my preferred and NOT preferred sources, but Google hasn’t allowed that for some time. I just ignore the stories from “Faux News”, though I wish there was a “thumbs down” or “show less” option to fine tune my stories. Ah well. Google is less interested in sharing information these days and more in selling ads. I have two main news feed apps and I just scroll both and hope for the best!
I love to read the news, and do so almost every day. You always get bogged down, however, with certain organizations taking certain political stances, or you’re unable to get several perspectives. However, Google News solves all of that. I’ve gone from using specific news source apps, to apple news, and now to Google News. It has one of the most user friendly UIs I have ever worked with, whilst providing an awesome experience. You can customize which news sources you’d like to see more of, but Google News will always give you a huge range of coverage. Not only does it make reading the news easier, but it also makes it easier to get several perspectives on any given story. One of my most used apps, can’t recommend a better News Application than Google News.
Google News is far better than Apple’s news app. First and foremost, Google’s has a more natural scrolling feel (like Safari or other browsers), while Apple’s is overly sensitive in comparison (a slight scroll sends me halfway down an article). I also like Google’s rate of updates throughout the day and the customizability their app provides (not as good as it used to be however). I’m able to block news providers as a whole on Google (like when random British tabloids of ill repute kept showing up, I was easily able to block their content). Wish Google supported comments within the app like it used to (now have to navigate into the browser to view/reply). Also, the ability within the app to choose to view articles in Safari is now more limited. I now have to copy paste the articles into Safari instead of just clicking “open in Safari.”
I’m a huuuge follower of the news, and recommend Google News to anyone who enjoys staying up to date with current events. A variety of news articles from differing biases and perspectives helps one to see the bigger picture. With a simple click of the “Full Coverage” button, you can see how any story is being talked about across the internet, including on social media sites. The design and layout of the app is sleek and orderly. Stories that are most relevant to your interests will send notifications to your phone, if enabled. I love the app!! If I had to make a recommendation, perhaps Google could make a “Biased” meter utilizing machine-learning to detect the nuanced biased choice of language from any particular story.
I switched from the CNN app and Twitter to get my news through here. I like the new “For You” tab. The interface is a lot cleaner and quicker if you just want curated news. I like that you can tap headlines and see latest news. It’s more national focused, while I have the curated one suited to my interests and local stuff. It’s a really nice way to see the news without other people’s opinions in the way. The new app is a lot cleaner and easier to use. As a student taking advanced classes it’s important for me to keep up with news and in general keep up with the news. The news has become a very important thing in my generation now. I think it’s important to know where you are getting your news from and this app does it right. It’s not just one source it’s many so you gain perspective.
May 30 Update. After many months I decided to try Google News again. Still the same huge distracting graphics. Still the limited feeds that lean far left. So many other reviewers say the same thing yet the amateurish graphics dominate still. Deleting this again. Not worth my time in this format. I’ll try again with high hopes in six months or so. I want so much to like this app! The new Google News is just plain horrible. The amateurish look is something a high school kid would create, full of big pictures and missing the ability to quickly scroll through headlines to find articles of interest without those glaring pictures distracting you until you just give up. Gone is the ability to use keywords of your choice to create a news tab, you can only choose from their limited lists. Google News now has the look of those webpages that are full of sensational gossip articles rather than raw news. Please bring back the old version.
This is my daily read, it continuously learns and gets better at picking relevant news that one cares about. I monitor several overseas news sources such as Aljazeera and really appreciate that they are available. A couple of improvements would make it even better. One would be to remove annoying news sites that require subscriptions even though they are not marked as such. NPR, San Jose Mercury, Santa Cruz Sentinel are examples. The other is to remove the irrelevant or not credible news sites that usually have a very small print and barely legible unrecognizable logos and present regurgitated clickbait news, several examples of this are in the physics and science categories.
The new version of this app is an enormous dissappointment. It now serves me huge swaths of visual (and oh great, moving) panels of news that are hardly relevant to me are difficult and sometimes obnoxious to scan. I don’t even understand how to train the algorithm to do a better job, because the only customization I can find when, for instance, I am served sensationalized local news stories picked up by the networks, is to eliminate the entire network as a news source, which is absurd. My old customizations are gone. This has gone from a smart, fast way to absorb a lot of information to a dumb, flashy slog which I continue to open out of habit but am now abandoning. It looks better and more immersive, but contains significantly less substance and value. Also, I hope Google is getting a cut of all the paywalls this app crashes you into now. No idea how this could come from a company that theoretically knows more about my web and news habits, whether I like it or not, than any other.
