Name: BBC News - UK & World Stories
Rating: 4.5 (779337 reviews)

Updating

BBC News - UK & World Stories

BBC Media Applications Technologies Limited

Released: 2010-07-23

Free 0%

Version 9.5.0

12+

Free 0%

Version 9.5.0

12+

Released: 2010-07-23

±0

#5 in Top Free Apps > News

±0

#4 in Top Free iPad Apps > News

iPhone Screenshots

iPad Screenshots

Description

The official BBC News app offers you the latest live news you can trust from our UK and global network of journalists.

Download the BBC News app, where you’ll get top stories and breaking news, live reporting, and the option to follow news topics that match your interests. Our topics range from UK News, Health, Lifestyle, Culture, Business, Technology and Science and Environment. These can all be found in the My News tab in the app.

The BBC News app offers the following:

News, Features & Analysis

Headlines, detailed analysis, and exclusive features.

Breaking news and top stories

Get breaking news and top stories from our trusted global network of journalists.

Live news and developing stories

Follow developing stories with up-to-the-minute reporting available 24-hours a day and access the BBC News channel live stream.

Local news and weather

Using the UK postcode in your BBC account, we’ll show you local stories and weather to stay informed on your area.

Alerts for top stories

Opt-in to push alerts where you will receive notifications instantly to your device.

Follow news that’s important to you with My News

Create a personalised My News experience that brings together the topics and stories you care about and trust the most. Access them quickly in the My News tab.

------

If you choose to receive push alerts, a unique identifier relating to your device will be stored by Airship on behalf of the BBC to provide you with the service. No other personal data relating to you (such as a username or email address) is processed.

You can choose to unsubscribe from BBC News push notifications in your device’s ‘Notifications’ screen.

For attribution and analysis purposes, our data processor AppsFlyer collects the below information about you:

- Your device information, such as device type

- Your IP address to determine your location

- Activity data, such as the time you downloaded the app

- Which sites (if any) referred you to download and use the app

We also use this data together with your BBC account data to improve the BBC News service. You can opt out from AppsFlyer tracking by filling out their ‘Forget My Device’ form: https://www.appsflyer.com/optout.

The BBC News app uses technologies similar to cookies to measure audience behaviour. The app uses information collected through these technologies for internal purposes to analyse and improve the app and help us give you a better experience. You can switch this off using the Send App Statistics toggle on the BBC News app’s Settings screen.

For more information about how and why we use information about you, please visit the BBC News App Privacy Notice: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/help-55320181

The BBC will keep your information secure and not share it with anyone else in accordance with the BBC’s Privacy Policy which can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/privacy.

For more information about how the BBC processes your personal data to provide a personalised service to you, please see the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy at https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/privacy/how-does-the-bbc-collect-data-about-me/.

If you install this app, you accept the BBC Terms of Use at http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/

What's New in Version 9.5.0

This release contains general bug fixes and improvements.

Seller

Name

BBC Media Applications Technologies Limited

URL

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Information

Developer

BBC Media Applications Technologies Limited

Version

9.5.0

Size

103.1 MB

Game Center

VPP Device Licensing

Yes

Rating

Rated 12+ for the following:

Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes

Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity

Infrequent/Mild Medical/Treatment Information

Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References

Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humour

Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence

Compatibility

iOS 17.6 or later

Devices

iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone SE (3rd generation), iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16e, iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro, iPad Pro (Cellular), iPad Pro (9.7-inch), iPad Pro (9.7-inch) (Cellular), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (10.5-inch), iPad Pro (10.5-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (11-inch), iPad Pro (11-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air, iPad Air (Cellular), iPad Air 2, iPad Air 2 (Cellular), iPad Air (3rd generation), iPad Air (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini Retina, iPad mini Retina (Cellular), iPad mini 3, iPad mini 3 (Cellular), iPad mini 4, iPad mini 4 (Cellular), iPad mini (5th Generation), iPad mini (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (7th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air (4th Generation) (Wi-Fi), iPad Air (4th Generation) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad (8th generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (8th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th Generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (9th Generation), iPad (9th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini (6th Generation), iPad mini (6th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air (5th generation), iPad Air (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (10th generation), iPad (10th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 11-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini (A17 Pro) Wi-Fi, iPad mini (A17 Pro) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (A16) Wi-Fi, iPad (A16) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 11-inch (M3) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 11-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 13-inch (M3) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (M5) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 11-inch (M5) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPod touch (6th Generation), iPod touch (7th generation)

Languages

English, Welsh

App Store: Customer Ratings

Ratings & Reviews

4.5 of 5 (779,337 Ratings)

App Store: Customer Reviews

2026-02-24

News

I always look at BBC News but I don’t find it as trustworthy as I used to. The journalists still have difficulty calling a man a man, even when he’s committed a mass shooting, and when he’s dead. If they can’t get these basic facts of life right, what else are they getting wrong?

How did we get in this situation? Stonewall?

2026-02-24

No widget for Home Screen- total deal breaker

Could do with a top stories widget to make it the perfect app.

2026-02-24

Excellent

2026-02-24

Grateful

The BBC offers so much more than just television and incredible value for money.

2026-02-24

A shadow of its former self

Too much speculation, too much opinion, too much gap filling with repetitive, tedious blather. Your duty is to report the facts, not to shape the news. It’s enough to say that FP Andrew and Mandelson have been arrested; please only return to this when you have something worthwhile to tell us. How about covering something positive that our government or royal family are doing, not just trying to undermine them?

2026-02-24

don’t like it

poor reporting

2026-02-23

BBC News

Works brilliantly no problem at all just please try to get the content balance and correct also it would be nice if it was updated a bit more often during the day, Sunday is the worst when nothing changes at all on the site, but of course we know things have changed in the world in that time .

