The New Yorker Reviews

I have gone in so many circles trying unsuccessfully to access my digital subscription through TheNewYorker that I am on the verge of canceling my subscription altogether. At one point, days into this, it FINALLY asked for my email and password. Once I entered them TheNewYorker sent me back to square one for the umpteenth time. It is Sunday night and customer service is closed. I am sure there is a simple answer to this, but FAQs doesn’t address it even though I see other comments describing the same dilemma.
(Part II) By posting this negative review I received a more detailed response to my customer service requests and an offer to edit my review, which I am now doing by adding this text which I hope will be helpful to customers, customer care and the developer of TheNewYorker: sign out and then sign back in with your email and password. “Sign out” is nowhere indicated, and it would have spared me weeks of aggravation. Now that I am able to access the content that I subscribed to, TheNewYorker functions as well as I would hope with high quality graphics. I would like to raise my rating to 5 stars, but I can’t in good faith until TheNewYorker provides clear instructions on how to link content. Without this minor correction, TheNewYorker is useless. If I missed something I apologize and am open to raising my rating as I do appreciate how much work went into this otherwise excellent app.

Like all the 1-star recent reviews have noted, my iPad app wasn't taking me past the Condé Nast web pop-up login screen. It just sits there after I type in my password.

So I gave up and tried to log in on my computer. Same kind of web screen from Condé Nast came up. After I typed in my password *another screen popped up telling me to "check my email for a link to log in*. I clicked on that link and was able to read articles on my computer through the web browser.

So then I did the same thing on the web browser and mail app on my iPad. Same thing happened-- clicking the link in my email on my iPad took me back to my iPad's web browser and I was able to read New Yorker articles in my iPad's web browser.

So then I clicked on the little top bar that offered to "open this article on the The New Yorker app" and that took me to TheNewYorker . TheNewYorker (once again) wanted me to confirm that I had a subscription, and it did so through a web pop-up screen, like before. *But this time it had my email/login/password credentials and asked me to select my verified account.* So I clicked on that and now my app is working again. Whew.

Condé Nast or TheNewYorker -maker needs to fix this. I would give TheNewYorker 5 stars because I quite like it. But these account verification shenanigans are obviously a problem for every iOS user, have been in place for several months now, and need to be fixed.

Either that, or they need to acknowledge this problem and offer a work-around.

Love the overall flow and design. I just have one issue with it: normally when I’m reading an article I can close my phone, even quit TheNewYorker and when I re-open, it will bring me to right where I was on the article (very helpful for longer ones). However, the same is not true for the crosswords, which is the main reason I use TheNewYorker (I read the hard copy more).

I love the collaborative feature and have discovered that if I open the crossword with the link it provides in my browser, my work is saved and all is good. However, if I just use TheNewYorker to fill in the crossword, the moment I close my phone or take a phone call, I’m sent back to the home page. Often, when I find the same crossword again (which isn’t straightforward because they aren’t listed by date in the search), my work is saved. But occasionally the board is wiped clean! Very frustrating.

I only started reading the magazine on my iPad about five months ago, and am underwhelmed by the experience. Sometimes TheNewYorker works, meaning that I can access all the stories from the magazine, and sometimes it doesn’t. The most recent magazine, for example (November 19, 2018) gives me only three “Goings on About Town” items - nothing else. I have closed and opened TheNewYorker , I have logged out and back in, and even removed and re-installed TheNewYorker , all with the same result. It would be OK if this was the only time something went wrong - on at least two occasions in the last three months the magazine completely failed to download, and/or told me I didn’t have a subscription. In contrast, I have never had any issues with the iPhone App, which I have been happily using for several years.

I love New Yorker and when TheNewYorker works, I enjoy using it for reading, using the interactive features, and listening to audio stories. However, more often than not, it forgets me when I open TheNewYorker that I am already a subscriber and requires me to sign in again. So I have to use the website popup to re-signin. It hasn’t been a big problem, just annoying, until this week. It completely forgot me and saying my password that worked all this time is invalid, that does not allow me to use the account number on my printed issues to link subscription and no way of getting my contents back, because “the account already linked to another email address”. Mysteriously, just a few days later TheNewYorker recognizes me again and my subscription is active. TheNewYorker has been so exhausting so far.

