ABC News: Live & Breaking News Reviews

I had to delete ABCNews because there’s an extremely bizarre glitch it’s been having lately: it starts playing audio of a news feed, while ABCNews is closed. And it’s nearly impossible to turn off. It actually drained my battery and used God only knows how much data because it was doing it for hours once before I finally realized it (my phone was on silent so I couldn’t actually hear it). It happens at least a couple of times a week. I like the news updates, and I feel ABC is better with doing updates than Fox or CNN or anyone else, and ABCNews looks nice enough, but this has caused me to delete it. If it can turn itself on without me doing it, what else can it do without my knowledge? With recent security and privacy concerns about Iphones, it does make me wonder.

I hope the people behind ABCNews see this and make a fix for it because it’s getting kind of annoying and makes me want to just delete ABCNews all together. When I have ABCNews closed and go to turn my volume up or down (when I’m listening to music or watching a video on another app) all of a sudden ‘ABC NEWS LIVE’ will start to play in the background without me even having ABCNews open. It keeps going until I actually OPEN ABCNews and FORCE it to shut off but closing ABCNews . It’s the strangest thing and it’s just getting annoying so I’m hoping y’all come up with a solution but I don’t think I’m the only one.

Infrequently (but multiple times since I downloaded ABCNews ) I will turn up the volume of my phone and randomly hear someone talking. Despite ABCNews having not even been opened (yes, I checked), ABC News for some reason starts streaming the audio of some current event. This morning it was Mitch McConnell. I never know how long it’s been going on, but a quick check of my data usage shows that ABCNews has been eating up my data in order to spontaneously stream this audio that I didn’t tell it to. The only way to get it to stop is to actually open the ABC News app then close it again.
I can’t afford the data loss, so finally made the decision to delete ABCNews . Now to find a replacement...

I really do love ABCNews and would definitely rate it 5 stars for the easy navigation, favorites tab, and how it keeps up with my interests but I can’t. The one single downside to ABCNews is that it plays videos whenever my phone connects to Bluetooth audio and also randomly sometimes. It’s extremely frustrating since I spend a lot of time in my car and my Bluetooth takes a minute to sync with my phone. Every single time I have to pull over and shut off the ABC News app that video that I wasn’t even watching in the first place. If this didn’t happen ABCNews would completely be 5 stars.

The headline font size is too small. Too much clickbait. Some special interest stories are buried within the clickbait. The clickable images for the news often doesn’t match the information given. Maybe I need to pay to get better service? I understand organizations need to make money, but all the nickel and dime news information should be accessible to all. It’s too much with so many underemployed or unemployed to get up to date and accurate necessary information about their neighborhoods, community, country, and world.

This needs to be fixed. While in ABCNews , when you click on a listed article, ABCNews just shuts down for whatever reason. This is becoming super annoying. Also, I know it’s something with ABCNews because I just did an update. Example, the article about Regina King 26 yr old son passing. When I attempt to read the article, ABCNews shuts down. I actually have to Google the article in order to read it as the it will not allow you to read the article. App just shuts down. This has happen with several other articles but this last time was just so frustrating, I had to post a comment in hopes this can be fixed ASAP.

I like ABCNews overall, it provides a good source of news information both in written form and in news videos.

But, I get news headlines popping up in notifications all the time and whenever I tap one because I want more information, it always just takes me to the main “Top Stories” page, and sometimes I can’t even find the article that I tapped on a notification for.

It’s very frustrating that a notification will draw my interest, but then I can’t get the information I want to see.

Just downloaded ABCNews to watch the Mary Trump/ George Stephanopolis interview. Found the interview in search and I still haven’t seen it. One commercial of 30 seconds first then the interview? No. It’s either frozen or damaged I see Mary’s face appear but immediately another 30 second commercial plays again, so I wait again. The ad is over Mary’s face appears frozen. Then another 30 second commercial comes on. I wait, Mary’s face... another commercial ...Mary’s face... another commercial. I saw 6 commercials and not one second of the video I came here for.

I know ABCNews makes their money on commercials but this is ridiculous.

Goodbye ABC NEWS APP back to NBC NEWS App once again.

To be sure, a majority of what is presented by ABC on ABCNews isn’t news, rather it is political propaganda designed to discredit those with whom they disagree—generally conservative voices—while promoting the political views and viewpoints of those with whom they agree—generally liberal and progressive voices. Take the so-called Steele Dossier, which has largely been discredited and disproven. Even so, ABC Propaganda sought to build up Christopher Steele and his political hit-piece paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC with a softball interview with former DNC hack George Stephanopoulos. The ‘reporting’ is generally one-sided and lacking the balance one would hope for when looking for news. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat—I’m a political skeptic—and ABC News helped cement my position as such.