This new format makes you wade through multiple versions of the same news story. In the older format, you could choose to look at expanded coverage if you wanted to. This is just tedious scrolling—and fewer actual stories. Am I missing a way to collapse the coverage to one report for each news story? —with the option to look at other coverage if I chose to do so? I couldn’t see any way to collapse these repetitious listing. It should be up to the user to customize how the articles are presented. I loved the old Google news. This is dumb. One more thing: when I look at the 69,000+ reviews, I see that the average rating is 4.5 stars. Yet, when I scroll through the recent reviews, at least half, maybe more, give it very few stars. Are the 69K reviews including your past versions of Google News which was much better? Something’s wrong here... And one additional note: today I clicked on a story from the WSJ, but was unable to read it because I don’t have a WSJ subscription. It would make sense to tell users “subscription required to read article” before sending them on a wasted digital trip. Or better yet, don’t include links to articles that the general public can’t access. I have to agree with other reviewers that this is a form of click bait that benefits the publishers of the WSJ, not the dupes on Google News whose time is wasted.
The range of sources is nice but many stories lead to paywalls and really hinder what stories I read. Also, if I click on a certain kind of story just for the hell of it, the algorithm goes hog wild and pesters me for days or weeks to the point that I’m less inclined to just click around on a whim. Or to click on an article whose bias I do not share but want to read against the grain. Just because I click on something does not mean I support it or detest it either. There are more subtle gradations of choice-making that the feed seems to not pick up on. How could it? I have no idea, that’s Google’s job. Lastly, it would be nice if one could put in a block on certain things - terms, names - that one is not interested in at all like Kim Kardashian. I’m sure she’s nice but I really just don’t care and do not need to be reminded anymore about how much I do not care.
You all need to make sure that you are able to fit in as many news sources from around the world as you could do that in this way, all users who actually use this type of app in general will always be able to see and hear about whatever types of news that they all would ever like to hear about from any parts of the planet in general. Lastly, you all need to make sure that you are able to post up photos, videos as well as any other forms of media in general that would actually be able to explain how all of these types of news sources work, what parts of the planet that they all are ever broadcasted from and so on and so forth. All of these forms of media should always be translated into as many different worldwide foreign languages as possible.
No more swipe to go back on 14PM zoomed display? - edited
Updated review: Ok Google, we complained and you listened. Thanks for bringing back the swipe right to go back! Changing my review to 5 stars because it is my favorite news app! Original review: Hey Google, why’d you get rid of swipe to go back and instead force users to tap a x to close an article? And why are you showing so much stuff behind paywalls? This used to be my go-to news app but it’s gotten worse over the last year or so that I’m now using 3-4 different apps just to get what I need. Please start thinking about the UX and not all about how to generate revenue.
I’ve tried a few of these news apps. Half find sites that claim to be unbiased that are very biased. Which way? Doesn’t matter if it’s lies. More than most of these apps only seem to find sites that rewrite Reddit am I a jerk nonsense or look another Karen to hate expose. This would even include microsoft’s attempt at legitimacy. Start over. Google still finds news sites that are a joke IMO, but I can easily remove them with a click. And I’ve yet to to see gossip ranked before actual events. I just wish they’d realize what a waste of time the New York Times is for most readers and cut them themselves. Oh the reason their local news is bad is because my local news is a joke. They can’t fix stupid, only source it.
would be awesome if things weren't always crashing
the app itself is stable, and i prefer whatever algorithms are in place to feed me what i'm actually interested in, and i ESPECIALLY like being given a list of news articles that i can, like... read. for free. without being badgered to pay to read half of what i'm being presented with. but all the free news in the world is worthless if the page spits out an error halfway through the article. i thought maybe it was just a mercury news thing, but it's doing it with articles from other sources as well. i tried babying it, letting everything fully load and scrolling very slowly, but even if that worked (which it doesn't), it's 2021, i shouldn't have to do this. i reasonably expect a google app to be robust enough to handle SCROLLING.
The content is fine but Google has nothing to do with that other than creepily spying on you and collecting your data to sell to the highest bidder. The app itself is irritating because you could be 20 headlines down, click on a story to read, then, when you back out of the story, the app sends you to the top of the feed again so you have to scroll back through dozens of headlines, some of which have changed or moved, to find your place. The feature of returning to the place you left off is so basic (e.g., in online shopping when you click on a product then return to the search page) that Google’s choice to irritate its users rather than implement a simple fix makes this app clunky and frustrating.