2026-02-23

I hate the updates, only made it worse

Hate the bbc app updates - it’s so hard to navigate from the main page to specific areas of interest. For example the sports pages. You used to be able to quickly access the rugby fixtures for a particular day- now it’s next to impossible. I end up giving up and going on google. Fire your app IT team!

2026-02-23

The most racist bunch of editors in the UK

Stay hidden

2026-02-23

I want news not gossip

The BBC app provides more gossip than news. It is supposed to be the world’s premier and most trusted news source. It doesn’t need to provide mind numbing gossip and should stop this dreadful trait mediated or it will lose the custom of myself and many others.

2026-02-23

Time, Day, Date

Remember BBC News is read worldwide.

Please consider using 24hr clock, when using local time show its difference from UTC (GMT),

And add the day name to a date, the computer will do it automatically if setup.

Sorry to be so pedantic..!

Thanks in advance, looking forward to seeing the changes.

2026-02-23

Honest appraisal

BBC in my opinion is bias it gives loaded views in favour of left wing politics. It’s hypocritical and in my opinion should be wound up

2026-02-23

News Reviews

All good except I do not like with your newspaper reviews your pop up deciding which main story I should see and read. I want to choose how I read the reviews.

Much improved lately.

2026-02-23

BBC news

Much too left wing biased. Get a grip on the important matters which are affecting THE MAJORITY of people in this country would be my advice.

2026-02-23

BBC NEWS

I like this app it’s very informative I always say to people go on the app, I don’t do anything online so for me to use this app it’s a big deal.

I view it daily and more than once if a notification appears.

2026-02-23

Recent updates made app touch sensitive

Recent updates to the app have made it too touch sensitive. Scrolling and reading an article keeps inadvertently jumping into links

2026-02-22

The best News App

I always use the BBC app for my news. They are trustworthy accurate and deliver the news as soon as it happens.

I use the app every day.

2026-02-22

Should be renamed USBC

One big America love in. Very little news on the Ukraine war, while I’m a celebrity gets a high profile. Sky news app has much better, deeper and better written coverage of world events.

2026-02-22

Woke TQIA+ narrative

BBC should be independent but continues to push a woke TQIA+ narrative. Kids should be protected from this harmful cult, as should museums.

2026-02-22

Does not represent BBC quality

The BBC has some fantastic reporters and I do not believe it is overly biased. The problem is that it although it gives you the main headlines of the day, most of what it tries to feed the reader is rather trite human interest stories.

More real news from the UK and around the world without having to hunt for it, please.

2026-02-22

Good

Excellent

2026-02-22

Why do you give Reform so much airtime?

Will go back to 5 stars when you get the political balance right. I want to see a balanced picture, not the Labour government is rubbish & Reform on every news item, not even mentioning the Liberal Democrat seemingly not exciting in your reporting

2026-02-21

Ukraine?

What happened to the war in Ukraine coverage?

2026-02-21

First rate!

BBC News is first rate, and always on top!

2026-02-21

Dumbing down & so many errors

Too many stories about the same event eg the former Prince Andrew. So many typos and syntax errors. A lot of stories just not well written so they don’t flow very well. Expect better of the BBC!

2026-02-21

My go-to News App

Some of the finest reporting you will find, nicely bundled into a clean and accessible App.

2026-02-20

Unbias

Clear language

2026-02-20

Up to date information

Excellent way to keep up to date with news relevant to me in a short space of time

2026-02-20

Review I no longer watch BBC. I only dip into the headlines and then compare it with other media!

At 77 years of age I have completely lost trust in the BBC to report anything in an unbiased manner.

To me it is a woke, left wing organisation paid for by people like me.

I rarely watch the channel and begrudge paying the licence fee.

2026-02-20

Why is everything so tiny?

Oh BBC, what have you done? Recent updates have made the body text too small to read, even on an iPad. You seem to have improved the individual stories now, but the live feed is still tiny, and there is no opportunity to zoom in. In settings, my text is already at the maximum size without going into accessibility settings, which makes the text in every other app ENORMOUS! Cannot comment on the quality of the news, because I can no longer read it.

2026-02-20

Free but Poot

Very basic and they desperately need to employ a proofreader as the amount of errors is embarrassing.

2026-02-19

The Beeb Bounces Back Better and Better

How after adversity that left a nasty taste in the mouth, Master Chef The Professionals has come up Trumps. So exciting, a talented new and likeable Master chef Judge, gorgeous Sets befitting this Top Programme. I am back enjoying Marcus, Monica and the brining back of past Master Chefs to the skills test .. Wonderful!

Thank You .. The new series will be a big success!

2026-02-19

All

Fantastic journalism

2026-02-19

Unfortunately biased

Disappointed in the BBC for actively promoting a biased political agenda. Considering cancelling my tv licence.

2026-02-19

Informative, lucid and trustworthy reporting.

As my title says bbc news is informative, lucid and trustworthy. My go to place for all news

2026-02-19

BBC news

You are still wholly biased- I don’t think you can help it. Your investigative skills ignore the Chagos deal which stinks to high heaven and has caused strains with the US. You are in the pocket of the government and Sadiq Khan and play down the grooming gang scandals and you were very slow and remain reluctant to report on Iran which is appalling - I get my news from other sources now and don’t think you will ever recover the gold standard you once had- and it’s a disgrace that you have let down your and our heritage

2026-02-18

Photos too small.

When the photos can’t be enlarged they are often indecipherable please can you do something.

