Minuteman Reviews

This is a great idea but the apps freezes up when you’re trying to put in your library card number and passcode

I loved the old app. It wasn’t perfect but it was fast, intuitive, and gave me 90% of what I needed (maybe more). The new app is cumbersome to use and behaves more like a website than an app but slower and clunkier. I finally deleted Minuteman and bookmarked the website to my home page, and will continue to use that instead. Definitely not an improvement.

This version has so many glitches.
It loads in slow motion.
It doesn’t allow me to stay signed in, which means it slowly loads again every time I come back to its open tab.
It periodically shows my home library as the wrong branch.
I can’t find an advanced search.
Layout is harder to read and formatting is unsophisticated compared to the older app. It’s a little embarrassing that you have switched from an easy to use app to this clunky thing.

This is the perfect example of not adhering to the time honored adage “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. This was working just fine until you ‘fixed it’ (not!). Now it works for a few seconds and then the screen goes blank. It really deserves NO STARS.

App is slow and often crashes. I have to close out several times before it accurately shows my account. When I tried to renew, the alert that the book was on hold was very tiny. The old app was fine, so this was not needed, and this should have been tested with users before going public.

As usual with municipal projects, this “improved” app is worse in almost every way. The old app was simple, straightforward, easy to use, and well laid out for a mobile app with big easy buttons and menu screens.
This new abomination is like a bastard stepchild of a website and an app and not enjoyable to use. It’s slow and buggy, everything is tiny and hidden behind meaningless corporate buzzword tabs like “discover”. Do you need a degree to be this bad at menu design? Like from the same feeder school Netflix hires its designers? Why is the main screen pushing new titles at me? If I wanted to browse, I would WALK INTO THE LIBRARY. There’s a “hide” button, but it isn’t working for me.

Remember when Butterfinger changed its recipe and no longer tasted the same but tried to advertise as better? That’s what you’re getting here: icky crumbly imitation Butterfinger; killed the simple app that works for an ugly one that doesn’t. It saddens me this change is being forced on patrons. Remember the old adage, folks: if it ain’t broke…

I just downloaded Minuteman for the first time and it wouldn’t even open the first 15 times I tried, would just tell me service error. Now I’m trying to log in and I’m getting another error saying “unable to establish connection with library”. Doesn’t seem to be quite functional or reliable just yet unfortunately.

The old version of Minuteman was dated-looking but it was quite functional. The search function is completely broken now. I searched for a few books I had looked for previously but chosen not to check out, and suddenly there are no results. I tried searching the book I currently have checked out and also “no results.” The search function is the main reason why I use Minuteman, so until it’s fixed, this is a useless app.

The new app format seems great- but Minuteman doesn’t work. Especially after past update. It won’t even get me to the log in screen and always tells me there’s an error. Sometimes if you close and reopen Minuteman it works enough to let you log in but then you can’t really use any features within Minuteman . Also, it doesn’t keep you signed in or save your log in credentials so every time you have to manually input all your information. So until it’s fixed it’s just better to use the website.

Improvement in UI, but a key functionality is missing: in the old app when I see all the books that I checked out, I can see how many times I renewed them, so I can plan the return dates. I borrow many books for my kids and it’s very common to auto-renew them a couple times before we return. Now there is no way to find out how many times I renewed, and which books reached the maximum renewal times and I need to return by the due date. Please bring this functionality back and I will update my ratings!

Although the original app was dated looking, it worked perfectly. The new one has cool features (love that we’ll supposedly be able to do self-checkout with a phone) but absolutely doesn’t work. Takes forever to load and crashes constantly. Today it couldn’t find a book I wanted, either by using the title or the author (both entered correctly) even though I was able to locate it quickly by searching the catalog through the web browser. I’m so annoyed I deleted the original app.

The developer/library system made a mistake in the browse aspect of the new app. Agreed it’s annoying that it’s preloaded with all the selections. And now it’s slow to load whenever you want to just check a book out. Even after unchecking all the browse selections.

A major downgrade from the previous app. Slow to open. Mobile checkout is terrible and way more clicks than before. Very sad that this is the required update.

The way the last app was literally unusable (crashed every time I opened it) yet somehow this brand new app is only SLIGHTLY better

App closes when I first click on holds. Need to reopen app, which as others stated takes time to reload. Today 3 items I have checked out were indicated by number but link for the list showed I had no items checked out. I like the landscape layout, long overdue. Fix the bugs and this is a great improvement over the old app..

Advanced search; hours & locations; Contact Us.
Also, the defaut seems to be to have ALL of the browse categories selected. They have to be de-selected one by one. Tedious!

The updated layout is nice, especially because My Account includes Libby holds and checkouts in addition to traditional books. Also it’s much easier to search and drill down on books. But Minuteman is very slow to open - can take 30 seconds to a minute after launching. Whatever is loading that ties it up I’m sure I don’t need to see. Sometimes when opening book details, the screen goes all white with no navigation, so I have to force-close it and reopen. Fix these two bugs and the rating goes up.

This new version now works on my iPhone 15 Pro screen but it still takes 12 to 15 seconds to load tells me it’s loading slowly and I get a quote about the library of Alexandria that I could care less about. I just want to get in and get my barcode scan my books and get out that’s the prime function I think for most people on Minuteman. And that should be what the programming is targeted at. A secondary function used less often is to perhaps go and look for a book to get although I prefer to do that on the PC. I think this is an example where Minuteman has not been focused on needs based but just bloatware

Aesthetically a better and more functional app. Lots of network connection issues and overall Minuteman is much slower

Rollout of Minuteman was tricky. Old one just stopped working but no message in app indicated why. New app can’t co-exist with the old one.