Contact The New York Times Support

I use a VPN (a mainstream, widely available one) and many apps/sites don’t load properly. NYT’s app is odd because it works occasionally, but not usually—I don’t know if this is because of the VPN or if the app is just bad (but it seems to have a bunch of positive reviews so maybe it’s just me?). When I click on a push notification, it opens the app but only goes to the last article that was open, even if it was several weeks ago. Not useful. Then, if I search for the story, it only sometimes loads. I usually end up just using the website or relying on the morning briefing newsletter (so why am I paying for a subscription??). Another annoying aspect of the app is that you can’t zoom in on photos—I find myself doing this a lot on the website because there are interesting things to see and the phone screen is so small; it’s always a frustrating surprise when I try to zoom on the app and nothing happens. Aside from those specific issues, I also find it a little confusing/unintuitive how to find specific stories. Maybe I should be able to answer some questions about what interests me, and then it curates my home page based on my self-reported likes and my past views/reads. I could then use the “sections” page as a backup. Obviously NYT is the gold standard of journalism, but I’m surprised and irritated every time I remember how bad their app is. The app does look nice—I guess that’s worth +1 star.

This app loaded my phone with so much adware and tracking software that my phone would frequently crash and lag. I was confused about why my phone had gotten so much slower and less stable and then I realized theses problems only surfaced after I had downloaded the NYT app. I deleted the app and bookmarked NYT’s mobile site to my home screen instead and now the problems are gone. NYT is pulling some really shady dat collection and advertising tricks with this app, and the UI is terrible to boot. This app also has a bug that makes it very easy to accidentally click on ads. This is annoying because it minimizes the article I’m reading and redirects me to the webpage of whatever company’s ad I just accidentally clicked on. I really hope this is just a bug, and that the developer will fix it, but I can’t help but think that this “bug” positively influences the developer’s revenue for ad’s that are paid for on a pay per click basis, and that at best this means they have no incentive to lose money by fixing it, and at worst they are aware of it and using it to fraudulently extract extra revenue from their advertisers. Overall, I’m very disappointed with the experience this app provides. The quality of NYT’s content is well worth the $1/week subscription cost, but it isn’t worth all of the problems this app causes and the personal data/privacy concerns that come with this app are worrying to say the least.

UPDATE: I tried the app again, thinking maybe i was being too harsh. Nope, the advertisements are actually worse now. meaning, there are more ads now then there were when i wrote the below review. I actually showed this to a friend who was amazed this is a paid subscription. The same animated ad is inserted between every 3 paragraphs. Honestly, I would pay MORE if the ads would just go away altogether as they completely take-away from the reading experience. Just charge me more so I can read the news in peace please. Original Review: As mentioned by many others, the content is the best in the world. Unfortunately it is served alongside insidious ad tracking that follows one from the web and into the app. Expect to see the same ad inserted between every 3rd paragraph, over and over and over. I hope you liked that book you searched for online because you will see ads for it all day using this app. Creepy, and unnecessary for a newspaper, especially one that writes article against "super cookies and advertising platforms". This is a paid subscription, not a free product. I expect no ads, or at the very least, less of them. I'm keeping my subscription to the best newspaper in the world, but i'm deleting this app and will read online, where I can block the ads and receive a much better reading experience, which of course is the point.