2026-02-18

Videos crashing

This app is taking me out for live news and asking me every time to log in after taking to safari while I’m always logged in the app. As a TV licence holder, I feel very bad for the same and it’s the same issue for me around past 18months ago, after my India trip. It logged me out of the app while I was on holiday in India saying that it’s not allowed to view UK news live there

2026-02-18

Don't trust Ayatollah BBC

Never trust Ayatollah BBC

2026-02-18

Biased reporting

Although technically the app is really good, the content reflects the growing BBC bias towards Nigel Farage and Reform

2026-02-17

Mr

You are anti Labour Party anti kier starker and pro reform your senior people in the news department need replacing the head of dept and Chris mason Laura mouthpiece and many more need to be sacked asap until then I don’t rate bbc news or watch it much any more

2026-02-17

Great news

Impartiality well delivered

2026-02-17

In the right wings pocket

You’re political bias is disgraceful, 1st we had Johnson and the Tories that followed now, your political journalists heads are so far up Farage you can only see their toes and he’s vowed to defund you, the mind boggles!

2026-02-16

Great coverage

So easy to keep up with the latest news as it happens

2026-02-16

The News

Better than the others most of the time

2026-02-16

Best for News

The best news service in the country, can always be relied upon.

2026-02-16

Worlds best news

This is a great app, so easy to navigate, and with unbiased reporting across a variety of subjects.

It’s a real luxury to have such easy access to impartial information, irrespective of what the extremes of the public debate will have us believe!

2026-02-16

Trust issues

I simply do not believe or trust in anything that the BBC reports on. Its became a leftist woke propaganda machine and I’m finding it hard to stomach.

2026-02-16

BBC so politically correct it can’t deal with facts

It constantly focus on Trump and pro Isreal views when we know the issues these two groups are causing. Focus more on home issues not politics but real people both good and bad. Our lives do not exist in USA or in Israeli or Jewish communities.

2026-02-16

BBC news and Look South

I’ll keep this brief and succinct…… In the words of Tina Turner “Simply the Best “

2026-01-16

When local means not local

The local new section is atrocious. Constantly showing news items from outside the area or even abroad and no there’s no to anything within the item about my area. Very slow to update stories. Old stories still appear weeks/months after the event and no, there’s no update within the story. Irrelevant stories of people passing away like old soap ‘stars’ make headline news, but when a true legend passes away like Stanley Baxter, they’re days behind reporting the event, it’s disgraceful. The F1 section is edited by a completely biased individual who should be replaced. According to him, there’s only one racing driver and though that driver has had some awful seasons, his own doing, this is the driver you only ever read about. Again disgraceful. You wouldn’t know Lando Norris won the world title reading this awful section.

2025-10-26

Below standard.

Constant spelling mistakes or words missing in grammar. Layout is a mess. Changes seem to be done for the sake of it. Pictures on headlines that interest you to the story to open up the article and it shows a different picture. I can no longer have the same interest in the article because it was the picture that I was interested in, in the first place. I’m dyslexic and this is just a messy site with the headline stories just repeated throughout the site in all sections. I understand certain things are done to protect the site security wise but I think some previous pre updated versions were better, more logical and intuitive to navigate. It’s now my last source of news media I access because of this.

2025-09-16

Poor since last few updates

This always used to be a very good app and worked flawlessly, since the latest new layout however (which I do prefer) there seems to be endless bugs. The app crashes for no reason (more so since the very latest update), it forgets where you were in the list meaning you have to scroll all the way down to reach the story. There is a totally pointless black banner across the top of every story to inform you what that story has been updated when in actual fact nothing worthwhile has changed.

When watching a video and you change from portrait to landscape or vice versa the progress bar stops but the counter keeps counting down.

Sad to say the Sky News app is now better, technically wise at least!

2025-04-22

Following news on the Beeb

The online news is a good service (partly because the user can choose what to read) but the television news broadcasts leave a lot to be desired. They seem often to be about celebrity and UK trivia rather than important world news (an example is the deaths of band musicians and ‘stars’, they contain adverts for their own programmes, focus too much on comparatively minor things in the uk but the political foreign correspondents are usually excellent. They spend too much time discussing things in the future, guessing at what will be announced instead of reporting succinctly that there will be an announcement.

Sometimes video backgrounds are unnecessary, too obvious. Words can be sufficient in spite of being a visual medium. There is insufficient information about how other countries handle issues although that could be on the fact checking programmes. It brings balance to issues discussed.

2024-12-20

No landscape mode for video

Dec 2024 update. Has improved since my previous review so have upped the rating to 4 stars overall but the lack of landscape mode for video on iPhone is still a major issue and has cost a star, so down to 3. When landscape video is available on all other news and video apps, what’s the problem?

Having used this app for some time now after my previous review (below) I have reduced my score down to one star. It’s a terrible interface and if this is what the licence fee buys it’s better to stop that too.

The videos are too small on iPhone in portrait mode and don’t react to turning the phone to landscape. Pretty much useless so now use Sky News as go to news app.

2024-11-03

Go back to how it looked in say 2004

Your near panic to look trendy is both impacting your fan count and your ability to make the app easy to use.

And half the stories I hear on your Today programme can not be found on this app using the search function unless you know the exact words used in the title. And often the stories read from newspapers are simply not in the app. Both of these needs immediate fixing.

Your attempts at trying to be trendy and not displaying boxes around stories and other methods of making navigation more obvious puts people off. Older people I have to help say things like "It's stupid that buttons you have to tap to do something are indistinguishable from titles or normal text because you have removed the button appearance". Make buttons look like buttons. Do you teenagers ever speak to retired folk about your app? I am certain you do not. Or if you do you must be dismissing their wishes as irrelevant.

2024-06-12

Why did you break it?

This app used to be great. Then you made some massive changes and it’s been poor ever since.

Why not have different tabs for different things? I liked having a tab for my news interests not all mixed in with everything. I liked the tab for video and the tab for local news. Now all these are mashed together in one feed with only three bits from each showing

I hate what you’ve done to My News. I go there now and see a few recent headlines, then the stuff about circuses (because that’s an interest on mine). But as there isn’t much news here so the feed is the same all the time. If I scroll down I’ll eventually find the others but each is the same problem. And as for my interest in Zebras, I’ll never scroll that far again!