The simple desktop version of news was wonderful. It was customized based on my personal preference and easy to read the news that mattered to me. Articles were arranged by the my chosen topics as well as common topics such as technology, national, local, sports, etc. The app makes it difficult to find articles on the topics that matter to me. While the old desktop news page would update daily, I find the same news articles suggested for me over several days, even after reading the article. I understand the aesthetic choices for the app, but sometimes we just want things to be simple and easy to find. The desktop was closer to the ease of finding news articles in a newspaper where the app is more scroll and hope I find an article that interests me.
Totally unstable: hangs constantly and sharing issues
Google news offers unique features that make it one of my 3 primary news consumption apps on my phone. (The others being Artifact and Newsify - an RSS reader). However, it’s infuriating to use because it hangs and freezes constantly when using the app. I’d say once every 15 minutes or so. It also hangs and freezes when trying to use the share sheet. I have a number of shortcuts added to my share sheet but they work fine in Safari and other applications. It’s maddening to not be able to send news articles to a a note taking service, to friends via text, or to summarize them with AI like I can in other apps because sharing doesn’t work without freezing the app. This bug has been present for about 6 months.
When I add an Apple widget of this app to my iPhone, I used to have thumbnails of news stories behind the headline. Not anymore. I’ve had this problem for more than a year now. It’s the smallest widget that has a problem, the square one, while all the other widgets do have thumbnails but they are so tiny and are placed beside the headline, and the widgets that feature them are too large!!! Please fix this! I haven’t used the app in years after this bug, and it’s a shame. It would be EXTREMELY nice to see a picture of news that are going on around the world, rather than just a black box with a logo and some text. This is not a technical issue, you’ve made it happen before! Figure out the bug and GIVE ME MY WIDGET WITH THUMBNAILS BACK PLEASE. I hardly open the app anymore. It’s virtually invisible on my screen because there’s NO PICTURES!! JUST A BLACK SQUARE WITH SOME TEXTS.
more recently Ive noticed the extreme left news articles non stop. Completely one sided. And then the jimmy Kimmel bashes trump skits...you know the guy famous from the man show...the show that was about everything that he now makes fun of republicans for...(hypocritical much) it’s honestly disturbing how 1 dimensional the news has gotten. I’d like 1 news source that’s actually open minded and not pushing their companies views or agendas. I’ve hit the do not show or fewer stories option and literally have had that very same article pop up 10 more times. We get it google you’re left. Cool I don’t care I also don’t care about what some celebrity ate and the fact I have to ignore 10 of the same articles only to have them reappear is irritating. At 1st I thought google news was better then apple news...now I think they’re both on the same level of junk.
I give Google News App two stars because the layout is workable and the algorithm better selects articles which interest me than does Apple News. But the good news ends there. The app will not launch articles in their related apps (such as NYTimes or Washington Post), nor will it communicate with Apple Keychain. Makes it a PITA to read such articles, so I don't. Instead I close the Google App. Also, on articles from sources which will open, the header won't remain visible allowing user to close the article and return to the main page. These are just examples of the countless frustrations and glitches. if the good elements of both this App and Apple News were combined the result would be a really great news service. As it is the apps are as miserable as the news itself.
I have been an avid user of Google news. However there are a few things that would make it much better 1. A personalized list to add articles for future reference. I know there is a read later option, but that’s just one list. Would like the option to make/share lists 2. Many articles are not correctly displayed within the app. Either some elements are not correctly displayed or image players are off. This needs to be improved 3. Ability to turn of dark mode. Since I am an “avid user”, reading on a black background hurts your eyes and I end up opening articles in the browser. Please have an option for background colors for dark mode and option to turn it off.
I spend time with Google News every day and it’s a great app in terms of amalgamating lots of sources on multiple topics. My only complaint is the navel-gazing algorithm. It seems to base my feed off of (1) news I’m reading and (2) my search history. I end up in recursive news spirals where (for example) I look up a Glee cast list one night while watching Netflix, am fed an article about Naya Rivera the next day, and from then on get 2-3 Naya Rivera articles every day. It’s as if that single seed had a very outsized influence on my news feed. Similarly I clicked on Ask Amy once and now I get Ask Amy AND Miss Manners multiple instances in my feed. Wish I could choose “show less of this” or something to tune the algorithm.
I have been using this app for a few days now. Despite my repeated attempts to dismiss news stories about Burger King’s new 1$ tacos using the “Show fewer stories like this” option, which I have done more than 20 times, the app continues to present me with article after article about the tacos. The same goes for celebrity gossip stories, sports articles, tech product reviews, and any article that mentions the name “Phillip Schofield.” I would estimate that I have dismissed around 100 to 150 articles about these topics, but they continue to show up more frequently than anything else lose in my feed. Show me well written articles about politics, foreign policy, economics, criminal justice, or anything of actual substance from a genuine news source, please! Even “following” specific topics and sources doesn’t seem to do anything. I’ll be deleting the app as soon as I am done with the review.
