Formed Reviews

It is a blessing to have an app like this to stream Catholic content wherever.

Functionally, would be great to have a more advanced search or search by some type of tagging or categories.

As for content, the original content and some of the series are great. I would love to see more content, perhaps working with other organizations like Word on Fire and Catholic Answers to include their content. To have some other great sources of content under one app would be awesome and something I would gladly pay for with a monthly subscription. My family is also utilizing a great program called Our Lady of the Rosary family catechism. It is totally free and the videos are a great walk-through of the Baltimore Catechism. Would be great to have those videos available on Formed as well.

I have used and enjoyed this app since our parish signed up a couple of years ago. I’ve read ebooks, watched various bible studies and films, and enjoyed special devotions for Lent and Advent. It has been a blessing.

I would like to see more resources on Catholic Social Teaching as I believe it would guide me as I seek to do my part in this broken, beautiful world. I appreciate the very short series with the Brother who draws so effectively (Brother Mickey?), and I would like to those in the parish. But I also need more in-depth resources for my own study.

One thing I’ve found frustrating in recent months is that Formed logs me out between uses (not every time; just sometimes). To get back in requires an email address, a visit to an email inbox, and a click on a link. It’s obviously doable, but when I have a just a few minutes or am on my phone, it’s a lot of steps and especially on my phone where I can’t see as well, I leave and read something else. I would appreciate a simpler process or just not getting logged out. Overall, though, I enjoy this app and find it helpful.

We go to this app for many different programs, and find the Truth and the Story of our Faith so well-presented. Practicing our Faith at home and celebrating the sacraments and devotions and attending enriching discussion groups at Church has been made more meaningful and has brought us closer to Jesus. So thank you, Augustine Institute. Wish there were more time to participate in everything you offer, although the stay-home situation has allowed us to explore more lately.
Four stars because it would be helpful to access a table of contents to see a printed list of all the programs that you offer, arranged in categories and be able to click and go right to the one wanted. Some of the video covers are hard to read when searching. That said, thank you for quality programs by wonderful, gifted presenters and excellent unique graphics for each series helping us to locate the one we need and leading us beautifully through the talks.

Formed has helped me grow in my Catholic faith. It’s provides content that I’ve been able to share with my friends, family, and even my young Godchildren. From being able to watch some of the movies based on the Saints by giving me visual insight as to what their lives were like to expanding my faith experience through series such as ‘The Search’. Even if one is more of an audio only type of person, there are great audio books available and talks from various speakers. I recommend Formed and I have shared it with various people that I know so that they can have the chance to deepen their faith through resourceful and wonderful Catholic apps such as this app. I would highly recommend downloading Formed and going through everything that it provides!

After considering myself Atheist for 13 years, I joined the Catholic church on Easter vigil of 2018 and this app had a MAJOR impact on my decision to do so! It all started with the movie, “Why would anyone ever want to be Catholic” and quickly grew into a full blown love of the faith! The study material that’s available through Formed is usually very high quality, informative, and true to the Catholic faith! The only improvement I would suggest is to bring back the categorical browsing. After the recent update, I am not able to browse specificly for audio content, unless I already know what I’m searching for or I scroll down the “Explore” page which sometimes isn’t the most convenient in the car!

However I love Formed and content and look forward to seeing more!

The Lectio series have been a very informative and eye opening. The content on this site has changed my life. My walk with God toward eternity is now more of an informed faith which makes it the walk more realistic and desirable. They assist to fan the fire inside me to desire Him more, especially in the Mass. this app and the Augustine Institute are really changing the lives of many . We received a membership as a gift through our home parish and it’s impact on my family’s life is visible. It makes having a healthy diet of catholic beliefs easier than ever, so we can be strong and change our culture one family at a time. The Videography in some series like in “The Search” series can compete with Hollywood which is also a plus.

Our women’s study group is using the Lectio series for our Bible Study. We started with Mark. The fine art that is included in the workbook is fantastic. The questions are thought provoking and easy to share. Dr. Tim Gray is the most excellent teacher. He is so easy to listen to and challenges us to go deeper in our relationship with God. His explanation of the paintings is amazing as he draws us into the current lesson and helps us to understand Scripture. We also love his sense of humor as well as the connections that are made between the Old and New Testament. Awesome!
We are currently going through “Prayer” for the second time. This lecture series is so rich that it takes more than once to begin to catch all the profound lessons that are contained in each half hour talk. We hear something new every time.
We have ordered the Study Guides for two more of Tim Gray’s lectures. We hope he continues to offer more.
You can’t beat all that this app has to offer. Every Catholic who is interested in deepening their faith will find something of interest in the fine productions of The Augustine Institute.

