TED

Recently I have had a minor addiction to video games during covid because of the scarce amount of activity in my life. This addiction was starting to grow, with accumulating many games on my mobile device, and a gaming console. When I wanted to accumulate another mobile device game, I found a section of apps, with TED within this group of applications. Therefore, I downloaded TED. Although I had a minor video game addiction, i still read books, and watched documentaries. However, while I downloaded TED I broke this minor addiction before it grew and spent more time to invest in education and learning rather than a video game that contributes only entertainment to my life. I love TED because with great quality in learning, there is not much quantity of time consumed! Therefore I could watch many more “mini documentaries” as so I say, than other documentaries. Thank you for your time, and last note. If you are wanting to learn more, I definitely 1,000% recommend this application.

The poor rating is for the new app, that forces me to answer filtering questions and queues up videos to auto start after I finish a video. I have used the TED app since it came out on my first iPhone, years ago. What I most appreciated was the chaotic combination of topics that were always showing up, with no theme holding them together other than combining Technology, Entertainment, and Design. What I valued most was the juxtaposition of wildly differing topics — I don’t want filtering and categorization and I don’t want a TED account, I just want the flood of wildly different topics that characterized the experience in the past. Please provide a way to bypass the filter questions and categorized presentations and just go back to the timeline presentation of topics as they are added to the flow. On top of sticking questions I don’t want to answer in the flow of using the app, at a recent update it lost the results and made me answer them again. Bad programming producing a poor user experience. I was about to give two stars, since that is all the app should get, but it is hard to ignore the fact that the content is still very high quality.

After I retired five years ago, I enjoyed looking at TED daily for the variety of coverage. Sometimes I scanned my own interests art, architecture and design just to see what others were doing. I titled this these two areas of concern because I appreciated the thoughtful coverage. My grandson who is 21 challenged me to find a group to discuss TED ideas with. Beyond my partner and my church and book club groups. As a teacher I led Socratic discussion, teaching students how to voice their own understanding and listen to others, even if I had to do so during our lunch breaks. I worked with 3rd through 6th grade. TED talks have given me more insight into the importance of discussion and ways of facilitating it effectively. Thank you for the ideas, the vision, and the hope for our future.

Don't get me wrong, learning is one of my favorite hobbies, and now that I have a job where I need to keep myself auditorily entertained, this app is perfect. Not only can I find mountains of content about all different topics I want to know more about, but I can download these videos for free so I don't have to worry about my work's wifi cutting out (like it does). However, there is no section of the app to find what you've downloaded, and no section to find the things you've added to your "list". I wanted to pre-download a bunch of videos before work, but I have 0 idea where they are, and don't know how to find them. It seems the developers were more focused on showing off their recommendations and podcasts than they were on making the app user friendly and easy to navigate/keep track of. If that issue gets fixed in a future update, I'm happy to redo my review to properly reflect the changes that were implemented, but until then, don't bother with the app if you want to save anything for the future.

We have a lot of TEDtalks courses offered for e-learning where I work and I’ve really enjoyed watching some speakers more than others. It would be great if there were options to not only be able to search by actual speaker or more than just a single word when typing into the search bar on the app and maybe only getting a small number of results with the exact word and have to try searching a different word to find the video you’re looking for. It would also be nice if there was an option to create additional lists to save videos to for those of us who watch for both work, personal, and/or any other reason. That way you don’t have to search through all of the ones you might have added to your list to watch when you’re only looking for one that was saved for work.

I have been a Ted fan for at least 12 years. This is a Terrible user interface. You would think with “Technology” in their name, they would invest something in their product! I could go on and on, but my two most recent aggravations are (1) when in search mode you must “check the boxes” every time to select your favorites. There is NO functionality to “save” your search topics, so every time I fire up the iPad I need to re-do my searches. Unbelievable and totally frustrating that this program does not have a way to save searches on the topics I want to see. And (2), the “Trending” feature line typically has Ted talks that are 10 and 12 years old. Someone needs to inform these folks what a trend is!! And yes there is more (3) everything should “ALWAYS” be listed from “newest to oldest”. I don’t want to hear about information, news, technology, etc. that’s outdated unless I choose to do so. Really hate this APP since they “updated” a couple years ago.

