NPR 4+

I use this app daily and often multiple times per day. It does the basics pretty well, but I wish it was smoother and a bit more flexible. I echo some of the suggestions I’ve seen posted. My main irritations are also about difficulty in sharing; the developer has responded about an option on the story page; I just know that from the item I’m listening to at the moment, there is no sharing option. For items that I really wanted to share, I have to find it on NPR’s website and send that way — something I don’t take the time to do as often as I think to share something. Also, the Listen To All Stories function seems to cue for an ad/promo to be inserted in the story sequence, which is fine, but it interrupts the flow by either skipping the story that should play right after the ad, or just stopping together after the ad. I select Listen To All Stories when I don’t want to have to hover over my phone, so it’s annoying when I’m across the room or otherwise occupied and then have to go back to it (or just have silence) because once again the play has stopped or skipped. Fine to play the ad, not fine for it to derail the basic play-all function.

I should have known better than to go with the new NPR app that replaced NPR News. There was so much to love about it. Although I do Support my local NPR Station, I also like to browse, including locally produced programs from other parts of the country, which are not carried by my local station. That was easy to do in the old app. I simply brought up the station, and chose an on-demand program. These shows were displayed alongside the live streams. In addition , I could create a Favorites list, and even add items to a playlist for later use. In the new version, all of these features are gone. Now, the only way to get on-demand material from other stations seems to involve changing one’s favorite station; and, even if you do that, you then have to go to a separate On-Demand tab to get such material, and there are fewer choices of podcasts and topics. For instance, on the old app, I could go to WUNC (not my local station), and listen to podcasts from The People’s Pharmacy. Now, even by making that station my favorite, I found very few choices—and The People’s Pharmacy wasn’t one of them. Then, I had to reset my favorite station; then, to get back to where I was (if it wasn’t my local station), I had to go to Recently Streamed, and _hope to find it there. I hope I will grow to like the new app better, but don’t count on it. The reason I even gave it 4 stars is that I’m a huge fan of NPR.

The new NPR app seems designed like the NPR One app, which is really unfortunate. On the old NPR News app, I could create my own playlists, listening to these three stories but not that one. That functionality has all been removed from the new (and certainly not improved) NPR app. Sometimes I might want to listen to most of one day’s All Things Considered program, but would (for example) delete the sports stories because I just don’t care about them. With the change to this new NPR app, it’s not possible to curate my own NPR playlist. It’s frustrating that NPR’s “digital” department thinks that this is what their listeners want.

The new NPR app is much less listener-friendly and makes it more difficult to seek out new/interesting content. It is still easy to find Morning Edition or All Things Considered—but it is very difficult to find the off-the-wall and obscure programs produced by smaller NPR member stations across the country. The old NPR News app was great for that.

Ugh. I gave up on using NPR One years ago because I didn’t like how that program “decided” for me what it thought I would want to listen to. I was an active user of the NPR News app for years and years. I used the Playlist feature on a daily basis. It was a very frustrating morning to be forced into using this new NPR app that has taken away much of the functionality of the old NPR News app. Please bring the old NPR News app back!