The Guardian Editions Reviews

by Drizzly Rain

This is a horrifyingly bad “update”. It may help with one hand scrolling on a phone but the tablet experience is awful. A drop down menu linking to particular sections would be useful instead of incessant scrolling to find a particular section also we have now lost links to other associated articles next to an article we are reading. The whole navigation of the paper is now needlessly complicated and I do not want a curated front page by your editors we should have ease of navigation led by our own curiosity. The last iteration was not great but this is by no means an improvement.

by Kgh85742

I am frustrated beyond words. I have been a Guardian customer for years, pay monthly. Suddenly the Guardian icon disappears when I click on it, or when I click on an article in my Guardian daily email. I just signed up again, and no luck. So...I’m getting double billed for no access!!! YOU HAVE A BUG IN YOUR SOFTWARE. Please fix it!

by Marklev

I have had nothing but problems with TheGuardianEditions. I used to subscribe and wanted to do so again. I download TheGuardianEditions , puchase a subscription through TheGuardianEditions Store, and simply cannot get TheGuardianEditions to let me see an issue. It knows I have a subscription but won't let me download an issue and never moves off the "you need to subscribe" screen. I have tried removing it and reloading it...oh, a dozen or so times. I go to the website and look for help and none of the email links for help work. I give up. Great newspaper...just wish I could read the bloody thing!

by M_J_S

I don't understand why there's so much more content available for free on the Guardian website which aren't available in TheGuardianEditions . It's hard to see it as anything other than contempt for the people who are actually paying for a subscription, since they get less than the people pay nothing and just go to the web site.

Also it's fine that apps develop over time and not everything anyone might like is there at the start. But it seems like the Guardian aren't actually trying to address anything, like add Retina support or adding any additional content.

I think these problems are a terrible shame for what was originally a great app and a genuinely original new media experience. It still could be great.

by Jje Mcm

This iteration of my beloved Guardian is the dogs breakfast. Large blocks of useless annoying color adorn the front page with little helpful text. The same holds true for the Sections. In an effort to look hip they have tarted up TheGuardianEditions with purples and blues and have ruined navigation.
Don't get me wrong the journalism is still the same and the offline reading is nice. Thats what gets it the two stars. But for an app that I would subscribe to regularly? Not with this poor example of polish.
The Giardian website is still faster, more up to date and easier to use.
Guardian take a tip from the news aggregators. Present the stories to me so I can make choices and not be assaulted by your ideas of a keel color palette.

by Pwlcfc

I paid for a subscription through Google and have the bill to prove it. I lost access shortly afterwards (I got a few weeks) was never able to log back in. Attempts to generate a new password always failed, I never received any communication. Tech support at the guardian were completely unhelpful and I was never able to solve the problem. I am glad the money went to a good cause but was astonished by the lack of access and support.

by John B 2018

Now when you scroll down, the article you happen to touch opens. Close it, try to scroll again, close the article you have inadvertently opened again. Eventually you get down the page but should it be this hard ? The grouping of articles and hiding them behind a plus sign seems to me just basic poor design, aren’t apps meant to be intuitive ? Finally, the download speed, always irritating, never improves. Approx 20 secs to update the nytimes (which does have its own issues). 10 mins on the same WiFi for the guardian daily. Excellent paper, bad app

by RoteoS

I can't be the only person who gets eye strain from trying to read the Guardian on my ipad can I? The major appeal of reading on a tablet is that, whether I'm on the tube or in bed, I can read without first having to fumble around trying to locate my reading glasses. Therefore, I cannot understand why TheGuardianEditions doesn't include a zoom feature for increasing the font size. Surely this should be standard on any reading app? This will be the 'deal breaker' for me if it's still not added by the time my subscription is due for renewal. Developers - please act quickly. Great newspaper, but without this feature, it's hard to read.

by Willett K

Guardian news coverage is excellent. Need to change overall front page ratio, smaller or fewer pictures, more text on what the story is about. Or, at least let user pick if the want more pictures or more text. Also, navigation is awkward. Both NY Times and Washington post get balance and navigation better.

Separate issue, why is "Guardian Editions" UK and Australia, and a separate App, "The Guardian" is needed for US coverage?

by Mario62

To the programmers: don’t you think your users might want to: print a story? Share a link? Bookmark a recipe?

by Watchful Fan

I read the Guardian every day - it's one my my three main sources of news. I really wanted to express my loyalty by subscribing on-line, instead of just going to their excellent website, but TheGuardianEditions is just so unsatisfying, that after a week I cancelled the subscription. TheGuardianEditions features large pictures and bars of color, but I can't really tell what the story is about from just the picture, and because the pictures are so large they consume a lot of the screen, so there is actually less usable information on each screen. It also makes me download each edition instead of just updating it, and it takes a long time (the pictures, I suppose). Navigation is harder than it has to be.

It's too bad. The New York Times really nailed how to be a world class newspaper with a App presence. I wish the Guardian had done so as well.

by Answers70

Okay, so TheGuardianEditions is quite cool and colorful (the hues are not totally to my taste either) and mercifully bug-free even in the 1.0 version which is no mean feat but my main gripe is the limited nature of the content. I understand that the Guardian have had to compromise between complete content versus push loading etc., but this is far too compromising. Good novelty app when free but doesn't replace print or website so why subscribe when the generous free trial ends?

by Anton Rang

I've been using the Guardian app on my iPhone for some time and have found it to be one of my two favorite news apps, in part because of the excellent tagging system which makes it easy to discover both new and archived content, and in part because of its flexible section/tag system.