I briefly wish to commend TED Talks for having become a magnificent global forum for the exchange of ideas and ideals indispensable to humanity at this and all future stages of its profess and maturation. The largest forward leaps in civilization on this planet have always been directly correlated with public information, education, illumination and inspiration. TED Talks present an entirely contemporary means of providing that service to all by enlightening and stimulating the public sentiment, awareness and conviction by presenting individuals with the necessary access to factual realities, expert opinions, and seasoned wisdom in succinct, digested and digestible presentations of key points on the leading and most critical issues of the times. As the inceptors and fashioners of the breakthrough documents that created and permitted modern democracy to exist, to progress and to thrive realized and emphatically proclaimed, the progress and stability of humanity is dependent on and the product of an informed and enlightened public. Herein do we discover the preeminent value and serviceability of TED Talks in contributing to the ongoing provision of all these essentials to human survival, advancement and happiness.

I gave this app three stars only because it plays the videos without problems. But the search feature is the worst I’ve ever seen on any app. I wanted to find talks on ‘self trust’. Typing either of those words in varying combinations, including with a comma between, turned up two videos or mostly no results. Of course, typing in ‘trust’ results in about half of the entire Ted library. I literally have to use Google advanced search to find videos I want to watch in my Ted app. Sheesh! By the way, when I did get a resul from my search in Ted app, the display was so tiny I had to use a magnifying glass to read them, and I’m using an iPad Pro. That lack of scaling in the display is ludicrous. Additional input: Recently, every time I try to access TED videos through Facebook posts, I am asked to register or answer ‘two’ questions. So I’ve deleted the app. Why does TED need my private info to use their app? TED = Take Everyone’s Data

Picture-in-picture closes while audio playback continues. This doesn’t seem like an intentional feature. Video player should be replaced with the stock iOS player. You’ve included no additional functionality using a custom UI, and it’s less responsive. There is an occasional scrolling glitch I haven’t figured out how to replicate. The page jitters struggling to line up with the inertia of the gesture. Scrolling performance is also extremely poor, lagging on long lists. The only standalone feature that sets the app apart from the website is the ability to download media for offline listening. I don’t need this feature enough to put up with the rest of the app experience. The presentation of categories minimizes discoverability. One alphabetized list that lags is not effective. Switching bottom tabs is also extremely laggy. Additionally there is an absence of - transcripts - speaker profile pages - related links to learn more and/or participate in the topic of the video - reading lists - footnotes - comments I can see the negative space in-app where these items are listed on the website so I hope that they’re in the pipeline. Hoping this app will change! I think there’s utility to providing more than a web app, but this ain’t it right now.

It wasn’t until I became open minded. that I began to learn. These videos are awesome. I’ve recently been going through marital problems. My hope is I can take this information and use it in a positive constructive way in hopes to change the outcome. Although I do struggle with excepting the fact that some people are unwilling or cannot or do not have the ability to be open minded. Through watching these videos I have learned that my approach or delivery to the problem could be why I am misunderstood. So for now I will just forward the videos with the link hope that they take the time to watch them.

I used to have the TED app on my iPhone 10 years ago; it was glitchy, so it’s surprising to see that 10 years later, there has been little improvement with the player. Whatever video player you all use needs to be overhauled. Simply pulling down the control center to increase the brightness of my phone causes the video to go black—every time, but the audio still plays somehow. The website’s video also tends to go black randomly and is laggy beyond belief, no matter what device or browser I use. I don’t imagine I’m only one who, out of frustration with the player, stopped visiting your app and website and chose to rely on YT to watch TED videos. The think about that is one tends to forget TED videos even exist after a while. Oh well…

It’s 94°F and the humidity is well over 90% today. But my task is painting my sons bedroom and I must get it done. TEDTalks are what’s making that possible. The last one was about the beauty and magnificence of birds and the urgent need to conserve them. Prior to that I was listening to several talks about urban architecture and how we can use it to make our world a better place. I give thanks to all the brilliant lion hearted people giving these TEDTalks and highly recommend them to anyone who needs a little lift to get through the difficult tasks of your day.