2024-05-25

Always a great app but My News UI has gone backwards

Always enjoyed using the app on both iPhone and iPad, however the revamp of the My News section has caused me to turn to other news providers more than I used to.

Previously it was very easy to select which area of My News I wanted to read, but now it is endless scrolling. The only workaround has been to move the most read areas into the top, however this still means that I have to scroll through to find other sections.

Definitely a backward step.

2024-04-29

Updates have ruined the app

The UX & UI of this app has gone completely downhill and seems to get worse with each technology refresh/update.

News stories no longer open seamlessly in the app - it’s as if they’re redirecting to a web browser (but with none of the functionality that comes with actually opening it in a separate browser). The text in the stories is so small I can’t read it but there is no way for me to increase the size (as I can pages in the rest of the app or indeed pages in an actual web browser). This is a serious accessibility issue and one that wasn’t present in older versions of the app.

I also find the repetition of articles (in the ‘Most read’ section) extraordinarily annoying. Every single article in this section can be found in the sections above… you’re simply forcing users to have to scroll further to get to new content. Why is that helpful in any way?

2024-03-23

Lived with the new version a while now and it has problems

Still very happy with content in the app.

When the new format was launched I decided to hold fire on my opinion and give myself a chance to get used to it. Changes always look worse when you first see them - give it time. Well I have given it time and I can honestly say I preferred the old format. Specifically the move from a horizontal flick to access a topic versus the vertical scroll to a curated top 4 or so stories in each topic. There seems not to be a huge amount of logic as to why some of the stories are on the front page. It just seemed easier before to flick across to the full page of stories in a topic and make your own decision what to view.

21st century problem I know and I still use the app over other news providers but hopefully this will provide some feedback to the developers (the option to do that was in the old version and not in the latest version as well 😁)

2024-02-27

Why, why, why have you changed this wonderful app

Probably used to be the best news app ever, with a wonderfully accessible content discovery interface and clever way of curating relevant, high quality news items. Now replaced by a stupid, impenetrable vertical scroll - relying on a search function!!! How do you search for news if you don’t know it’s happened?? The new app is like reading a broadsheet which has been mauled by the dog and read by a toddler first - it’s a bloody mess. So disappointing and completely unnecessary change. Perhaps bung your developers another £100k to switch it back again? - such a shame.

2024-01-07

Poor grammar and missing words

As the nations ‘official’ news agency I can’t believe stories of less than 200 words can’t be copy checked before being posted. The amount of times words are missing from sentences is embarrassing. I don’t pretend to be the most literate of your readers but lack of proof reading undermines your content and credentials for the simple want of a colleague checking over your work. Should there not be some kind of process before articles or posts are approved ? If it is because of a rush to publish then 30 seconds would be enough !

Also, the newer version of the app (as of Jan 2024) is awful. It seems the format is emulating Apple News with different size tiles and priority given to certain stories over others. The simple list format and catagories of previous versions were much better and consequently I use the app a fraction as often as I used to.

2023-12-22

Confusing

Much preferred the layout before this current incarnation. No longer easy to find the categories of interest. Used to able to choose these yourself.

I also wanted to be able to read national newspaper headlines as well as Scottish…no longer an option.

It was all very straightforward before, but now just a mess.

I often switch to the Sky news app (even though I despise the ads) just because I find your layout frustrating.

In this age, things supposed to be more accessible. You’ve succeeded in making it less so. And you probably paid someone a fair amount for this mess. Dispiriting.

2023-12-17

Was better before the revamp

The app was redesigned earlier in 2023 and after giving it some time before writing this review I have to say I’m not impressed. The previous structure with tabs worked much better as it was far easier to see what items were new and hadn’t been read previously. The app now resembles the website in which case I may as well just use that. For the app to work well it should offer a different user experience to the website giving an alternative method of viewing articles. That’s what the previous style did well and I miss it.

The articles themselves, however, are good with top, unbiased journalism.

2023-12-14

The old version was better

On the old version you could easily select the topic you were interested in without having to scroll down through all the news. Also videos would play in landscape mode and in general the synopsis under each headline was compact and complete. None of that happens on the new version and I have given feedback several times when asked. Well to be fair some of the videos are now playing on landscape mode, but you when using “My News” I still have to scroll down through all the news to get where I want instead of being able to choose the relevant section from a tab. A lot of the time the synopsis under headlines is incomplete and the same happens with the comments under pictures, they are cut off mid sentence… very poor for an app of such a prestigious organisation. If they fix these issue I will give them 5 Stars.

2023-12-13

Bring back tabs and drop the scrolling for topics

The tab menus where a better user experience. I could quick go the news topic that I want to see at that time. Now if I wish to see articles on the last topic, I have added, I have scroll and scroll to the bottom of my listed favourites topics. It’s a pain when I have to scroll past the sport section where I’m at risk of seeing results for games and races that I want to catch up on by view them later in the day. The old style tab layout allowed me simply skip the sports tab.

I have consider switching news provider due to the new layout.

Also, one annoying issue I have picked up since the new style is that the app frequently does not update without have to force close the app and reopen it. What a pain.

I much prefer the previous app can we have it back? …please, pretty please?

2023-12-09

Where are the good news stories ?

We have become a critical nation over the last 4 decades, tearing down anyone who does well, the first thing that happens is a search for a sordid past, indiscretion or non pc comment.

Bad & upsetting ‘news’ abounds every day. Is it any wonder that mental health problems abound with the fear that is down throughout journalism ?

Where are the good news stories ? Those of compassion, heroism, kindness & going the extra mile ? Where is the defence and congratulations for good moral & ethical behaviour, honesty, apology when wrong, and self sacrifice ? Of supportive community & relationships that bring joy, humour & a smile on a grey rainy day ?

Yes we need to know what’s happening in our world but that means good and uplifting news too, it’s called balance.

