Seattle Times Mobile Reviews

SeattleTimes and its stability is pretty great, but the way they go about the articles feels a little cheap and unbecoming of the Seattle Times. I understand having to pay a subscription fee, and that’s not my beef with SeattleTimes . My beef is the way they push notifications to your phone that seemingly have a full story, but then you click to open the story using one of your sixteen articles for the month just to find out the story is 1-2 paragraphs long. In fact, 1 out of every 4 articles or so is like this, and as a result makes SeattleTimes feel cheap and like a money grab, especially when they’re constantly reminding you of how many you’ve read that month and then pushing you to subscribe.

I enjoy a relevant, quality news organization as much as anyone, and understand the need to pay for news, but I think the non-subscription method could be fixed in order to draw in more people, people who would actually pay for the subscription at some point in time if it weren’t for the cheap, tacky feel SeattleTimes gives off.

SeattleTimes is only ok for reading the latest news, but I'm disappointed that content I receive for my paid subscription is the same as the free app. I even called your office to assist me in reinstalling SeattleTimes because all I get is an abbreviated version of the print paper. We were loyal subscribers to the print paper for 20 years and wanted to continue our subscription when we moved to Oregon, but the cost was prohibitive, so we settled for paying for the online subscription.

If you're going to offer a paid online subscription, I would like to see SeattleTimes offer the same content since I only read the news on the go and don't have time to sit at my computer. I miss my comics and gardening sections! I'd like to see a search feature too.

Please offer your paid subscribers a way to get more content. Otherwise, I don't see any benefit to paying for the subscription.

Hey Seattle Times I love your paper. I pay for a subscription but SeattleTimes is really below the line and stinks in so many ways..

1 THERE IS NO SEARCH . Want to find related articles or something you have read in the past? Nope can’t find it because there is no search bar.

2 LINKING FORCES you into the web browser. Really ? Dang well what’s the point of having an app ?

3. MISSING SECTIONS of the physical newspaper. Again really who designed SeattleTimes? I thought I paid to see the entire paper.

4. STOPPING MID-ARTICLE. What ?Why ?

5. NOT UPDATED often enough. It’s only seems to occur when forced by a new release of operating system.

I know there are many other frustrated readers. Yes, the internet destroyed so many newspapers Seattle Times YOU ARE DRIVING AWAY INTERESTED PAYING USERS?

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE a fix SeattleTimes and put in new features.

The Seattle Times lets you access there main page but after only a couple times that you read an article they want you to spend money to join. No other national news apps require this and when I checked further there are hundreds of other cities that do not require this monetary requirement. I feel that this should be free to the general public. The Times makes enough on advertising and other monetary ventures. Most people do not have the ability to pay and keeping news from the public is not good. I can view all of there national news content on other news network internet apps for free. I can read Seattle news on one of the news networks apps for free. So why bother to read the Seattle Times? More over why should I be made to pay for this news outlet, when KIRO 7 and KOMO both provide free news. Get with it Seattle Times and help the public by providing free access to current news!

The Times app does allow you to read news. But it lacks some features of other news apps.

•lacks the ability to direct clicks to Times stories that are emailed to SeattleTimes rather than a web page
•lacks the ability to mark stories to a “read later” or favorite queue.

I have the Times email me top stories. When I click the story, it sends me to a web page even though SeattleTimes is installed. SeattleTimes should allow me to designate in a setting whether I want to read stories I click on the web or SeattleTimes . And if I designate SeattleTimes , then it should automatically route my click to launch SeattleTimes and open the story.

It also desperately needs the ability to mark a story for reading later. Compare Apple’s News app. When apple news sends me a notification of a story I’m interested in, directly from the notification I can mark a story to be read later if I do not immediately have time. SeattleTimes does not do that.

Also, when in a story, I should be able to favorite it and/or add it to a list of stories to read later.

If they add these two features, as a subscriber, I would be eternally grateful and able to give a 5-star rating.

The Seattle Times has had great, informative coverage of virus information during the pandemic. The appearance of SeattleTimes is good and I find it easy to use, but one massive problem is that links clicked within SeattleTimes open in a browser. Links should open in SeattleTimes ! Any user who frequently clears data like cookies from their browser is equally frequently nagged to log in, and it’s so annoying. Just open in SeattleTimes , where users are logged in.

I am a paid subscriber, by the way, and this is an affordable subscription for excellent local reporting. If you’re whining that it’s not free, please buy a subscription. You don’t get to walk up to a newsstand, grab a paper, and leave without paying, either.

