Variety is my go-to for entertainment news. This update is a big improvement, it’s faster, easier and has new features. I love that I can customize my newsfeed.

The app states there are real-time new alert push notifications you can turn on via the settings menu. This is 100% false. There is absolutely no way to do this. There is actual absolutely no alert feature at all. I’ve emailed support 5 times with no response, so I’ve decided to leave a review to inform others that are expecting this feature. If I’m incorrect, please reply to this review with instructions on how this can be done & I will revise the content. Below is what they state, but the feature is completely nonexistent. “REAL-TIME NEWS ALERTS: Keep up with breaking stories as they happen with push notifications, easily toggled on or off in the app settings menu. “ In fact the screenshots show a “bell” icon next to the “gear” icon, which does not exist in the actual app. Please respond with how to active the real-time news alerts. Please. Thank you.

I simply can’t understand why the app would be redesigned to just have one general feed without any option to read by topic (TV, Film, Digital, Business, etc.). As someone who works in the media industry and reads Variety daily, it’s incredibly sad and I have deleted this app from my phone. Instead, I have to use my mobile browser to read articles from the web page. This is literally the first app review I have ever written but this UI/UX is so poor that I felt compelled to do so. Whoever is the CTO should immediately implement changes - I would imagine app engagement has totally collapsed. This is digital media 101 and calls into question Variety as a leading player in media itself.

Just upgraded from the not very good older version. Endless scrolling to get to all the headlines. No longer able to look for news in a particular section — look at all the news or none. The articles used to be more readable in old app than on the awful website, but this is now web based in app reading experience with slow load times and an all around awful reading experience. The Variety app has long been awful, and this is just a new variety of bad. Wish I could go back to the older version for pre-iOS 10 that was a wee bit less bad than this.