When I opened Formed for the first time,I was speechless for a while, just looking at the screen. I felt like I was given a glimpse of eternal life in heaven. I felt like I want to know more and I want to watch , listen and learn more about this. My heart was pounding fast and loud, I felt this warmth feeling from head to toes that until this day, I can not forget about. Never felt that before. I knew that if I had access to this was not a coincidence. So ever since I have watched so many videos that had make me understand better my faith and religion. I have grown closer to God and understand better the teachings of the Catholic Church. Formed has been a blessing to me and to my family.
Thank you so much for the work you all do. May god bless you always.

this app has so many great talks, podcasts, and videos! Many of which aren’t easily available elsewhere as far as I’ve seen. I have not yet listened to a talk that I haven’t enjoyed, and I have not yet failed to find something when searching for a specific topic. I would highly recommend Formed to anyone seeking God who wants to grow in knowledge and understanding of the beautiful truths of the faith.

If I have one complaint, it is that you can’t lock your screen when listening to audio because it’s formatted as a video. In the previous version of Formed , that feature was available and I’m not quite sure why it was removed. Everything else about the update is awesome, but I do hope they bring that back in the future. It’s a pretty minor thing, but it really helped save battery when listening to longer talks.

This Ap was a gift to our congregation for Christmas years ago. I have had it on my phone for a couple of years and had not made time to open it. Well as they say in many of the this app talks, God looks for us. Early January I started watching and listening and now I listen to the lessons on my work everyday, or pray the Rosary or the Divine Mercy chaplet. I have always loved being catholic but listening to the Lectios, Daily reflections, The Search, saint storiesb, consecration to Mary, Holy Spirit retreat sessions, and even programs for kids. I am so glad that this app is available to all and it has helped me so much during this Covid-19 pandemic. It is a true gift! Well done Augustine Institute. When God knocks we should open or reopen the door...I’m so happy I did♥️. Everyone could find so much in this app! Not just Catholics🙏🏼

I am so grateful for Formed, paid for by our parish, at no cost to all the parishioners! I tell many people that they should give it a try, and they will love it! It offers a wealth of what I consider “continuing religious education”, never before available to me, that I can now enjoy in the comfort of my own home, even while doing dishes, laundry, or exercising on an elliptical! My favorite topics are the Bible study videos, particularly the Lectio Peter and other Lectio video series. The presenters are wonderfully knowledgeable and enrich my faith, with great presentation skills and a joyful outlook. I love having the opportunity to learn more about the Bible as an adult, which can be tough since local Bible study classes are often at times I have to work. After many years of attending mass, it is great to learn more about some readings that I have heard for years! It is an amazing gift. Thank you!

In my busy life I find it hard to sit and read a book on spirituality, or hard to pray set prayers for long stretches at a time. Sometimes, even at Mass, my mind wanders and I miss the message. I feel “occupied” with life and I don’t want to pray.

Using this app is like finding an oasis in a dry expanse. I can find books on audio for the car or while I get ready in the morning - like the Advent audio “Meditations On the Art of Waiting by Mary Francis” was soooo helpful relieving my stress as I wrapped presents at Christmas. Watching saint movies with my kids, or opening important topics to discuss with my teens through YDisciple, this app bridges a gap I’m sometimes at a loss to know how to cross. Even encouragement for my marriage is a result of this app.

Vastly more important than helping my family relationships, this app brings me closer to God. I can feel His presence and hear His leadings after I’ve meditated on the application of something I’ve heard or seen on this app. I’m hungry and have the strength, the desire to seek after God once my soul has been touched by one of the shows in this app. And at times, I need all the help I can get!!!

Our parish provided this app for us and I did very little with it at first. A friend set up a few of us to do the this app live for Holy Week and I was all in after that. I learned so much. I watched and enjoyed several movies. I am currently in a study using the Peter series. The amount of knowledge and connections made have blown me away. I have just started listening to some of the audio choices for when I walk and have been so pleased and even telling others to check it out. this app offers a lot of resources and I feel that it could do our youth and young adults a world of good in learning about our catholic faith. I am a cradle Catholic in my early fifties and have grown such a greater appreciation for my faith and the mission of Jesus. I am just very pleased and am trying to carve out more time for this app.

Thanking God for your apostolate!

I have been greatly blessed through the easy, quick ability to access the materials you provide to enrich and encourage my faith journey! Converting to Catholicism has been beautiful, touched by His grace and also marked by trials. It took 7 years of exploring and RCIA classes. I was asked to leave my first RCIA class... thanking God for the rejection of that priest! Humility is key. Now at 25+ years of finding the fulfillment of my faith, I am edified intellectually, strengthened in my journey and still seeking sanctification through your beautiful ministry! I have incorporated a lot of your supportive materials while facilitating Adult Faith Formation at my parish. I know other ministries in our church also take advantage of your materials, as well as many individual parishioners we have encouraged to connect with you. I support this app! May the peace, joy and love of Jesus rain down upon you always. Thank you!

