The old version of the app was quite good, easy to look at, easy to find useful information, and had lots of reliable functionality. The new version is hard to look at, hard to navigate, and is unreliable. Today, for example, I tried to perform a withdrawal to a bank checking account, but the app listed two checking accounts at the same bank, even though there is only one. This confused me and I had to double check a paper statement to see which number was the checking account (later using the Vanguard website, I found that one of the accounts was nicknamed “savings” but the app mislabeled it as “checking”). After choosing the real checking account, the app hung and indicated there was problem. There was no transaction for a pending withdrawal listed on the app but I noticed that my Vanguard account value was reduced. I therefore quit and relaunched to app, and sure enough there was now a pending withdrawal scheduled to the bank checking account. This is pretty scary behavior by the app for such a fundamental function. I’m planning to use the web site for transactions in the future. The older version of the app and website were so much better, but now they are gone and I have no idea why they were replaced with junk.

If you were buying and selling stock in your Vanguard account this new app has eliminated 95% of necessary information. Please read all the most recent (November 2021) reviews to learn of the many features that have been removed. One has to go through three screens to find out how many shares one owns of a particular stock. If you place an order you can no longer change the order but you are now forced to cancel your order and go through the entire order process again just for a change. If you want to see if your dividends were paid by each company forget it because they removed the “History” section of your transactions. Much more is missing but other reviews have mentioned other particulars. The app is geared to a five year old and not built with a stock transaction in mind. Updating an app is supposed to provide enhancing the quality of information needed to improve your experience but not the this useless application. When I called Vanguard to ask why they eliminated information the customer service representative said “I haven’t been trained yet in the new app so I can’t help in answering your questions.” He then suggested I log on to my laptop. I don’t carry my laptop around with me but I use my smartphone to conduct all my other business transactions banking, insurance, medical etc. So the customer service representative gave me the true answer on their app——carry your laptop around to do business because this app doesn’t serve you when using your phone.

As many users have already pointed out the update has removed virtually every useful feature that existed in the previous version. The new version treats the user like a 3-year old. Large fonts displaying minimal information. Toggle buttons that do nothing other than make the font, or graph, even larger but adding nothing of value. It’s insulting. Most likely explanation is they no longer want you to manage your own accounts and are trying to force you to sign up for their expensive “Personal Advisor Service” to get any guidance on managing your account. Also, do not be fooled by the high overall rating as the overall rating reflects high marks for previous versions. This is an entirely new and different app. You need to look at the most recent ratings 95% of which are 1 star and accompanied with some of the most negative comments I’ve ever seen. UPDATED REVIEW. They finally pulled the support for the old App. After a year or more of negative reviews, 1 star ratings, and pleas by many customers to keep supporting the old app, they pulled. Just a message to download the new app. Nothing has been changed in the last year. None of features that made the old app useful have been added. None of the old analysis has been restored. None of guidance on how to manage your portfolio has been restored. Bottom line if you want an app that you can actually use to help self-manage your account consider changing to a different brokerage firm. I opened a trial account at Fidelity. So far it’s been great.

The app is absolutely awful if you have more than one account or multiple stock holdings. Here are six specific examples of bugs or flaws that have been unfixed for months: (1) It’ll often show a transaction as “Dividend” or “Fee” and not be able to show which security issued it, even if you click on the transaction, making it impossible to know why money was added or removed until you get your paper statement. (2) Security amounts are rounded to two decimal places in summary views, but tracked to 3, so you can’t reconcile anything without manually clicking on every single transaction to get the extra decimal place. (3) Information about securities is often shown by ticker only, so you have to memorize the tickers of all your holdings. (4) Transaction history views are maddening if you have more than one account because they don’t have a column for the account name; either you see everything uselessly jumbled together or you have to manually create a filter per account you want to see (which might be fine if you have 1 account but otherwise tedious). (5) Transaction history views default to the last 30 days, necessitating fiddling with the filter views to see anything more (whereas any other app would just let you scroll down). (6) You have to remember to manually select the tax method (e.g., highest basis first) each time you sell.