Thank you Seattle Times for today’s much needed update, especially that it now includes screen optimization for the iPhone X. I would like to make just one suggestion regarding the layout though. Please make the top section more translucent (get rid of the top border section). That way as you scroll down you can still see the article and pages while still seeing it as it goes behind the iPhone indicators (clock, location, signal strength & battery indicators. A great example of this is the revamped CBS News app. This in my opinion is currently the best optimized app for the iPhone X screen. You’re almost there Seattle Times. Thank you and keep up the great improvements!

SeattleTimes works well but not all of the Seattle Times content is directly accessible via SeattleTimes .

In some cases SeattleTimes provides just the start of the content and then references you to the full article and this is just a web link.

The Seattle Times web site viewed with a mobile web browser is horrific and consistently crashes. Current versions of Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox all report problems with various versions of iPhones on current OSes. If the mobile web page doesn’t fail it will only partially load or repeatedly crash and reload. Best case scenario is the page loads and the ads constantly change size and you read a moving target; that really is the best case. Non-mobile versions of the web page are much better and work for the most part.

You may never be able to cancel your subscription or grow old trying. It is routed through a “Developing” nation. They will intentionally not cancel your account multiple times trying to keep you subscribed and continue to draft payments (they must have learned some tricks while writing pieces on shady corporations that employ tricks like this). How would anyone ever believe a word written in this publication when their transparency of cancellation is completely absent. Shame on The Seattle Times being the news people in the Northwest receive about this amazing world. Seems to be a common trend at the Seattle Times, saber rattle about in-equalities and corporate boogeymen and then have a complete criminal cancelation policy to extort subscribers.

My family lives in Bellevue. Generally when I land at Seatec it’s a quick ride to the Factoria exit,and then the thrill of pulling into their driveway. We easily flow and start our reunion and visit.
This grandmother has to wait for hugs and her Girl Scout cookies. I love your newspaper. Here in New York, I get a flavor of my family’s hometown. The photos and reporting keep me connected. Until Kennedy and Seatec reconnect, I’m grateful, every day for your quality coverage of the day’s’ events.
Joni Brenner
Huntington New York.

Slow to load, hard to navigate, and not enjoyable to use.

I often get the impression that your Web developers do not actually use the apps you create; pages often do not load completely whether on fast Wi-Fi or my cell network. The big ads you have in the middle of many of your articles are easily mis-clicked and then I’m taken away to some ridiculous add that has nothing to do with anything I’m interested in which I find to be slightly obnoxious because I pay for the honor to use the Seattle Times app via a subscription so I don’t understand why I need to be bombarded with more ads.

Overall decent content. Don't like that I can only read a few ads online before getting blocked. You need to have advertisers fund the option of online viewing vs having customers pay.

As an FYI, the way around....I now click on your app icon, when I see an article that looks interesting, I go to google and type in your headlines...read your article in google, get what I need, and it's great- but you sent me somewhere else. If you didn't limit how many articles one could read on your ap, and not make the pay, yet charged advertisers... news "papers" might not be in the positions they're in. You're behind the times.

This is literally the first app that I go to when I wake up in the morning, and I use it every day. Overall I like it, but it’s got a persistent bug that doesn’t happen with any of my other news apps. When I’m reading a news story, and I try to scroll down, many times the news story closes and I’m taken back to the main screen. There’s some bug with the scrolling function that treats it like a back button. I consciously try to avoid it, but it still happens all the time.

The Seattle Times app is a poor clone of the website. Most of the content is the same, but SeattleTimes has functionality problems. For example, I’ve found that some articles are cut off prematurely and that it is way too easy to exit out of an article I’m reading. Once you swipe right out of an article, you have to start the article over.

You also can’t see comments on the article from SeattleTimes . I really want to like SeattleTimes , but I’m better off reading the mobile site rather than dealing with the infuriating app.

This is a MAJOR flaw. The font on the articles in the iPhone app is very small. iPhone has a setting called dynamic font. It means apps should use the font setting from there - especially a reading app.
I am questioning my entire reason to subscribe to the electronics/mobile newspaper.
Content that I see on Seattle Times Facebook is not on SeattleTimes .
Breaking news is updated after every other newspaper has already reported on it. I get this is local to Seattle, but still - I have turned off alerts for news due to that.
Finally - if I see an article on Seattle Times Facebook and want to read it in SeattleTimes, I cannot because I can’t find it. And there is not search button.
This means even as a paying customer, unless Facebook tells me, I’m only reading a few curated articles using SeattleTimes.