If you have a toddler, the show Benjamin Cello is excellent. It is a mix of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood (great) with Barney (overdone kid acting-ugh) but the preschool set just laps it up. This is a Grammy winning musical family who wrote original, incredible songs good enough for an adult audience. Also, Brother Joseph in the episode “overcome evil with good” is the equivalent of having Pavarotti on PBS kids. Whoa.

Everything else on this app is hit or miss—some is really hokey quality but has a nice cover image and some is garbage cover and incredible quality. Just hit play on everything, and give it 3 minutes. Some are hidden treasures.

Generally pretty good, solid Catholic teaching. Formed rarely crashes, and is worth your time (and the hassle of the email signup process). Considering most users aren’t paying for it, but signed up through their church, it’s all you could ask and more.

I have enjoyed the reliable, orthodoxed Catholic resources made available in one place by this app for a few years now, but now more than ever, what a blessing this app is in helping us bolster our spirits and give us a forum to go deeper in prayer and faith formation while our parishes have closed doors. As we slow down our lives from the hectic pace we have operated undet for so long I see God’s gift ... drawing His children back to Himself. this app offers us such a great opportunity to take this time in history to learn something new, find hope and joy in the rich gifts of our Catholic Faith and fill the gap while we wait in great anticipation of the return to our blessed Sacraments of our holy Catholic Church. Until then, I pray those who are struggling will give this app a try, so they may allow God this time to grow some of those seeds of faith that have been planted within each of our souls. God bless you and keep you all.

I'm not even Catholic yet, but there's so much good information here, a person can be well persuaded of the truth of Catholicism.
My 9-year-old daughter LOVES Brother Francis episodes, and I do too. They are very well-produced and true to Scripture and (from what I know about Catholic doctrine) the Church's teaching. The computer animation is good, the songs are melodic and memorable for kids.
Their Symbolon series was used in the RCIA course I attended. It is good, but to a degree an apologetic for Christianity against unbelief. As an evangelical with some training in theology, some of the defense of theism wasn't necessary for me. That said, as an RCIA series, that is probably good to have in there because the Holy Spirit draws people to Christ's Church from many different levels and types of belief.
Brant Pitre's scholarly and Biblical explanation of Catholic doctrine is probably the best thing here. As a former Sola-Scriptura evangelical, I find his knowledge of Scripture and accessible explanations more persuasive than anything else I have encountered in my trip to the Church.

I have been a Catholic all my life. My parents raised my siblings and I with the sacraments, the saints, the rosary and a Catholic education. My husband and I raised our children in the same way but sadly, the secular world as seduced them away from the “faith of our fathers”. Since I discovered this app, I have learned so much about our beautiful faith and I find such comfort in learning more about the sacraments, saints and teachings of the Church. Watching the series “Presence” and “Forgiven” I was brought to tears of love to rediscover the joy of these incredible gifts from Our Loving Father! The audio series about St. Patrick and St. Cecelia were also amazing. My grandchildren enjoyed the Ryan Defrates series. The quality and entertaining potential of the movies about Maria Goretti, Mother Theresa, and St. Barbara have enriched my life and bolstered my faith. Any time I am struggling with an issue, I can get on this app and find wisdom, grace and peace. Thank you for doing this great work for all of us in the Church Militant. Please pray for my children and grandchildren, siblings and cousins who have lost their way. God bless you all.

I love diving into the contents on the this app app.
There is something for everyone, no matter where you are in your knowledge of your Catholic faith. I am particularly delighted to explore all the content about the gospels. I never realized how much the Old Testament and the Jewish religion used prophets to foretell the coming of Jesus Christ.
I also love the music that accompanies a series. In the series about divine mercy - “The Second Greatest Story Ever Told”, the music enhances the dramatic effect and raises your enjoyment to a whole new level. The scholars and professors of the Augustine Institute are always bringing us new content. I feel like they are knowledgeable and the way they interact with each other ( for eg. The Augustine Institute Show) shows a genuine respect for each other and their audience. They clearly enjoy sharing their knowledge with us so we may tell others ( family and friends) about our faith. I love that there is a section for children and the recently how Institute wants to offer more content in Spanish. God’s blessings and good fortune continue to shine on the work that you are doing.