I like TheNewYorker . My only grievance is that if I swipe to another app and come back to the New Yorker it always loses my place and I have to search for the article. Also the search is a little hit or miss

Update: I got an update from a developer. I have an iPhone X running the latest version of iOS and the latest version of the New Yorker and it routinely loses my place on TheNewYorker if I switch to another app and then back. It just seems to crash and the apps goes to the home page

While I appreciate that many stories on TheNewYorker are accompanied by Audm narrations, I’ve never had more trouble with audio than with TheNewYorker. Half the time the audio doesn’t even play. When i can manage to coax the audio into playing, it crashes unexpectedly if I do so much as navigate to a different page on TheNewYorker . Even just pausing the audio is a gamble, since very often paused audio will not start up again. As a big fan of the New Yorker but not someone who likes reading long articles on a phone screen, I am greatly disappointed at the quality of the software. The fact that I cannot easily search for stories with accompanying audio is a frustrating limitation I could live with, but the vexingly awful behavior I experience makes TheNewYorker mostly useless for me.

I downloaded TheNewYorker hoping for an easy way to listen to some of the great long-form articles.

The audio content is hard to find, and the audio player is buggy and poorly integrated. Siri reads incoming texts and driving directions *over* the podcast audio (instead of pausing it). What’s worse is that TheNewYorker doesn’t even register itself as an audio player!

This means that the usual controls on the lock screen don’t work — there’s no easy way to advance or go back 15 seconds, nor even a play/pause button! Tapping on play (or using my headphones cord’s button) causes my music to come on (as if I had been listening to nothing) and after that I have to go back into TheNewYorker , find the article I was listening to, and restart the stream.

I think your App is AWFUL and I love everything else about the NYer...whenever I get my daily email from the Nyer with a story that interests me I click on it but it denies me entry (why if the NYer sends mail to my email address can it not recognize that I have been a subscriber for THIRTY PLUS years???)...but I’m interested enough in the article to open up my NYer App to read the article there but half the time it denies me access, instructing me to link my subscription (which I have done repeatedly!!!)

Tonight was the final straw: Patrick Berry is my favorite crossword constructor so I was eager to tackle his puzzle; I went through the rigamarole described above, but when I reached the Link Your Subscription page, my attempts to either enter my address or my subscription number failed. Aaaaaargh!

Please tell me what I am doing wrong and make the NYer more digital friendly for your loyal and enthusiastic subscribers!!!

Love the New Yorker and consistently read it. With my commute it was nice to listen to the articles but TheNewYorker was super buggy for me and had zero customization for listening. I decided to get an Audm subscription since it includes other magazines and, more importantly, better audio controls/interface.

But now the Audm app isn’t necessary for the New Yorker. The new update is much easier to use, less buggy, and has its own pop-out interface. Two things would make it even better: 1.25x speed and an updated pop-player for older issues.

I love reading The New Yorker in print form, but I find TheNewYorker to be just as good. It’s very convenient for anyone who wants to read TNY when they have downtime; be that on the train, an Uber, downtime at work, etc. It’s smooth and easy to navigate. They recently just extended the amount of articles you’re able to bookmark. Before, you had a certain amount before it capped you. The only thing I wish they would incorporate is the dark-mode screen feature. Maybe they don’t want to add it because they’re trying to keep the same aesthetic and feel of the magazine in TheNewYorker form, but having that option would be icing on the cake.

Re: article “Why are so many healthcare workers Resisting the Covid vaccine” By Dhruv Khullar This is an irresponsible, fear mongering article that spends far too much time citing the uninformed concerns of healthcare workers who are not virologists, have no understanding of virology, molecular biology, chemistry or the innovative mRNA and other techniques being used to bring a new class of vaccines to the public and haven’t made themselves familiar with the phase 1, phase 2 or phase 3 trials data for safety and efficacy for any of these vaccines. The reporter should be making the public familiar with the science behind these vaccines. I suggest spending time listening to TWiV podcasts by real virologists. If this passes for journalism at the New Yorker and the state of editorial review, how can one trust its reporting in other areas. I am dropping my subscription.

I love a lot of things about TheNewYorker, but two things I really don’t like:
- I wish they would add a dark mode! I often read at night before bed, and even with my screen lighting turned down and orange-y night mode on, the white is annoying.
- It used to be that when I closed TheNewYorker , or switched to another app and back, it would return me to the same place in whatever story I was reading. But since some recent update, I now often see a blank white screen when I reopen the new yorker app, and when I toggle back to the story I’m on, I get thrown back to the top of the article. Needless to say New Yorker stories can be quite long, so this is discouraging.

I’m new to TNY (shocking, I know) and absolutely love it. As for TheNewYorker , it’s v simple and clean which I like; however, I have two suggestions for improvement. First, the ability to archive or favorite articles. I know there’s a “save” feature but I use it more as a “save to read later” feature, as I’m sure many other users do as well. Second, the ability to highlight favorite passages and come back to them. Some articles are extensively long yet only a few sentences or paragraphs might be meaningful (to me). Medium has both of these features and I find them v useful.

- Whenever my subscription auto-renews, it unlinks my account and shows my subscription as terminated. I have to physically relink the subscription every time.

- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give us a "dark mode"! I want to be able to read the New Yorker at night without doing additional harm to my eyes and sleep cycle! I know I am not the only one who wants this option.

- I wish the search bar was more sophisticated. It would be nice to search by the author's name (and even nicer to be able to click on the author's name to see what else they have written for the magazine - sometimes I just want to catch up on what Rachel Syme and Naomi Fry have been writing lately!)

In the most recent update of TheNewYorker , they added a Top Stories section. That’s fine, but when I open TheNewYorker I want it to take me ti the article I was last reading, not Top Stories by default. It often takes me numerous sessions to finish an article and now to figure out where I was I have to go remember which issue I was reading in and then find the article. Super frustrating.

Lots of other things I like about New Yorker, and the simple fact they have an app, but not popping me right back in the article I was reading and where I left off just makes it hard for me to use.

I love the New Yorker and find TheNewYorker to be very presentable and easy to use. But it has an infuriating bug that drove me to unsubscribe a year ago, and now I have resubscribed I find it’s still there! Every time I am reading an article and switch to another app, when I switch back to the New Yorker app it reloads the article and loses my place. And after a few hours it will sometimes even return to the Top Stories page. So I lose my place in the article! I don’t even know why it needs to reload, as the articles are presumably not updated. It is extremely frustrating and I wish the developers could fix it. I’m on iOS 14.4 FWIW.

This review is for TheNewYorker not the magazine. I have been an app subscriber for a long time. Before they updated TheNewYorker many years ago your place would be saved in an article. Now as soon as you scroll away from an article even if by accident it takes you back to the beginning. Also it is very easy as you scroll down to accidentally turn the page - it is very sensitive and no it’s not my phone settings. Because of this sometimes I have to scroll back and find my place over and over again. Cmon developers - people have complained about this many times before and still no fixes?? Why oh why did you spend money making TheNewYorker much worse from a UX perspective?!?!

I’ve been a regular New Yorker Reader for decades. Sadly, every iteration of their attempt to create an iPad version has been a miserable failure.

For example, say you’re reading an article in the current issue. You have to put your iPad aside. When you come back to The New Yorker app you’re greeted not with the article you were reading, but with a blank page. If you click the arrow at the top of the page you’re taken back to the contents. You find the article you were reading and select it. But instead of taking you to where you left off in the article you are taken to the very beginning forcing you to manually scroll through the article until you find the place where you left off.

This act of cruelty to the reader is inexcusably bad programming. After all, the technology to "remember" where a reader left off has been around for a long time. The Kindle app remembers where you left off reading a book and allows you to continue across all devices.

I could go on, but this one defect alone is sufficient to justify the one star rating.

This replacement for the NYer Print app no longer offers the entire print edition of the magazine, advertisements and all. Sure, it is nice that the New Yorker Website offers content that changes daily, and that they link to that content from TheNewYorker, but what makes The New Yorker experience special is the fact that it is a weekly print publication able to encapsulate an experience of a year in 48 or so issues. It loses too much without the weekly deadline and the determination to present only the best of what was available.

Please bring the NYer Print app back to the iPad. It is still available on other platforms (including the iPhone).

The content is nonpareil. TheNewYorker is rinky dink. For instance: I have a digital subscription but I also look at The New Yorker Today and they don’t speak to one another. if I click on something in NY’er Today that refers to an article only—at that time—available in the downloaded issues, I have to sign in again. Or, I’m warned that I’ve run out of bookmarks but there’s no way to decide which I’d be willing to forfeit, I’m merely told I’ll lose the oldest. When I sign in, sometimes it recognizes me, sometimes it doesn’t. I could go on. For a subscription this expensive, surely the online material should be easier to access. But the content—wonderful.

Saving where you're at on an article is an amazing feature when it works. Half the time I reopen the article, I'm at the top of the article instead of where I left off. It doesn't matter if I manually bookmark it, or close out of TheNewYorker - it sometimes works, and other times it won't.

TheNewYorker works fine aside from that, but considering the length of the articles, that's a pretty necessary feature.

I do wish there were fun ways to discover old articles I may not find otherwise (a retrospective, editor's choice, browse by tags, etc.), or that the old articles went back even further.

After seeing SO many reviewers mention the exact problem I have been having for years with the New Yorker app...I had finally got it working but it only can download the whole magazine. So when I get headers in emails FROM THE NEW YORKER- for great intriguing articles the NYorker offers - and I want to read I manage to get this New Yorker Today app in hopes that the endless sign in - you’re signed in- Loop would end, but no.
And then I learn that everyone else is/has been telling you the same thing since 2018?
As a loyal New Yorkerian, I have to believe this is some ghastly oversight. Surely you don’t intend to publicly display incompetent programming? Or ineffective responsiveness over such a long period of time?
In short, what’s the deal?