Beware! The Download feature does not work well! First, the app does NOT download the video or audio in the background on wifi so you have to make sure you keep the app open! Second (and even worse) when you click on "My Talks" then choose downloads, it will show your talk as being downloaded when in fact it isn't! (the talk has only started to download or is only partially downloaded). This means that you will consume a lot of unplanned bandwidth when you try to view the "downloaded" talk (which may cost you a lot of money) or you won't be able to access it all all if you don't have an internet connection. It's a poorly designed app. They should have a "pending download" section in "My Talks" and enable the app to download in the background when on Wifi. There should also be a progress bar when the talk is being downloaded.

I love TED. I really want to preface with that before I continue. I’m still going to use the app, because I love the concept of TED. Conversation, connection, knowledge, growth, all great things we need a lot more of. I usually watch them on my laptop, but I recently put it on my phone. One thing I hate, and it makes me scream curse words at this app, is the search section. I will literally put in the exact name of the TED talk I want to find, and it will tell me that there is nothing under that search. I have to go to my web browser, type in the TED talk name, and then open the link that takes me to that talk in the app. You guys are a multi billion dollar organization. Please fix your freaking search bar on your app.

I like the fact that you can still listen to the audio while the app is closed. However, the front page hasn’t updated since I downloaded the app a week ago. Same videos and categories, same recommendation — I mean this is like app 101 the home page should have new daily content to look at. I also agree with a reviewer below that I would prefer no or little categorization and to let the content flow into a beautiful chaos of ideas. I understand TED has to try and remain relevant within the problems and contexts of these crazy days, but what made TED special in the first place was its ability to transcend all of that and make its viewers view problems in a different perspective.

You would sort of think that the people at TED would have a brilliant app that…worked (at minimum). I love this app and I spend a lot of time with it. I love the ideas that it brings me. But on my phone, it crashes a lot. Every time they “improve” it, it seems to get worse. The buttons require several clicks before they work. The search feature actually won’t find individual presenters by name. Several times recently I found a TED talk that I wanted to see, and the app crashed and closed before it would start. Just some of them. Not always. Is it really that hard to make an app that gets the basics right?

I used to love listening to TED talks. I loved learning of new inventions, innovative and health beak-throughs and business ideas so I decided to download the app and I chose categories I THOUGHT would be pretty similar to my interests: technology, science, design, business, innovation and health. All that popped up on my feed for days was a bunch of global warming, politics (all leftist views), racism topics, feminist topics and just 2-3 topics that seemed unpolitical until I clicked on them...and even those turned out to be liberal and leftist views. No longer interested! I get so sick of people virtue signaling and promoting themselves as self righteous people. I don’t need people to tell me we all have internal racism and we lack diversity when these TED talks clearly promote only one way of thinking. What a freaking disappointment!

App seems to work just fine. My problem is with the lack of diversity of ideas over the last 2-3 years which I LOVED Ted for in the past - learning something new or an idea I’ve never considered or even heard of from different perspectives. But now, a lot of the narratives are all coming from what seems like the same person no matter what the topic. All very leftist leaning; socialist ideas = good, individual freedom = bad. Developed countries = bad. Race and gender identity good, individual character = bad. Come on Ted, throw in some other perspectives. Challenge people to think outside of their box and not feed from the same one with people that think exactly alike.

I absolutely love listening to the wide variety of TED talks while I’m at work. Whether it’s inspiration, passion, motivation, learning, or exposure to a new view that I’m looking for, TED has it. The only problem is that I was using so much data! Well, no worries!! TED allows free downloads of not only audio but video. Hallelujah! The only thing is my phone sometimes freezes when I’m using the app, but it may just be since I recently updated my phone and not because of the app. Overall, highly recommended and so happy!

