NPR One Reviews

by Ben_VZ

I love listening to NPR, but I really really detest NPROne. The design of NPROne is fine. My problem is that it is still so buggy and crash-prone even years after its introduction. There have been times—like this very moment—when I have to spend like 20 minutes closing and re-opening and restarting NPROne to get it to work and sometimes it still doesn’t work. At first, my love of NPR made me want to give NPROne the benefit of the doubt—maybe it wasn’t their app but my crappy phone that was the problem. For a long time I told myself that that was the real problem. But then one day, I bought a brand new phone, and I was sadly disappointed when NPROne ’s behavior failed to improve. NPROne has continued to regularly fail me for the past year that I’ve had this phone. I keep hoping it’s going to get better with some kind of update, but it hasn’t yet. I probably have 30-40 apps on my phone and this one of only two that consistently misbehaves like this. Please fix it. Please. I’ll change my tune and write a good review.

by CJ345820463aaw

I support NPR. But NPROne is so frustrating I'm wavering. Return after a long enough break, and one is given the option to "catch up" (meaning get the latest 3 minute news summary) or "resume" (meaning continue from where one left off). Often this just doesn't work, and trying to find the news summary any other way seems impossible. It's frustrating because it seems obvious that access to the latest news summary, when desired, is what most people would want. Second, after the summary, some stories run automatically, and while you can skip forward to the next, you can't skip backwards! (Got my hands full, missed some of that story that was just on, want to rewind, and... can't.) This smells of "we know what's best for the user" nannying. No! Please just give the users the obvious controls they might want. Finally, NPROne itself is labyrinthine and very confusing. There's no need for this. NPR, please get some app designers who know how to put the users first, instead of trying to handspoon them what they often don't want.

by Actually Weezy

Downloaded NPROne specifically to listen to Morning and Weekend Edition, as I am able to enjoy other NPR programs using podcasting apps. Unfortunately, there is no way to listen to the complete program in one go, due to it being cut into segments. I am forced to search for the program repeatedly to jump back in from where NPROne diverts to often unrelated content.

I do not understand the point of NPROne at all, unless the point is to keep the user interacting with it constantly to extract as much data from the user as possible. There are indeed listeners out there who don’t care what gets streamed at them, and aren’t concerned with feeding an algorithm their data. As far as NPROne goes, however, it would seem to require a lot of effort to end up with a reasonable result. There are many listeners like me, though, who want the news without having to submit to an algorithm’s whims. A shame that NPROne cannot provide a coherent listening experience that allows the user to be in control. The NPR One app functions like Pandora, and as such is effectively useless.

by Matt70lock

Not sure what happened with the most recent update to NPROne but 3 times in the last hour of listening to my podcast NPROne has (with my phone locked and sitting on my kitchen counter as I’m doing dishes) cutoff my podcast without rhyme or reason changing it to the news. This of course wipes the episode I was listening to from my recent list and also any progress in the podcast I then have to search for that podcast then try to find where it randomly cut off.

An added layer and further annoyance is that the news is of course 10x louder than the podcasts I actually care about so when NPROne randomly decides to start playing the news it blasts my speakers. This is incredibly obnoxious and if left unfixed I plan to uninstall and find a new place to listen to podcasts because it’s really obnoxious having to stop in the middle of what I’m doing pause NPROne so it’s no longer blasting my speaker then spend multiple minutes trying to locate the episode and time in the episode where NPROne cut to the news.

by Smcauley6

I like the option to save podcast episodes and news stories to “listen later” but NPROne buries that list at the very bottom of a scroll under the “explore” tab, not the “listen” tab, which is super unintuitive and hard to find. Then when you’re listening to an episode, the controls on the full screen view don’t give an option to advance by 15 or 30 seconds, just reverse. And if the phone is locked, the mini player on the Lock Screen doesn’t even give the reverse option. I need to unlock my phone and pull up NPROne every time I want to back it up 15 or 30 seconds to hear something I’ve missed. The mini player should give both the back up and advance options. I’m also frustrated by the fact that if I’m listening to a podcast from the Listen Later selection, then pause it for more than a minute, NPROne has forgotten what I was listening to, even though I didn’t close NPROne , and I have to find and re-select the episode, and it doesn’t remember where I stopped.

by Kdawggzzz

I listen to stories on the NPR One app every day, and really enjoy the ability to open NPROne at any hour and instantly hear the latest headlines. I also enjoy its unique blend of podcast/broadcast streaming.

That being said, there are a few things I'd really like to see in future updates. For one, I hope something can be done to cut down on the amount of battery power NPROne uses. Also, I would love the ability to add stories to an "up next" queue, and to create custom playlists of stories. It would also be nice to be able to download stories to listen when I'm offline. In addition, it would be great to add a button to scrub forward 15 seconds, not just back.