I’ve always like google as a news aggregator. The “for you” section is pretty good at suggesting relevant articles. The top news section is decent when it comes to showing articles from the right and left sides of the news spectrum. My only complaint is that if I’m using the app and have scrolled down a lot, and have to leave the app for a minute and open another app... sometimes when I open google news again it refreshes rather than leaving me where I left off. This can be annoying because I have to scroll past a lot of stuff to try to figure out where I was at. And sometimes it will even refresh the ordering. I wish it would wait for me to tell it if I want to refresh.
This is honestly my favorite way to get my news now. Not only does it have a beautiful user interface, but it aggregates so much useful information together for you that just saves you time. For example if there's a big national story, many similar stories from various news organizations are aggregated together, which is nice because you get all the perspectives from Fox News to CNN. I also love how it's automatically personalized. Google, in my opinion does a great job of using the data they already have on you, while also giving you the option to personalize even more if you prefer. Great app, would highly recommend!
By "crashes often" I mean it displays the ice cream cone frequently. Returning to the feed page and clicking the same article loads fine. Super annoying bugs: click on an article, the the back icon to return to the news feed and the app dumps you 26 -92 articles prior to the one you just read so you have to scroll down past those articles to return to where you were in the news feed. Autoplay videos: the setting to disable Autoplay does not appear to do anything as videos still play. Once I have read an article, I don't need to see it again in the news feed. If I down vote an article that is part of a collection, why do I have to down vote every other article in that collection to make them go away?
I have used the Apple News app religiously before discovering Google had their own alternative. Apple News is built into iOS making it convenient but I had one continuing issue during our time together, no matter how many times I marked certain types of articles/editorials with ‘dislike’ it seemingly had no affect on my news feed. Google News doesn’t have this problem, in fact within a week it seems to have already figured out what stories I want to read and which ones I don’t. This is something Apple News didn’t do in well over a year of use. Thank you Google!
Google news in general is a great service, aggregating various new sources into one platform so you can dig into topics and see various points of view. That being said, this app is garbage lately. When you click into a story and then back to the feed you almost always lose the place you were in the feed when clicking on the story when the app reverts you to being at the top of the feed for the specific section you’re reading. A real pain for anyone trying to get a easy digest of top stories. Even more concerning is that lately when using the app my phone loses connection to my WiFi for about a minute. Only happens when I use google news. Very strange. Even Speedtest can’t find my network for 1-2 mins when this happens.
The choice of articles covers many aspects of the new giving a nice review. My only objections for some of the articles is that they are blacked by their publisher like the Washington Post, USA Today, & others unless you pay to subscribe to their papers so you can only read their headline. I would like to see those articles entirely removed from Google News as they are useless & I am not interested in subscribing to a paper to read one or two of their articles every two weeks or so. Other than that, I give Google News 5 stars for its coverage!
My biggest problem is that I am afraid to use the ‘more/less stories like this’ feature. Some stories have so many different topics that it is hard to just say ‘less’ when I don’t know what I am exactly saying ‘less’ to. What if I like some parts of the story, but dislike others? Samsung has a feature when I say I like a story and want more it asks which parts I want more of. Then I can say less and it asks which parts I want less of. It gave me a much more customized news feed. Now I don’t want to say ‘less’ because maybe it talks about a sports team I like, but I don’t want to say ‘more’ because last time I did that I kept getting stories about a team I don’t like because they were mentioned once in the article.
I honestly prefer Google News over Apple News because it incorporates my Google search history and provides stories I might like. The problem with that is it “uses my Google search history to provides stories I might like”. Apple News uses learning too but while it’s more private and isolated on my device, it’s siloed. Whereas Google gives me a far reaching spread of news tailored for me by my behavior. The iOS app refreshes when I leave the app (while reading an article). This is annoying because when I go to return to the article, the app refreshes and goes to the “for me” section from the start so I can’t return to the article that I wasn’t finished with.
I have used this app since it came out. I have now switched to using a browser instead. Stories don’t load but do on the website. My subscriptions to WSJ, NYT, Atlantic are ignored and I have to enter credentials every time. Even that doesn’t work with NYT because the link for login doesn’t work. Teaser for articles behind paywalls. A lot of paywall blocked content presented - feels like chronic advertising for all the sources I’m not a subscriber to. I chronically get a blank screen and have to back out and select “More like this” and read that news via different source. Often the X to close at top left of screen is inexplicably not there - covered by content. And this app is as slow as molasses. I have never disliked an app more. It used to work but it has degraded to the point of uselessness..