TED talks have literally changed my life. I love everything that TED is about and the work they are doing. Everybody should watch TED talks in their free time, there is so much to learn and that’s what we were created to do. Grow, learn, and improve / help society one day at a time. I pray and hope to work for them one day, furthering their mission statement that aligns so perfectly with everything I am about. I Love TED. If you want the app, download it. If you don’t, download it anyways and wait for the day when you do. Thank me later! xoxo juliasparks

In 2019 bugs were introduced to the TED app that make it very hard to use. The problem was reported to TED support at the time and was responded to with something to the effect of, “We will consider Voice Over (VO) access as a future enhancement.” While the TED app is updated regularly, the bugs have yet to be resolved.” The biggest problem is the lack of button labelling. It is common to encounter screens that are a mix of labeled and unlabeled buttons. I can only conclude that either TED does not test the app before updates are released or people who use VO are simply not enough of a priority to justify the problems encountered during pre-release testing.

I’m sure this review is - technically- supposed to be for the app itself. However, I’m having a hard time thinking of the app without the content. For me, the app works; it downloads fine, plays well, and is there whenever I want it. Four stars for that. That said, the content gets eleven stars (on a scale of 1-5). There are so many fascinating ideas that I’ve been completely unaware of that I have to laugh at my own ignorance. Thanks, TED crew, for helping me see beyond.

Even with the updated version I can’t get the videos to download successfully for off-line viewing. I have a dozen or so videos supposedly downloaded in my downloads section, but when I am in airplane mode I cannot watch those videos. There’s also no indication regarding the progress of the download. After you click on the download video button, it just shows up in your downloads section. But there’s no indication how much is downloaded. And there’s no way to refresh the download or restart it.

The atmosphere of the app is amazing, and I love the personalized content! However, the app fails to remove videos from my watch list after repeatedly trying to do so, and it sometimes duplicates videos after an attempt. Additionally, the app lags and freezes almost every time I use it. I don’t both going on it as often anymore and putting videos on my watch list because I know I won’t be able to get them off of it! If these were fixed, though, the app would be undeniably great!

An incredible app that provides easy access to so much good information. I think a way that it could be even better (and gain more users, particularly younger ones) is to adopt a tik tok type feed as well. Tid bits of information filtered through an algorithm that users can scroll through would definitely be appealing to social media users familiar with this format. Just something to consider.

There is no option to edit your account, the Podcasts tab doesn't scroll all the way to the top, so the top three listings are halfway cut off and inaccessible, and the interface is generally not well optimized for iPad. Thumbnails are the most glaring example, just at a glance. The thumbnails for videos when you click on them is low definition and pixelated because it's been stretched out instead of being designed properly for a bigger display. Overall the app functions well, but the iPad design is not good.

I had been watching TED talks on my safari web browser and it was always glitching. The app works great and I love that it saves your progress if you don’t finish a video. I also like being able to save videos to watch later. My only complaint is that I can’t find a list of already watched videos. I’ve watched a bunch and when I think about one I’d like to share with someone I can’t find it. The app would be perfect with this added.

First off… Love the Ted App. Suggestion - Would like to create multiple lists and be able to move them between lists. Maybe like Pinterest boards. Examples - Maybe I’d make them for different work aspects, marriage, boards of clips I want to watch with my kids or suggest for them to watch before they can do some mindless other app. Once my kid watched it, I can move to a “Done” board.

TED should be broadcasted in every part of the world, free of charge. It should be a given right to have access to this information. PS: Love the notes you guys write when you push an update to the app store! Makes keeping the TED updated, makes me feel like you’re building an app for the users and followers and subscribers😄 (in comparison to Facebook which seems to only make an app for the masses 🙄) Keep up the good work! ❤️

Great content. Good app. Please add auto detection of which Apple ID is logged in to the Apple TV so that my spouse watches things on their account and I watch things based on my account without having to manually switch it in the TedTalks app. Also, glad you use the top shelf function on Apple TV. It would be great to populate the suggestions with talks from my watch list or recommended talks based on my watch history.