I think NPROne 's concept is really innovative, but it could benefit still from the functionality found on some other podcasting apps. Thanks for the consideration!

by 897adnDIazzz

Firstly, I love NPR and its content. I really enjoy the press play and automatically getting served a variety of stories, both news and podcasts. My problem is with some major app bugs.

My most major problem is if NPROne is not in the foreground and is paused, its very likely that that app will not resume what was previously playing, even if it was just paused for literally a few seconds. I then not only lost my place, but often I can’t find what I was listening to and NPROne moves on to another story. This is very frustrating and really ruins the experience. This especially is awful when I’m in the car and get a phone call, when the call is over, I know very likely I will not be able to resume what I was listening to. Other apps, whether podcast or music apps, do not seem to have this problem. If that main issue was fixed this would be a 4.5 star app for me.

by Motown08

I love NPR One and use it daily to catch up with over a dozen podcasts throughout the week, but I’m becoming increasingly aggravated by a consistent bug I’ve contacted super about twice to no avail. NPR One has a nasty habit of opening itself in the background and autoplaying when no such command is given over the past two years. It tends to also auto-open randomly when connecting to Apple CarPlay. Though most times this isn’t an issue, it has opened itself while on phone calls, while in meetings, and possibly worst of all, at 11:30 pm while I’ve been trying to go to sleep - no one wants a news update blasting in their ears from the darkness of their bedroom.

Support has only suggested deleting and downloading NPROne , which has not resolved the issue. Frustrating as this is, along with its incredible battery drain and data hogging, I love using NPROne since it’s a one-stop-shop for everything I love on public radio from around the world. Please fix this issue!

by BookWyrm67

For the most part this is a decent app, but I’ll tell you what I find beyond annoying. You’re listening to a story and in the middle of it. It’s a great story. You’re excited, enraptured, curious to see what’s going do you happen next. You pick up your phone, which you were listening on, and accidentally bump the forward button. The next thing you know, your story is gone. And there’s no way to return to it. True, they have a finished listening section. Unfortunately it’s filled with stories you were listening to last week and the month before, not stories that you were listening to recently. Aaaarrrrrggh!
Why can’t they have a back button? I don’t mean going 15 seconds back to listen to something you just missed, we’re going back to the store you were listening to.
So, until they fix this problem, I’m only gonna give them three stars for a halfway decent app.

by KFent1

A great app that fills a need I have on my commute. Previously I only listened occasionally on the radio but now I can more easily choose the segments I want to hear. Now I listen on my commute and even on weekends. Can’t go without. A few small things that could be improved..

• Returning to half-finished stories:
Often times I’ll be listening to the story in my car only to have to turn what I’m listening to off when I reach my location. The next morning I’ll jump in my car and want to hear Up First, but after I’d like to return to story I was listening the previous day. At this point I end up circulating various screens only to find the segment I was looking for 2min later which starts completely over.

• Referral/ad content:
During a story sometimes I’ll hear an ad for something I may be interested in. There’s been many times where I say: “Yeah that sounds cool”... but I’m in my car and the ad only plays for about 15s. For that can you add something like a sticky bar that stays up for 2 minutes? Or push a notification that when clicked adds that to your “Listen Later” queue?

• Taxonomies of news/feature segments:
Glad to see this section of NPR’s feature offering growing! I’d like to see this section be more targeted to my listening habits.

by Bmrie

Using the NPR1 app has become a part of my daily routine. I always start my morning with the Up First broadcast. I like how NPROne automatically moves between a myriad of shows, since I’m usually multi-tasking and rushing around while listening. However, I do wish it was easier to find which shows I recently listened to or which ads for new shows popped up while I was listening. The content is great, but this part isn’t very user-friendly. Sometimes I hear an ad for a new podcast and before I can process and “click on the screen to learn more,” it’s already gone. There have been many times when I’m driving, cooking, or just somehow disconnected from my phone that I miss a show I wanted to hear more about. Maybe a “recently played” or “recently suggested” would make this easier. When I’m not starting with the news, I tend to switch to other podcast platforms simply because I don’t know or can’t find what I want to listen to on NPR1 (though I know I would rather hear its content).

Other than that, I really appreciate the diversity. I don’t subscribe to one political party, so I’m always searching for a more balanced and empathetic coverage that fairly describes both views (even the view I disagree with). Though NPR can still lean more in one direction, it is the best I’ve found so far and I appreciate how the hosts usually refrain from emotional or opinionated responses. I’ll continue listening and using for a long time.

by Reviewer4296

NPROne is overall solid and listening is part of my daily routine, but there are a few bugs that don’t stop me from listening, but are an annoyance:

1. I wish NPROne would do a better job of remember where I leave off. I listen to longer shows like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me over the course of the week and since NPROne doesn’t do a good job of remembering my place, I’ve started taking screenshots of the time stamp before closing NPROne so I can start at the right place in the episode when I come back.