2023-12-04

Killed an excellent app

This was an excellent app but the latest version has left me searching for alternatives. I used to go to this app multiple times a day and I was able to easily review all of the news quickly and easily I am now only going there every few days just to see if there is an update to fix this go awful release. I actually only had one wish to make it perfect and that was to be able to quickly and easily get a download before I boarded a flight . Now my one wish is roll back. Did you test this latest release with your loyal users???? If you were a commercial entity you would have rolled back already.

Ok so even after the update which fixed things like rotation it’s still a nightmare to navigate. However today a ureka moment. The website can be saved as a shortcut. It still has an easy to use navigation and an uncluttered interface. Happy days .ive ditched the app and moved to the website .

2023-11-08

Tried again - still no so

Hated the changes in the most recent update. Thought maybe it’s me, so I left it a couple of months and gone back to it. Tried to force myself to use it for a week and have come to the realisation that it’s not me at all- it’s the app. All of the features of the app are fine as an addition but it takes away from the fundamentals. I want to read a broad range of stories, staying up to date. I don’t want to have to scroll to a topic, read, click out, pick a different topic, read, click out and so on forever. Just have a chronological feed, and swipe from one story to the next.

This app makes me feel less well read, less rounded in what I hear about, and generally frustrated to the point where my most used app after the social media sites has been relegated to to the 4th page of my phone.

2023-09-26

Very poor upgrade

Pretty much like everyone else who has commented I can’t quite understand the recent changes to this app. One long list of articles with zero navigation creates a very poor user experience. I don’t know what news there is so please create a method of allowing me to choose. Searching for topics creates an endless list of very narrow interests so again help users by giving them something to choose from. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of users are mainly interested in the main UK and global news of the day so put that at the top and go from there. Someone needs to make some fundamental changes pretty quickly as I’m finding myself go to other apps very quickly which I’ve never done before. Shame. Switch back and work out the issues if you’re brave enough to recognise you got it all wrong.

2023-09-23

V7 is a downgrade

Really not sure what the UX designers were thinking here. Presents less information on the home page and ‘my news’ is all one long scrolling column rather than being tab based. I do not want to read or be presented with the same stories every time I look at my news on slow moving more specialised news feeds whereas before I could simply choose the tab for each topic. I also do not want to see all the topics blended in one very long column, I thought this sort of UI was abandoned a long time ago. Maybe some people like this new layout but I hate it so please put a settings option in to revert to the tab based layout. At the moment this is unusable for me.

Now permanently deleted as looks like there is no going back sadly. Clearly we are all just very stupid and just don’t know what a good UX looks like.

2023-09-21

Not all updates are improvements

I have had to downgrade this latest version 7.0.0 It’s really not doing it for me, I preferred the old version where you had swipe right to different topics, this scrolling one is terrible, and doesn’t seem to show as many topics, and fresh news is less than it was, The only thing I find I want to scroll is back to the previous Version, still I suppose these app developers have to keep themselves looking busy 2 / 5 and that’s being generous.

Update: Further downgrade to 1 Star, seems the app has a Share function, so you can share news on Facebook etc… but it doesn’t actually work, you press Share, and select Facebook, it appears to perform a curtsy and that’s it, so it is awkward to use and lacks functionality, don’t know why they did this, the previous version was much better. Pointless

Updated Update, well the latest version seems to have fixed the curtsy and I can now share news as a post on Facebook, but sadly the layout is still not improving any, but back up to 2 Stars, I wish they’d go back to the previous sideways scroll, I really can’t find any interest in the vertical scroll.

2023-08-20

Latest Update

With the latest update, the app has gone from being functional and useful, to almost unusable. You cannot read through a latest news thread any more (past about 10 stories on the homepage). On the ‘my news’ screen it brings up news relating to categories, but no longer combines them, so some of the categories at the top of the app for me haven’t had a story in months, what’s the use in that?! Please revert the app back to the previous version to make it usable again. Prior to this update I used it multiple times per day, now I barely go on it.

As an aside, there are far too many ‘breaking news’ notifications, this feature should be user-changeable so if you want notifications for a certain topic you can get them, but if you just want major, important news, then this is possible too.

2023-08-14

Version 7 a major step backwards

Once an excellent app and my news source of choice, but this latest version significantly changed the interface and made it more cumbersome to use. I can’t personally see any benefits to it and I have no idea what the designer was trying to achieve other than to lose users.

The news feeds seem to rarely update, or at least the stories on display don’t.

The screen endlessly repeats the same stuff, there’s far to much white space. Navigation around my chosen topics now requires a lot more scrolling, before I could just use one tap to access a given topic, say UK news, and then a list of news items would appear. Now I have to scroll down a long list of other topics until I find UK news which then shows an arbitrary list of ‘top’ stories and then tap again on the title to list the whole array of them.

Scrolling through those stories now requires going back each time to the list rather than swiping to the next one. It’s all just horribly clunky. Another thing that seems to have changed is the ability to tap on a picture and rotate it so my phone gives a full screen image - useful on a small phone screen.

Overall a really retrograde step that has made me use the app far less than before - perhaps that was the idea?

As an aside there’s no feedback option in the app which would be good.

2023-08-12

Update ruins previously excellent app

Huge fan of the previous app. Clean design, easy to use and provided quick access to news divided neatly into collective headings picked by the user. You could quickly scan the news and delve deeper if you wanted.

New version is a messy unconstructed stream of consciousness where you need to scroll and scroll through headlines to see what you want to open. It’s a retrograde step and loses the efficiency and simple interface of its predecessor. It discourages use due to its format at a time you should be facilitating wider use and engagement.

Bring back the old format please.

2023-08-11

I read a lot less news in the new design

Sorry, but I don’t like the new layout . I used to have My News set up with my favourite categories and liked to look through each one. Now you can only see 4 of the stories in each category so I have to do an extra tap to open the full list of stories which is a pain. It was also easier to swipe through the horizontal list of categories, than to scroll down the whole new My News page to get to the one I’m looking for. Additionally, I used to swipe through the stories in a category to quickly look at each one. Now I have to tap back and then tap the next story - 2 taps rather than a single swipe. Please can you at least bring back swiping?!