I love the New Yorker and I love TheNewYorker and wish that other magazine publishers would offer the same format. Since they don’t, this is the only one I use.

I’ve only used it on the iPad and can’t speak for how it functions on the iPhone. TheNewYorker has functioned well, no freezes, crashes or other annoyances.

But the thing I love most is the simplicity of the offerings. I get the full print magazine, which others read, while I read the longer reads on my computer, usually over the weekend. What I want to read on the iPad are the shorter daily articles that are not part of the what the magazine has published, nor do I want to wade through them looking for the web only stuff. TheNewYorker is perfect!

Thank you, New Yorker. TheNewYorker is a winner!

Like others have noted, TheNewYorker boots me off every month and tells me I’m no longer subscribed to them. When I log in online, it shows that I am still subscribed. When I try to link my subscription, it claims it’s already tied to another email address. Basically for a few days every month you can’t read any articles because of TheNewYorker ’s problems. I love the New Yorker, but this is extremely frustrating.

TheNewYorker interface is pretty and not buggy, but some features of TheNewYorker don’t work (like saving your place when reading an article). TheNewYorker needs some work for sure!

I truly love the New Yorker. The writing is superior to any newspaper that I read (NYT, WaPo, WSJ). I love the long, in-depth stories that truly familiarize you with who/what’s happening. There’s one issue with TheNewYorker though that prevents my rating from being 5 stars. When I leave TheNewYorker for more than a few minutes it restarts the article at the beginning. I have the “save your place” setting selected but it doesn’t appear to work. I hope it is fixed soon. Overall, I love it.

In typical New Yorker fashion TheNewYorker is elegant and a joy to read and outstandingly, to listen to. I have no complaints.

I have been reading the magazine since my teenage years and I am 73 now. Who could ask for more?

I imagine that some of the bad reviews I see here must have something to do with signing in. I think if a problem does get fixed people ought to go back and adjust their review. I had some difficulty at the beginning because I purchased on Apple and I had to learn a different way of signing in. Once I jumped through that hoop all has been fine for a few years now.

Actually, TheNewYorker is the best magazine app I have ever read.

Thanks New Yorker.

Entirely agree with the previous reviewer - TheNewYorker is a complete mess: You can’t sign in properly - it loses your passwords, and repeatedly tells you have read your free articles, which are indeed NOT free, because you have already subscribed and linked. It does all this THROUGH THE LINKED EMAIL! I have just gotten a new password from a human, and there is no way to change that to a password of my own choice. How about you go back to the drawing board and FIX THIS AWFUL THING!!!! Did they actually pay you for this? If I could give you negative stars, I would give you about 10 of them! Can’t submit this without giving you one of them.

... which is fantastic, and doesn’t need my or anyone’s else’s endorsement. This is about the clunky, grief-filled digital experience. *PLEASE* get a grip on this. How can it be that I keep getting the “you’ve read half your articles for this month” message when I’m a digital subscriber opening the NYer Today from *within* TheNewYorker ! These are not the nineties! These are not allowed bugs! You cannot expect me to call an 800 number just because I’ve subscribed from the Apple app store and *you* can’t figure it out! Get Roger Angell on it- you know he can do a better job than you. And he’s on your team. Come on, already!

I'm an active subscriber to the New Yorker and have used (and enjoyed) TheNewYorker before. On iOS 13 it doesn't work at all. The main "Top Stories" view is blank, although sometimes it shows an error that it couldn't download an issue (I didn't try to download an issue). I get the same error whenever I *do* try to download any issue. The search tool works, but all stories that appear in search results just open in Safari (where I can read them just fine). I've tried force-quitting, uninstalling and reinstalling, restarting, logging out and logging in. It's just broken.

I love New Yorker, but I find myself having to open articles from it in Safari Reader instead of TheNewYorker. Black text against a white background hurts my eyes, and TheNewYorker has no option to change that. Many other apps have an option for white text on a black background. I would appreciate a similar option in the New Yorker app, so I don’t always have to open articles outside of TheNewYorker .

Having already said the positive in the title, I’m sorry to have to report a big complaint

It is absolutely dreadful to me how TheNewYorker will lose my place in the article by merely ditching to other things or letting the phone turn off. These are not short articles of course. Super, super annoying having to scan over and over to try to find my place. Begging for this to be fixed.

Whenever my phone locks, I lose my location In the article. Have to scroll back down from the top

Edit: it’s not a matter of waiting a minute for TheNewYorker to find its location. Still happens if I wait (and even if that were true, that is terrible app design). Looking at other reviews, this has been a common complaint for over a year. Y’all need to get better coders..

Also what’s with the new pop up spam ads when I open an article? That take over the entire screen and have to be closed to read an article. This is trash.