I’m very disappointed with this app. I downloaded it so I could search for a talk my group might find interesting for discussion. I’d started this process on the TED website, and wondered if the app might offer additional controls. The answer to that latter question is, “apparently not.” But more important to me, the app fails as a search tool compared to the website. On the latter, I was able to search by category: Click on the category; see all relevant talks. All I could do on the app was search by words that might appear in talk titles. That latter is simply not very helpful. Oh, well. Back to the website.

This app—especially on tv—really needs an overhaul: it’s not fully compatible with iOS/iPadOS/tvOS. As others have mentioned, the content is great… but the removal of features and lack of support—especially on the TV app (where I use this app the most)—just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. It got to the point where I completely removed the app from my devices a year ago, and came back to see if any advancements have been made… and, once again, have been disappointed. And, judging by the comments, others feel the same way.

I love TED Talks. I just wish there was a bit more functionality for the iPad app because the iPad is my main device. For instance, the app doesn’t take advantage of split screen or have a floating window feature that allows me to multitask by taking notes. Also, more customization in terms of allowing the user to create their own playlists would be great. Thanks for being TED, the world would be a lot less interesting without this platform.

Let yourself just wander over older topics don't just follow one thing. It is simply amazing about how many incredible people are working on complicated problems, social and scientific, and then can explain them to you in a short burst of maybe 15 minutes. Literally, If you could only have one program to watch this would be the one. Good wandering!!

I’ve used this app for years and it has always worked fine. now it’s broken so badly it fails to play videos in many cases. Screens freeze constantly. tapping on a Ted talk often does nothing. you are lucky enough to get a video to play, the entire app may freeze while it’s playing — including the playback controls. It’s a terrible mess and should never have been released. I see there was a new release just two days ago. It’s not any better as far as I can tell. Ted talks are a wonderful gift to the world and you have made a terrible mess of some great content.

Love the TED app. However, in the last few months SEVERAL of the talks, and animated talks WILL NOT PLAY. I have tried to switch to a different wifi, I’ve tried using cellular data only - neither works. The only way I have found to work around this glitch is to DOWNLOAD the episode you want to watch/hear. This is a pain b/c it takes extra time and then the end user has to remember to go back and delete the download to free up memory space. What happened and how quickly can your IT dept. solve this? It would be greatly appreciated!!

I miss the old app, I miss the drip and ripple, I can’t search/find playlists any more, and I tried to add a talk to my list, it said it did it, the plus turned to a check, then it turned back to a plus and did not go on my list. Did this numerous times, I finally just downloaded the talk to save it for later. Still love TED Talks, just miss the old app. UPDATE Got the latest version, I still cannot add talks to my list. The plus turns to a check then a couple seconds later it turns back into a plus. I really miss the old app, why mess with something that worked so well?

Love this app and it’s content but there is a bug that keeps updating/refreshing the screen while I am searching for content. When I try to find a way to report the issue I discover that there is no way to contact the developers. Even the App Store takes you to where you have a drop down to report a quality issue and states that it is free content. And dead end. Typing here is the only option.

I love this app because of the variety of videos on it and the surprise me feature which always brings me interesting videos I haven’t watched before. It also has a clean user interface and well developed search engine. However, whenever I play my downloaded videos offline, I am able to play one but the next one does not play because of a playback error. Sometimes it plays once I restart my iPad, but most of the time it still does not work. Please fix this!

I love how this app is set up, and the content is incredible, but I seemed to have a problem downloading content. I would have like 15 talks downloaded in my list, but when I look again, I only have nine. Not only this, but several of my successfully downloaded talks that didn’t mysteriously disappear just didn’t play and ran into an error. Overall, while the content is very interesting, I had to take a star off for the downloading issue.