TheGuardianEditions is missing both of those. It's a strange omission, since clearly the metadata is already available. There thus seems to be less content in TheGuardianEditions, and less discoverability, than the iPhone one.

I'm very pleased with the content, and am likely to purchase a subscription to support the paper, but I will be disappointed if the flexibility and marvelous archive which I've grown to love is not available here. For now, I've placed the iPhone app on my iPad next to this one.

P.S. An earlier review complained that there were no sample issues. There are—just past issues, rather than future ones.

by AdeleMajor

I'm surprised at the bad reviews of TheGuardianEditions. It's a great way to read the Guardian as opposed to the website - well designed and thought out for the iPad from scratch, rather than trying to replicate a newspaper experience.

Only complaint is the Observer doesn't seem bundled with the Guardian subscription, as this page would lead you to believe, and sometimes navigation is difficult. A few extra features like saving for later and/or better integration with Instapaper wouldn't go astray either. But they're nitpicks - TheGuardianEditions is great.

by Rain Brain

I finished the 81 day free trial two months ago, and still come back to TheGuardianEditions almost every day. It's perfect for the subway, because there's no need for an active internet connection.

Nonetheless, this is a smaller edited version of the print or online version. While the interface and portability are great, I've occasionally been on Facebook or Twitter and seen a friend post a great article from the guardian from sometime in the last week, only to find that although I had read all 6 iPad editions that week, had not seen the article.

While I was visiting London I bought the paper edition a few times to compare that day's content and the iPad content. The images and text flow much better in the paper edition, and with the online edition the comments are always entertaining. The in-app browser function could be improved too.

Nicest: paper edition
Fullest: online edition
Most portable: iPad edition

by Ssfandad

I have been using TheGuardianEditions for years and really like it but now they updated it and TheGuardianEditions Store subscription doesn’t work and I can’t use it at all. This despite me writing twice during the beta which I also couldn’t use because of this issue including an email just before the launch mentioning the same issue and now the actual new version of TheGuardianEditions is out it still doesn’t work!

by Eagun

There are so many really good things about TheGuardianEditions. It pushes the new edition every morning, so that I can read it even offline, the quality of the interface and the content are both superb, it comes with a free 3 month trial subscription, you can choose to update the edition later in the day when the evening print edition is published, it integrates sharing without being obtrusive. The Guardian app is the standard by which I measure all other newsstand publications, which means that the bar is set awfully high.

by HiThereYouPerson

This is probably the best app in the newsstand. It is formatted well, you can actually select text (it isn't just a huge image file) and now it has instapaper integration for some things (which is a nice way to save content rather than insisting we change our workflow and save things in TheGuardianEditions like every other newspaper app). Performance seems to have improved with this update too.

by Pdx_photoman

The Guardian app downloads the entire content of the web-based edition of The Guardian on a daily basis, rather than presenting an interface to an online edition. This means that you can take it with you, rather than needing a wifi connection to access it. In the event of updates, the entire issue is updated. This is a bit of a bother at times, but necessary to achieve the degree of portability.

Content is well organized on TheGuardianEditions and there are links to related content on the Guardian website, allowing you to delve deeper into a topic or explore its background.

Guardian journalism is first-rate, giving readers a view of the world available in no US daily publication, not even the NY Times. And the subscription price, through the ITunes store, is extremely reasonable.

by Radiophile

I like the way I can save my reading preferences that sorts them into categories in which I’m interested. TheGuardianEditions is very easy to navigate. It also eliminates the endless and annoying pop up advertisements that plague the NY Times app, which I stopped using because it was so awful.

by Peasandcarritd

Why are you charging for this?There any number of free news services that have better news hi-lights. Also there is no search ability

It’s very confusing I thought I was subscribing to the Guardian, TheGuardianEditions is news lite, I don’t need to be shown hilights.

Now I have get my subscription cancelled!!

by Cnewf

subscribe to the Guardian. but not because of the new app. replaces sections with endless scrolling down- just like reading on a computer!! so read it on your computer. they have wrecked the concept of TheGuardianEditions .

by Njdcampbell

I love the newspaper. I love the journalism. I even love the crossword. So, the 2 stars is posted in a fit of pique because I can’t believe that after all this time and effort they’ve spent prettifying TheGuardianEditions they haven’t sorted out the dismal functionality of the crossword. It can’t be that difficult to sort out and it’s not as if they haven’t been told.

by Old-wiz

Guardian re-organized TheGuardianEditions , but I would say they broke it. I enjoyed reading it to keep up, but now I am about ready to cancel it. It was working fine then they had to “improve” it. All I can say is BLAH!

by Ianmbelinos

Still a great read but the removal of the section navigation bar at the top of each page is a disaster. User interface design conventions point to "fewer clicks" for better navigation - this version now requires bringing up a drop down menu and clicking on a section to get there - takes longer and more clicks than swiping and scrolling along the navigation bar. It is like it has been designed for a regular web page rather than the IPad.

Please get with the program and bring back the navigation controls that are iPad oriented rather than conventional web controls.