ABCNews doesn’t work half the time. I can’t get the news to play, and sometimes it’s because of the ads lagging to load. Other times, it doesn’t matter how long you wait, it just won’t play the news segment at all. It’s gotten worse since ABCNews added ads before each segment. I like ABC news, but ABCNews is the worst! I’ll likely use other apps for news if it doesn’t improve with the next update. The order of segments for longer shows, like 20/20 make it impossible to watch, because you have to scroll down to segment 1 of 11 and by the time you get there, it’s frozen up because it can’t handle not playing all the ads. Pretty much useless. FIX YOUR APP, ABC NEWS!!!

Dear Disney, please have anyone who is human test ABCNews before releasing it again, it is unusable, full of defects, and a completely awful user experience. Dear devs, ABCNews should not reset when the next story is playing and jump back to the first story, the ads should not continue playing while the news is playing, ABCNews should not spin not knowing what to do. I have to reset ABCNews every day to make it even pickup the latest stories. ABC news is struggling to be relevant against many news apps that just work. Nuff said, good luck turning this ship around, I’ll check back in 6 months - but for now, good riddance.

I got home from work at 1:30 EST and I wanted an update on the storm in NOLA. I found nothing on my AppleTV weather apps. I went to my news apps and opened the ABC app. Even though I didn’t find any current information, I found something even better!

The option to have the split screen is phenomenal!!! On top of that, there are multiple cams that I can select on my split screen. This is why I cue up David Muir when I get out of work! this app is awesome and ABCNews is even better!

The AppleTV app people should be ashamed of themselves. Seriously - Ads now play first before you even watch anything, the only streaming media service in existence that doesn’t have countdown timer for ads that play, the ads aren’t even watchable in the blocky standard def format (how is it possible advertisers pay you for this?), this isn’t live news so stop acting like schmucks hijacking what people are trying to see, it takes twice as long to deal with this horrible experience…newsflash - maybe it’s time to get on board with the rest of the world and not show 2minute ads in this format…before anyone has watched anything. I’m deleting it, nice job

I have been watching this ABC News app daily for years. And I just switched to NBC because of whatever changes were made in the way it is viewed on my iPad. Now when I open I only see the streaming pod cast...not the breaking news with scrolling updates of other news and GMA news. It has been like this for about a month...I kept hoping it would change back...and it hasn’t and I can’t see the option anywhere to make that change. So...NBC news app it is. And I’m sorry...I have never written a poor review for anything like this..that’s how disappointed I am.

Seemed to be causing some issues. Sometimes after I get an ABC News notification, my phone won’t go to sleep. (ABC News app isn’t even running!) I have to restart my phone to get it to sleep again. A few other times, the ABC News audio will start playing and I can’t get it to stop. ABC News app isn’t even running, but the news audio is playing somehow. I go to my music and play a song to get the ABC news audio to stop. This happened the other night when I woke up and picked up the phone. Maybe hit one of the side buttons.

This is still my go to news app, but parts of it are very frustrating. Some of the news items are from LAST YEAR. Writing this on Aug. 31, 2019. On the bottom of the U.S. news feed, I see photos of the Hawaiian volcano from June 2018 and stories about cookies from December 2018.

Some stories are only available via video, and I much prefer to read the text. And stories are frequently miscategorized. Mattis saying the U.S. is at a breaking point is sadly NOT entertainment, despite showing up in the entertainment feed.

Fix the bugs!

ABC NEWS is great, but ABCNews randomly starts playing audio when it is not open and my iPhone is locked. Apparently I’m not the only one with this problem, as googling turned up this review from a year ago, which describes the problem:

“I had to delete ABCNews because there’s an extremely bizarre glitch it’s been having lately: it starts playing audio of a news feed, while ABCNews is closed. And it’s nearly impossible to turn off. It actually drained my battery and used God only knows how much data because it was doing it for hours once before I finally realized it (my phone was on silent so I couldn’t actually hear it). It happens at least a couple of times a week.”

I deleted ABCNews a few months ago, then re-installed, thinking surely they had fixed the problem, but no. So I’ll delete it again.

I have lots of news apps on my iPhone, including CBS NEWS and NBC NEWS. None of the others have this problem.

There is a frightening glitch with ABCNews where it will start playing audio on its own and cannot be stopped. It would start at any given moment and would say some terrifying things and really made me think my phone was hacked or possessed because it was never clear it was a news story...it would just be a narrator preaching, often about the word of God. It was after the 4th time when I heard the words “abc news” in its speech that I finally deleted ABCNews . Be warned, you will think your phone has been taken over. It’s a real shame too since it’s one of the only trustworthy news sources.