2023-08-08

Quality News but Terrible New Interface

Whilst the trusted nature of the news content remains high there are significant issues following the latest update with the unhelpful user interface.

What used to be a user experience that enabled users to jump through different categories to reach the one they wanted, this version comes with a poorly thought through mechanism that requires the user to scroll through every category if they want one that’s later. It will probably be recognised for years to come as what not to do when teaching app developers what to do when allegedly improving a user experience.

2023-08-07

Why??

Why did you ‘update’ the app?! It’s a mess. The new chopping and changing between different size and shape story boxes on the main screen is an eyesore. Some headlines have photos, others don’t. And despite this new app, you haven’t fixed old annoyances like the list headline photo often not being the main photo when you open the article and you still can’t swipe through photos in an article. And now the most watched list has vanished, and you can no longer watch embedded videos in full screen landscape orientation.

What a waste of time and money. Stop making bad apps and consider hiring some proof readers instead - the standard of copy in the BBC’s articles has slipped hugely in the last few years with typos, missing words and other errors a daily occurrence.

Enough is enough - I’m now looking for a new news source.

2023-08-03

Stop updating!!

Seems this was my last title…..

Just worked out while v7 feels bad on navigation.

In My News it now shows the top few stories in every category regardless of how old they are. This means I’m scrolling through stories which can be several days old to get to something which is just a few hours old. At the top of the list are just the last 4 stories from all my categories. The last version listed every story from my categories in chronological order - much more useful. I just scrolled down until I hit a story I’d already read and knew I was up to date. It’s impossible to do that now.

And the scrolling gallery view still doesn’t work even though you advertised it until quite recently. Again something which worked on older versions - hence the STOP UPDATING request.

2023-08-02

Loved before update. What’s happened to live news?

I loved the old app and regularly watch live news through it but, after the update, ‘live’ has disappeared. The white background is overbearing and, on the whole, the ‘improved’ app is not as easy to navigate and bombards the user with articles that don’t seem relevant. I want to know what the national headlines are…not how Mrs Scroggins down the road has had problems with her drains! I have a TV licence and should be able to watch live news coverage on my devices. What’s happened? Fix this problem.

2023-08-01

A shame it’s been made so basic.

I used to use this app multiple times a day, but now it’s been updated with a new layout I don’t think I will. There seems to be much less news and information accessible, and it requires so much scrolling.

The app feels really basic now. I think it’s a shame that the ‘my news’ section has been made so simplistic with only a few stories for each section and no menu to chose a topic any more. When I try to add a new topic, it just presents me with a search bar - how would I know which topics are available to search for?

I am dyslexic, and unfortunately this new layout is not dyslexia friendly - there’s too much white space, and too much of a gap between the lines/paragraphs. The font is also uncomfortable for me to read in. I don’t feel that I can ‘connect’, to what I’m reading in this app now.

I’m experiencing a glitch in it as well; when scrolling, the page jumps a bit and doesn’t move smoothly.

It’s such a shame, this app used to be the standard for news apps.

2023-07-31

A job well done.

Congratulations on a job well done. You must be reading all the reviews of the latest upgrade with a burgeoning sense of pride knowing that you have achieved what everyone told you was impossible. It couldn’t have been easy, and I’m sure there were many doubters along the way who said it couldn’t be done, but you proved them wrong. At a single stroke, you took a universally beloved product, which probably millions of users visited multiple times per day, a footfall that most websites could only dream of in their wildest fantasies, and turned it into an unworkable mess. You can take pride in the fact that you were the one who started the decline of a once excellent service into mediocrity and irrelevance, leaving it with so few users that it can be quietly relegated to history and so save the Corporation the expense of maintaining it.

Or, you could heed what the vast majority of reviewers are saying, put on your big boy pants, and admit that you have made a huge, and undoubtedly massively expensive, mistake and then roll back your changes. If you need to upgrade, then by all means, do so, but make sure the changes are an improvement and not a degradation.

2023-07-30

Awful update

Please bring back the old version! The new layout is clunky. No swipe left to right for the next/ last article. Only back to the previous menu. The font size control just doesn’t work at all. It’s stuck on huge and nothing you can do will change it. Before anybody says anything my two boys at 18 and 20 who are both huge some fan boys can’t do it. It is so bad that I’m now looking to change my news source, which is a pity. I don’t like the other options but I can’t live with what they’ve done to the experience.

2023-07-02

Turn off Laura Kuenssberg interview “breaking news”

I like the app generally but there are some frustrating elements, such as the links that come through from the breaking news alerts don’t lead to anywhere useful and often just a holding page. Perhaps put the basic info that you have or what you’ve heard/think you know rather than rushing to be the first to alert - it’s not an effective alert if I have to look at the Sky News app to actually find out what’s happening

Also, can you make the breaking news alerts configurable, so I can be alerted to important world events or unexpected announcements, but not get alerted to watch live whilst Laura Kuenssberg interviews someone related to a story that happened a week ago?

2023-03-11

Infests your device with cookies

When travelling abroad this app takes the opportunity to foist cookies on you. It pretends to offer you the choice to reject them, but this takes you into an endless loop with no option to save your preferences. So you'll always have 1/3 of the screen covered over with the cookie message unless you relent and allow them to infest your device. As another 1/6 of the screen is covered by advertising (again when you're outside the UK) this means only half the screen is visible - rendering the app useless. I strongly suspect this behaviour is contrary to law despite Brexit, but they get away with it from their lack of scruples and no enforcement agency.

Their illegal infestation of cookies on your device continues after years of me pointing this out. They simply don’t care - they have the power and no sense of responsibility, so they choose to act illegally.