I was born in an interfaith family; my mom was a Christian (who later converted to Catholicism) and my dad was a cradle Catholic. Growing up, I was exposed to a variety of services in denominations, and also the Catholic Mass. Even as a kid, I felt like something was missing from the Christian services, and I now know that it was both the Eucharist and the reverence that I felt was lacking.

When I was 18, I experienced my first religious crisis as I realized my lifestyle and morals were incongruent. After bouts of anxiety and depression, God brought me back to the Faith.

I am now 19, and feel an incredible amount of grace in my life as I continue on my journey home. But as I grew deeper into Catholicism, I longed to learn about my faith.

Enter this app. I have learned so much from this “Catholic Netflix” that has helped me understand and share with others the beauty of Divine Mercy; I listened to a logical argument against abortion; and I’ve been inspired by the conversion stories available on this app.

I simply cannot recommend this platform enough. I feel purpose when I watch or listen to something in this app.

Now if you have read this far, this message might be for you: God loves you so much, he wants you to ask questions, to seek the truth, and to deepen your faith.

OH NO! This latest update makes it more difficult to navigate. Just this Tuesday, I was trying to “sell” this Catholic platform to our Church’s Faith Formation leader and I was showing her Formed and how easy it is (was) to navigate using the drop down menu where you could select “Watch” or “Listen” or ”Read” and once in it, you could scroll for different options (to include youth content). Now it’s all lumped together in seemingly endless scrolling which turns me completely off from wanting to use it. Sorry this app team, this update is just not for me. 😕
Previous comment:
I love Formed with one exception: on a recent update, the book browser has made the books so small, that I have a hard time reading the book title on most books. I look forward to a change back to where I can read the titles of the books and see the book covers easily. Thank you.

The content here is really terrific, but using Formed can be frustrating. It’s a pretty bare bones streaming service which works fine if you sit down to watch/listen to a whole show at once. But heaven help you if you get interrupted and need to find your place again after Formed restarts. This really needs a “recently watched” list, a “continue watching” list, and a “to watch” list. Ideally this would be stored in your account so it could be accessed from the browser version too. I’d also like to be able to search within a content type, for instance searching for a keyword and returning only podcast results or only video results. I really like the content but I am spoiled by other streaming services and podcatchers which really put this one to shame in terms of ease of use and keeping track of what you have and haven’t played.

This has been life changing and has enriched
My life in so many way !! I love Christ and all that are with him. There are so many facets of this site and of course the Bible and scriptures
This has been a real learning experience beyond words. It is easier to be more engaging and devout when you understand what Christ was teaching us. Understanding the apostles and martyrs more opens My heart and fills me more with Christ love for us. I can hardly stop watch
And meditating on this wonderful site. The theologian breakdown The scriptures for us so lovingly and passionately. I’m so blessed to be part of this!! Gratitude is too simple a word for all that is presented here!!

this app has been such a blessing to our entire family! Our youngest daughter loves all of the children’s videos especially Brother Francis. He is helping her to learn and be excited about her faith. Watching it fills her with such joy that is infectious to all those around her. We also enjoy all of the wonderful new and old live action saint movies - they have really helped our family learn about the saints and celebrate their feast days. We have also really enjoyed the books and rosaries on this app as well. Thank you for helping us grow and share our faith with others!

We were introduced to this app after attending a mother-daughter retreat with the Sister Servants in Birmingham. I have used it for my own personal spiritual growth but since I had to put all the kids in public school recently (after homeschooling for 13 yrs), we needed a way to still incorporate the faith on a regular basis. We have started doing regular “family catechesis” night and watched saint movies, listened to talks, and going through a series together right now. My kids are ages 19, 17, 15, 13, 10, and 3. There is more well done solidly catholic content on here than you will ever get through, and they are always adding more. this app has been a God-send.

So grateful to have access to videos and audios that have helped my family and me learn and grow our faith! Growing up, we went to church every Sunday and I went through CCD, but didn’t have a relationship with the Lord until much later in life. There is so much “noise” and information out there but this app is definitely a resource I trust. The “Forgiven” series helped me be more comfortable with regular confession; “Presence” helped some of my doubts; practical audios helped me in my marriage and parenting; and the weekly Gospel reflections have helped our family prepare for Mass as we drove to church! Thank you to Augustine Institute for your quality work and ministry, and thank you to our church for providing parishioners access! All glory to God!

I love this app! The seasonal reflections are helpful in keeping my attention focused on the real reasons we celebrate Christmas and Easter. I’ve listened to many talks, often with my children, so that we can discuss afterwards and it helps teach them our faith. I am just blown away by the amount and quality of the content available on this app. Our parish has a subscription, and I am constantly recommending it to others. The fact that it is online and available 24/7, helps serve the needs of those who would like to learn more about their Catholic Faith, but are unable to participate in studies at the parish.