As a 19 year subscriber, I have seen a significant deterioration in the content and objectivity of the paper. The news section is a cut and paste essentially from The NY Times, Wash Post, and LA Times. I choose to read the news and make my own conclusion, not have the paper’s agenda strewn throughout each article. We aren’t stupid out here but the paper treats us that way. The Local news and Sports sections are ok but I can get that news online. The saddest part is when the editor uses a full page to pat himself on the back for winning the state-level print awards against such tough competition as the papers in smaller cities across the state. And the price for this keeps increasing.

Pulitzer Prize winning writers, Nina Shapiro, for one on complex stories, her spouse, Dominic Gates cracking Boeing scams 737Max and many other stumbles, one too many advice columnists having to read both, good comics which should be in color like the LA Times and include Sherman”s Lagoon, not just on line. Perfect local and national coverage, concise along with just two brief sections, News and Sports, quick easy read, great Blethan Family paper that beat out Hearst’s PI. OK, remember, Sherman’s Lagoon, icomics in color, perfect.

Kate Steinle verdict @ 6:00pm, Seattle Sounders final score @ 8:00. News next morning? Sounders game win! Steinle verdict no mention!!! Really? Not even manslaughter and you think not worth reporting?
Don’t sell yourselves down the tube. You must see beyond your bias. We are not racists to see the injustice in the verdict and yet you don’t even report on it until 2 days later!! Really?! Important verdict but you stuff the reporting! How can we trust your reporting the news when you avoid timely reporting on issues that your customers might agree or disagree with.
Your job is to report the news irrespective of the underlying bias you may have. Otherwise you become a “rag”!
U r better than this!

I have edited SeattleTimes Store review several times over the years. SeattleTimes is much improved, with fewer intrusive ads. It’s still a bit buggy and fails when other news apps I use don’t do this.

However, I want to support my local newspaper and now I’m rating SeattleTimes a 5 star for effort and continued improvement.

I was recently advised the number of articles I could access would be limited just like it has been on the paper's regular website for sometime. So, I held my nose and paid for SeattleTimes ...about $10 per month through the Apple Store. But, this makes me a subscriber only on SeattleTimes . I am still persona non grata on the website. $10 is a lot for a poorly written and worse designed app. I moved away from Seattle years ago and only want a way to check in on the sports teams. I'm looking for another source.

Bottom line: in Seattle 2020, your app shouldn’t be an afterthought or an add-on to your paper delivery service. It needs to showcase your quality journalism and draw in users who will never buy a paper copy of the Times. It is currently a shadow of what it could be.

I am a paid subscriber through SeattleTimes . I would like SeattleTimes to do a better job of representing a full local newspaper experience. Currently the main page highlights a small list of articles - they aren’t sorted by section, and it’s unclear how those particular articles are selected. I often find out later about articles that would have interested me (but I didn’t see them on SeattleTimes ). Similarly, why can’t I read comments? In local politics, it’s sometimes interesting to see how the comments are trending. And you are the news source where I can find out about local events and controversies. But to read comments I have to leave SeattleTimes . That’s silly - you are providing less content for paid subscribers than you provide on the free web, and you are missing an opportunity to connect with the people who actually pay to have an app just for the Seattle Times. These are just a couple of examples.

Please consider treating your app as an independent source of readers and loyalty that could strengthen both your brand and your finances. This is a tech city now. Become a tech-savvy news source.

Thank you.

I originally began the online mode when I had a difficult time getting home delivery to a new address after thirty years of delivery at the old address. Very quickly, I appreciated the convenience and mobility and no mess aspect of the online edition. Physically, it is much easier to hold an iPad in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, than a newspaper with both hands. Online has been to both coasts and Hawaii. If our resting place has no WiFi, which is rare, a local bar can be used to download the news faster than I can finish a beer....well maybe. My recycle bin is less full and I will never have to walk up the driveway to grab a wet paper again. I am in my early 70s and as my visual acuity wanes I can easily make the print larger...Kurt

As a paid subscriber to half a dozen newspapers, including the Seattle Times, I will say the Seattle Times app is easily the worst newspaper app I have encountered. Simply a horrible user experience in every way.

App content appears to update only sporadically with articles failing to appear even several hours after they have been posted elsewhere online. The organization of articles by subject area is inconsistent, at best. Articles also are not sorted by time/date, making it harder still to find what you are looking for. These problems would not be as annoying if there were a simple search function, but of course SeattleTimes does not have one.