2022-11-23

“New Experience” good but video playback need more work

I really like the “new experience” option which you can turn on in settings however it has one really frustrating thing. When you play back a video, you have the option of maximising so that it only show the video on screen and not the text of the article, which is what you would expect. Now at this point your phone orientation is most probably portrait. If the video was shot in landscape the natural thing is to turn the handset on its side so that it is landscape orientation and this should result in you viewing a landscape video while your phone is in landscape orientation. It does not autorotate the video. The old not “New Experience” did this. Note behaviour is not consistent for all videos and is does autorotate for some. As I said “new experience” option great and I would recommend it, pitty it is being let down by the way it plays back video in news articles.

2022-11-14

Generally good but some features don’t seem to work

The main features (Top Stories and Popular) work reasonably well. The app is generally fast and not too buggy, although there are 2 major annoyances for me.

Firstly, the search function doesn’t ever seem to work for me. It never returns search results. Sometimes I want to find an article I’ve previously read or e.g. search for the weekly news quiz. This feature would be very convenient for that purpose. However, since it doesn’t work, I have to either manually trawl through articles in the app or run a Google search for the article I’m after. This makes the whole feature redundant. If this worked, it would massively improve my user experience so it is frustrating that it doesn’t.

Secondly, the top 10 popular articles often have the article names and associated images scrambled (so that the wrong images are attached to the wrong headlines). This is a fairly minor issue, but it is sometimes confusing and sometimes jarring when a serious headline is mapped to a comical image or vice versa.

2022-06-30

Things changed :(

I don’t understand whey they need me to sign up or make an account now. The app sends drop downs alerts on Iphone about things that have happened but when I click to read news it tells me to make an account, easy enough to do but no clue why I need too now. The app already lets me personalize what news I received and it already sends me updates to my phone without me having an account before so I just don’t understand why it wants me to make an account l, like why do u need my email or anything, the only thing I want from you is news and I already get that, why not make it optional to make an account and explain what benefits come with it and let me decide on whether I want to or not, just feels like if I want to read reliable news I now need to give you something in return and tbh I’d rather just give you money then give you methods of contacting me, giving you money is easy and over quickly, giving you my details means you can contact me whenever, and if it’s optional to not hear anything; again why isn’t it optional just not make an account and continue using it like before?

2022-03-28

Generally good but can be frustrating

As reported by another user (more than a year ago), it is really frustrating to click an item only to be taken to another summary page instead of the article.

The main item at the top often gives a headline which you click with the expectation of being able to read the article but it takes you to an update page which just repeats the headline with no further detail.

The latest update has changed the icon which is now far more difficult to identify against other icons on the background. The old solid red icon was so much easier to find. This will be another frustration from now on.

2021-03-20

Often excellent. Some frustrating‘features’

I use it every day. In general it is very good with clear reporting. However I am maddened by the belief that the most important news from Manchester frequently appears to be football matches that have not been played yet! The first 4 items on that page today are such, and the only content for each is ‘match report to follow’. Might as well have the main headline on the site ‘World Ends’ with the only content being‘Apocalypse to follow’.

Usually one can get to the next story by swiping to the left but if that story has not been formatted for the app then it gets missed out. It seems odd to have 2 separate and apparently mutually incompatible forms of story layout in the one app.

2020-11-05

Not all news is equal

Disappointing that African news (Africa Live) gets put all on one long page (like a parish notice), rather than webpage per item, like other news. It makes it so difficult to use and almost impossible to share a story. Please fix this - African news is important too. It’s not surprising there are so many people out there who are ignorant about Africa, when the premier news source with world-class writers, displays the news from the continent in such as a difficult to use manner. Please sort this out - it’s frankly embarrassing that in 2020 this is still an issue.

Also, you seem to have news blackouts on certain countries. I never saw a single thing about the Pakistan floods, and I have an Asian news flag in ‘My News’ but yet you report on floods in Philippines. The Armenian/Azerbaijan war took weeks to report. The Sudanese unrest in 2019 was also ignored.

2020-09-26

Nice, but with niggles

Overall a pretty decent app, but with a few niggles. I frequently find that I go back from an article, and it jumps to the top of the list of stories - annoying to have to scroll down to where you were up to. Is also too easy to swipe right and left to the next story - again annoying, especially when combined with the tendency to jump to the top of the page you were reading a second ago.

And some news articles seem to dump you into a browser-in-app, which works badly. The second that happens I hit the back button as it’s quite annoying and loads slowly.

These have persisted as issues for ages, and are still there in this iteration of the app.

2020-08-16

Shame about the font change

I use this app every day, often frequently, and enjoy the coverage offered by the reporters. My rating is lower simply because of the font change in the most recent update. I can’t find how to revert to the previous, and I just don’t like the look of this one. The article I want to read always seems to take a couple of seconds (in app terms, too long) to open, and then I have to accept this strangely fatuous font, even while reading about some very serious issues. It seems a strange choice to make as a developer, and not one I’d have made. If you can undo the font change and speed up the article loading to their previous versions, my user experience would be greatly enhanced.

2020-05-19

The Isolated and Lonely

This pandemic has brought out the true worth of our “News Industry”. Since the outset of this pandemic all of our major news programmes have been confrontational, corrosive, aggressive, pernicious and above all completely negative and speculative. At then end of this pandemic your industry needs to reconsider how many deaths have been caused in the UK by the constant negative approach of our News process. If you only trade in gloom and doom any isolated elderly vulnerable individual will give up and lose hope! To preserve sanity in the UK today the last thing you need to do is to listen to the “News”.

2020-05-19

No contact point

Generally a good app which I use most mornings. I particularly like the fact that it shows the front pages of each of the national newspapers and that you can either look at the top stories of the day, the most-read stories or tailor the feed to suit your own interests.