ABCNews is OK but could have so much more potential if it didn’t crash all the time and give me glitch messages about how the network was not working even though I have strong Wi-Fi and cellular. I like that I can at least get push notifications about stories and certain topics I care about, as well as breaking news. Please fix the homepage so I can read stories that are posted because every time I try to click on one it doesn’t open and gives me error message.

Very frustrating bug seems to have existed for over a year according to other reviews.

Out of nowhere it started playing audio on my phone. I haven’t used ABCNews in ages on the phone, so thought it was the Apple Watch triggered it somehow. Killed the abc watch app and that didn’t stop the abc news audio from streaming on my phone, even when I locked the iPhone. The. I Killed all apps on the iPhone and that didn’t stop the abc news streaming audio from playing on my phone. Rebooted phone to stop the abc news audio.

This has always been my fav. News app, but now I’m looking for a different one. Even if my phones on SILENT the ads still play at full volume and won’t be silenced no matter how many times you hit the speaker icon. I understand the need for advertising but I can’t have my phone bursting out in noise very time I try to read an article.
That on top of having to watch a video commercial before EVERY news video and sometimes they’re a full minute long, is so frustrating. Previously, I knew I could expect a video commercial before every other video, which I was willing to do because they were at max 30 secs long. But now more often than not, I end up not even getting to the news video because of the commercials or because as I scroll down the article it flips me back to the headlines at which point I’d have to rewatch the commercial in order to view the news video.
So frustrated and so disappointed. Bummed to have to find a new news source.

I tend to hold my iPad with my left hand in landscape mode and I don’t always want to scroll with my right hand in the middle of the display... most of the time I want to use my left thumb to scroll through an article that I’m reading. This is impossible with this new app. The navigation area of an article has such large left and right margins that it makes it impossible to navigate with my left thumb while holding my iPad... otherwise, I like the search and targeting News features. I find those very useful. If you could fix the navigation issue, I’d give more stars. I see where people have complained about ads... those are part of the experience in any free content... so they are to be expected. It would be nice to allow us to skip an Ad after so many seconds. Thanks for reading this review.

First of all-you should’ve sent us (iPad Pro users) a push message for an update app. The previous app started getting sluggish & slow for things to open up for months. I just quit using ABCNews . I finally deleted ABCNews and went to ABCNews Store and downloaded the new one. I don’t like the optics and don’t like the layout of the NEW app. The old one was much better. It functioned & worked better. You could surf better. The optics, the format, was better then this NEW app. Plus there are several things missing on this New app that are not on the old one. I’ll probably just use it less. Depend on it less.

BILL, Country Club Park, California (A part of LA bouldering Hancock Park-home of LA city Mayor Garcetti)

I really appreciate the live coverage (especially minus the chatter of commentators). The comment thread allowed people to comment as they got news from various stations around the world.

I didn’t care for the reporter going into a cave to show us what it was like (similar to reporters standing in the middle of a hurricane or icy bridge to show the conditions)! This is unnecessary and could have potentially diverted rescuers from their mission if something unexpected had happened to him.

I much preferred to wait for the cameras from the head cams of the Navy Seals.

News coverage has been sparse and spotty on the MSM channels.

Your camera coverage has been outstanding and I appreciate seeing events unfolding on the scene rather than listening to the regular “star” reporters telling us about it as they sit around a table giving us canned news and constant coverage of 45 wrecking our nation.

ABCNews provides instant access to the global resources of ABC News with breaking headlines, morning rundowns, nightly recaps, and well-written, quality stories. You can filter news based on your interests if you wish, and you can set up notifications to reflect those interests. I open ABCNews multiple times and a day, and I enjoy the feeling of connectedness with the news it gives me!

The display keeps tilting to the far left when I open ABCNews for some reason. Booming economy in the U.S., ninety percent of illegal opioids and other drugs still coming across the open southern border, yet neither of these stories get any news coverage. Guess I should quit working and get a free Bama phone. Then ABCNews would prolly work better.

The updated app doesn’t have the ability to set a local weather for a particular location such as Miami for example. Other then that ABCNews does what the old app did with a few more features. The old app was just fine. It does however use a large amount of data which needs correcting. I just wish it would be corrected soon. The old app was much better than this one. I will continue to use the old one. Also this update is much bigger than this one.

The current incarnation has invasive video ads mid article that auto play with the sound ON! The sound doesn’t turn off even when you click on the mute link or if the sound link is already muted. The videos play even if you have auto play toggled off in the settings. So you are forced to watch the whole video, with the sound on, even if you are only reading the article. So everyone around you, in the library, in the coffee shop, in bed still asleep next to you early in morning are all disturbed by the sound of these annoying ads.