Having been waiting many months for the download function to work, this version kind of works, yet with many bugs. 1. Crashes when downloading about five or more playlists. 2. When come back, the downloading function will not be able to resume properly. 3. When you play a video, even if it’s a downloaded video, the downloading function stopped. 4. When you first started download a talk, the downloading button shows a circular progress bar. But when you come back from the middle, like crashes, or shutdown, the progress button is gone, and not responsive. 5. No indicators on the download status, I will never know which video has finished download so that I could view offline. 6. No pause, resume 7. No control for individual videos within a playlist. 8. No background downloading.

Your app is a great app and I use it every morning when working out to get “educated”. One big flaw is when I choose a video to watch and I see on the right hand side another video in “Related Talks” I’m interested to watch afterward there is no way to find it again. Every time I finish the main video the “Related Talks” have changed again and I’m not able to watch the other video I was interested in. Even more so: There is no way to add a video in “Related Talks” to your watch list. That makes actually the “Related Talks” section pointless since I can never get back and watch what was suggested to me. Please, I would appreciated if you can make it work that the “Related Talk” videos are NOT changing every time I finish a video or add the main video to the watch list but rather that I’m able to go back and be able to watch one of the suggested videos. Thank you.

Never had this issue before, but this app just freezes in the first screen saying “there are two questions to answer to get started “. A few times, the app did move to a screen saying the app couldn’t refresh data (or something to that effect). Disappointing because I loved TED. 3 stars because I used to have this app years ago and loved it so much, can’t bear to give this a lower review. Hopefully it works for others!

- needs a setting for only downloading via Wi-Fi. – need a progress bar to show what is being downloaded and what has not been downloaded. (One of Ted’s talks state-owned Porten a progress bar is. Irony that they don’t take their own advice.) - videos should be grouped by categories to make it easy to watch similar videos. For example if I want to learn about astronomy, all those videos should be grouped together, and easy to find. I’m giving the such a low rating not because the app is good but because I believe this is the only way the developer will take notice of my comments and fix the limitations I find in the app.

I love Ted talks and expected more from the app. There is NO content about Art. A world filled with lectures, philosophies, theories, history, characters, unlimited content to discuss and unlimited subjects in the matter to inspire. Yet nothing. Just a couple, 2 good, 2 old and slightly off topic and a few “the art of…” titles that have nothing to do with real art (such as NFT’s. So many artists, galleries, curators, teaches etc….it’s endless the talks they can add if they sought it out. I expected more selection from such an app but this shows that the arts really is slowly dying and that Ted is clearly on board.

I love TED with a passion, it has helped me change so much in my life for the better. The app however does need some changes but the two are mutually exclusive as far as I’m concerned. I watch TED the most when I’m away from home and lately (I’ve downloaded the latest update) I’ve not been able to watch or listen to any of the talks. Please fix the app, TED is so inspirational! I only gave 4 stars because of how the app is behaving lately.

The content deserves at least a 4 star rating but the app has given me some grief. It closes unexpectedly as the video is loading and I wish talks on the subject matters of interest previously selected would appear on the home screen. Currently there are many talks I have already watched and others that are recommended for me but in which I have little interest. Wouldn’t it be nice if the selection would refresh with talks yet to be enjoyed.

For the most part this app does exactly as you’d expect. Easily browse videos and playlists, and the “Surprise Me” feature is pretty cool. There are a few things I’d like to see improved though. The video player lacks the swipe gestures that other’s do (pinching to exit a video, for instance) and I think there are yet more ways to navigate and filter TED Talks that couple be employed. Overall rather satisfied though.

I rated this app 4 stars because it is easy to find videos you like and very easy to navigate the app in itself. However the like button doesn’t seem to work, no matter what I do it will not save the video as liked. The downloading has worked for me (I’ve only downloaded audio) so far. If they could just fix that little bug in my opinion it would be a five star app.

App was working great for the most part, with just a few bugs here and there. Then came some big update that changed the layout and appearance. Since that update the app has become a pain, often freezing, crashing, or taking significantly longer than it used to to load things. It’s very frustrating, I wish I could uninstall the updates because it pretty much messed up the app for me.