Criticisms - the extremely irritating silly music they feel they need to use to accompany their videos, particularly the more light-hearted ones, and the fact that the videos are not updated very regularly. Sometimes the same ones sit there for days.

Also the fact that you cannot contact the reporter of any story to point out any factual errors or poor grammar or offer them further information you may have etc.

2019-02-19

Please fix this!!!!!

Along with my below comments from previously I would like to add that the search function is practically useless. I can only search for a topic like “Science” or “Sport” and not for the actual article, like “Mars Rover” or “Rugby six nations”. Surely this would be a more useful feature!?

We are almost there. Being taken to the top of the page when scrolling through articles has almost stopped now. However, when I go into an article, read it, and then go back out I will sometimes be taken to the very top of the list again. This means I have to scroll and scroll and scroll, trying to remember what I have and haven’t yet read. Like a web browser it should be intelligent enough to work out where you are at all times. I don’t mind it going back to the top if it asks first or sends a note saying page has updated. I just don’t want to be taken to the top without me invoking it.

2019-01-08

Losing user friendliness with each major new interface update

It might sound lazy or stubborn, but I stopped swiping through videos ever since the interface started requiring an extra click to go into videos. Just so they could tease trailer the videos on a preview carousel; ironic!

“My News” used to be separate tabs mixed in with the main tabs along the top - now it’s another click into "My News" and then scroll through them within a subset of tabs. Why, for what gain?

I wonder if the developers / product managers would benefit from real ‘consumer’ input, rather than self validating their own new design ideas.

It’s still my favourite go to app for news and other reading. Not in depth articles, but that’s what I want from a mobile news app.

Offline viewing could be more intuitive and easier to kick off when you only have limited time before you go underground. Unless I’m missing something I find having to open each story in order to ‘cache’ item locally, but any sniff of the weakest signal and it won’t let you even open the cached page. Ho hum.

I’ve decided to give it an extra star - 3 was too harsh :)

2018-12-26

New Layout More Difficult To Use, Videos Playback Still Terrible

Having the My News and Top Stories at the bottom makes it very difficult to use and increases the chance of you dropping your phone. You can barely reach the buttons using your thumb now, which makes this updates’ focus on making navigation easier a joke.

Who thought this was a good idea? Did you actually test it on an iPhone X? Because using this app without a lower bezel is a nightmare. You’ve just made the app terrible to use on Apple’s flagship, plus increased the risk of people smashing their phones. Nice job! Not.

In addition, and a more long standing problem... every time I play a video, without fail, it begins playing and like clockwork, after a few seconds, it restarts! Then other times the videos just won’t load “this content is not available” etc. Poor.

2018-10-02

Go Forward or Backward

Sorry but the previous version was better than this latest revision. Now there is so much news available but not properly categorised or is out of date, you can be forgiven to miss something important. It also wastes time - reviewing old items that certainly should not appear on “My News”. It may have a categorised place though.... How about a category for “old news” or “ Updates”

To help with all of this, it would be good if at the end of each item, both in picture format or detailed text, you add the date and time the item was first broadcast. You can also add an update date / time, but keep you first broadcast date / time as well. The date / time of your informative news incidents is important to everyone so this is a very worthy consideration.

Thank you for reading and considering this.

2018-02-04

New tab system is less user friendly than the old compact view.

My old review is below - the new tab system has removed the compact view and carousel feature as far as I can tell. This makes it harder to navigate on an iPhone 6s as I now have to select feeds rather than having my chosen few on the grid style my news. I appreciate that the new design may be better for the newest phones but we can’t all afford to upgrade - any chance we can have the old design back?

As it is, the new view has meant I’ve knocked a couple of stars off as it’s less user friendly (the content is still five star).

I’ve left the old review below to illustrate the difference with the new design.

———

Old review:

The latest update which introduces 'compact view' greatly improved my user experience on an iPhone.

The 'carousel' feature completes the user friendly experience for me as I can now access my preferred news feed at one time making scanning stories easier.

Huge thanks to the developers for listening to the feedback - this is particularly appreciated when other major app developers churn out fortnightly 'updates' without any noticeable changes. Clearly this is a company that values the opinions of it's user base and this is very much appreciated.

I've upgraded my rating to five stars - well deserved.

Thanks again!

BBC News - UK & World Stories

iPhone Screenshots

iPad Screenshots

Description

What's New in Version 9.5.0

Seller

Name

URL

Information

Developer

Categories

Version

Size

Game Center

VPP Device Licensing

Rating

Compatibility

Devices

Languages

App Store: Customer Ratings

Ratings & Reviews

News

No widget for Home Screen- total deal breaker

Excellent

Grateful

A shadow of its former self

don’t like it

BBC News

I hate the updates, only made it worse

The most racist bunch of editors in the UK

I want news not gossip

Time, Day, Date

Honest appraisal

News Reviews

BBC news

BBC NEWS

Recent updates made app touch sensitive

The best News App

Should be renamed USBC

Woke TQIA+ narrative

Does not represent BBC quality

Good

Why do you give Reform so much airtime?

Ukraine?

First rate!

Dumbing down & so many errors

My go-to News App

Unbias

Up to date information

Review I no longer watch BBC. I only dip into the headlines and then compare it with other media!

Why is everything so tiny?

Free but Poot

The Beeb Bounces Back Better and Better

All

Unfortunately biased

Informative, lucid and trustworthy reporting.

BBC news

Photos too small.

Videos crashing

Don't trust Ayatollah BBC

Biased reporting

Mr

Great news

In the right wings pocket

Great coverage

The News

Best for News

Worlds best news

Trust issues

BBC so politically correct it can’t deal with facts

BBC news and Look South

When local means not local

Below standard.

Poor since last few updates

Following news on the Beeb

No landscape mode for video

Go back to how it looked in say 2004

Why did you break it?

Always a great app but My News UI has gone backwards

Updates have ruined the app