Keeps updating while in the middle of looking at articles
Big problem is that in the middle of scrolling through news articles, the reader will jump to the top. So you lose your place in the articles. It should do what other readers have done. Take a snapshot of the articles. When an update occurs, provide a button to refresh. If I don’t press the button, I’m still reading through my snapshot. This snapshot should also apply, when I’m in the middle of reading an article. When I go back, it should be to my snapshot of articles, and NOT, some updated version. This is the reason, I stopped using USA Today reader. It would jump around, while I’m reading or scrolling
It would be the best news reader I’ve ever used if the notifications worked properly. I’ve tried reinstalling it and the notifications come back for a couple days, but then stop again. Otherwise I love it. It has a great range of sources. It seems to learn what I’m interested in much better than Apple News. I love the “full coverage” button that brings up stories related to the one I’m reading. The layout is both pleasing and functional. I like that there’s a tab for stories tailored to me and another for top headlines in general. If they fix the notifications, or if you’re lucky and don’t experience that bug, it’s an easy 5 stars for me.
Poorly designed app. This is the only app that competes with Apple News, which is terrible. This is my main smartphone app. I spend more than a dozen hours a week using it. What did you do!?! I hate it. The feed doesn’t load sometimes. The app freezes. The feed stops loading, while reading. Requiring you to reload the app and losing your place. The curation is worse. The local news is gone. The app is a battery hog. The app using too much data for a news app. Why is it always trying to run in the background? Why is it better at loading content while I’m not using it? The news isn’t updating as often. The main draw for Google News is that it’s always updating new content. The full coverage feature is great, when the app works. Please pay a couple of people to tighten this app up for us Google. Discouraged news junkie. 😥
One of the best news apps as you eventually can get it tuned in to “exactly” what you want to see. But the jump “up” after a while, as it adds additional articles to your feed, after reading something, is very annoying. I have to prevent my thumb from scrolling up, while I wait for the “jump” / insert of another article on a topic I just read. Sooner or later I forget and I touch the screen and the “jump” takes me all the way back to the top of my feed again, where I then to curse and have to flip/ scroll past ALL the stuff I already read Hoping one day this will be fixed.
I don’t hate taylor swift. I just do not care to get push notifications about her holding hands with someone. For the past 4 months, it seems the only news that I get is about taylor swift and her relationship. I do not care about the relationships of famous people, and I had done all I could to block news sources that were pushing that content to me. I had blocked over 40 sources, and I could not find a way to put a content filter so that I could more generically block any news about taylor swift. After enough time, I realized this app had lost it’s original utility to me as being a feed where I could see international, national, and local news articles in one place. It is now just a taylor swift feed, and I am not interested in that. Please rename the app so users aren’t confused or misled.
I have used the Google News app almost exclusively since it was called Google Play Newsstand. Over the last few weeks, I have migrated more and more over to the Apple News app. My biggest issues have been resets and looping. Looping: I start reading a story, set the phone down or move my attention to a conversation then come back to my phone to discover that the article I was reading had closed and the app had reset to the home screen. That article is no longer shown on the home screen list at all. Resets: Stories on the home screen loop endlessly, the same 12 to 15 stories appear in the order as I scroll time after time no matter how far down I scroll. I will continue to try to use this app, if only out of habit, but it has fallen behind the Apple app in terms of user-friendliness and usefulness.
Google News is a personalized news aggregator that organizes and highlights what’s happening in the world so you can quickly catch up and discover more about the stories that matter to you. With Google News, you’ll find: YOUR BRIEFING: It can be nearly impossible to keep up with every story you care about, Your Briefing makes it easy to stay in the know about what’s important and relevant in your world. It updates throughout the day to bring you the top local, national, and world headlines, plus personalized news tailored to your interests. LOCAL NEWS: Explore your community through stories and articles from news outlets in your local area. Customize and choose multiple locations so you can know what’s happening near you or wherever home is. FULL COVERAGE: Dive deeper into a story with multiple perspectives. The Full Coverage feature organizes everything online about a story, surfacing and highlighting coverage from different outlets and mediums. With just a tap, you’ll uncover how the story is unfolding and how everyone is reporting on it. STORIES FOR YOU: The For You section delivers personalized news related to your interests. Take control and customize the articles you see by following the topics and sources you care about. ACCESS FROM ANY DEVICE: Stay up to date on the news no matter where you are. Pair the Google News mobile app with our Desktop website, news.google.com, and enjoy your personalized content across all your devices.