2. The show “This is Uncomfortable” is stuck in my list of followed shows in the explore tab. I didn’t followed that show and I don’t have the option to unfollow it like I do for other shows.

3. I can’t click the bottom option in a show’s episode list because it’s blocked by the play/audio bar at the bottom of the screen. This is especially noticeable for shows like “This is Dating” where the newest episodes are on the bottom of the page. Since I can’t click on new episodes from the show page because it’s blocked by the play/audio bar, I have to find the episode title and search for it in NPROne search bar to find and play the latest episode.

Overall, I enjoy using NPROne! These are just some minor bugs that are a bit of annoyance. Thank you!

by Techie Tucker

The mini player itself is great and pretty much the same format you would expect from any audio app on iOS. It’s not dark mode when you have it maximized but it’s close enough to not make much of a difference. The forward and back buttons are a great improvement. The main app is still going to blind you if you open NPROne at night but at least you can get it to something more reasonable by maximizing the player. Searching for recently missed shows on some of the podcasts with lots of shows is still a chore. When you go to the shows podcast page, they are still ordered from oldest to newest instead of the other way around like any other player would do which can mean scrolling through dozens of pages to get to a newer show for some of these podcasts. A sort button like most other apps use would go a long way to fixing this problem. Hopefully this update is and indicator that NPROne developer is listening and we don’t need to wait years for basic features after this. I do like NPR and NPROne is a significant improvement. A little more tweaking and it could be five stars.

by Slippery Pete

I understand the complaints of some other reviewers. If they are experiencing crashes or very high data usage then there is a problem. I haven’t experienced these problems.

I live overseas and miss NPR and NPROne is absolutely perfect for me. It’s like an intelligent radio station in that there is only some user control, and for the most part it will play what it plays, learning over time what kinds of programs you prefer.

If I wanted an NPR podcast portal this wouldn’t fit the bill. But what I want is an NPR radio station that allows some control but otherwise plays a mix of familiar and new content, with little to no interaction by me, and I love it. It plays and plays and plays while I work around the house or office, occasionally skipping a show here or there. Perfect. Bravo to the developers for delivering so well on a somewhat novel concept.

by FireDMG

I start every morning by listening to the national and regional newscast. It’s informative and only takes a few minutes, while staying objective to events that happened without inserting any political bias.

After that, I let let NPR autoplay through Morning Edition or the podcasts I follow from my previous and current local stations as I go about my morning.

My only gripe is that I wish their search and discoverability UX were more powerful and topic-specific so I could find similar or related podcasts from ones I already currently listen to. I’d also like to be able to more easily explore other city’s stations to see what shows are available in their region without having to guess their obscure/dated string of call letters (so maybe just a map where I could tap on a region and see what shows are popular/being listened to there).

Also, I know it’s not really meant for this but I wish I would be able to make my own playlists and add shows/episodes I find to them: “Shows that got me through 2020”, “BLM”, “Adulting 101”, etc.. The current Save For Later function is just a flat list of up to 20 episodes, but I try to use it for relevant shows I feel were largely representative of or impactful on the era they were released.

Love NPROne and all the great journalism and content by all these wonderful people.

by JJBL_mom_of_2

So I’ve heard the “npr one” commercial countless times while listening to some of the NPR podcasts during my drives, while i wash the dishes, at work.. etc & although I listened to the podcasts of shows i loved, I did miss actually listening on the radio (because I’m often out of range). I love that i can listen to my local station now with NPROne wherever I am (although... should their be a nostalgic section where you can listen through static? Literally the only thing ppl will still keep on through static & barely be able to make it out... bc it’s that good lol. That was my childhood riding in the backseat of the car, listening to static laden NPR programs my parents were playing.) Anyway— thank you for making NPROne so user friendly, personal, efficient, informative & esp. providing the little snippets of stories... love it!!!

by A_riverrat

My Radio went out in the truck awhile back and so I don’t have access to 90.1 so I tried out NPROne and I use it all the time. It’s great for local stories, connects to your local broadcast similar to how the radio method does, or I can use the explore option if I wanna find something specific or I can hit catch up and it plays up to date/recent stories and news coverage. I am constantly driving between towns no ones ever heard of in rural utah and it Connects/ works great- seriously have been impressed on the content and the functionality of it. So, thanks!
ps Make sure your phone is updated because there’s one review about it shorting out or bugging but I had that problem so tried installing belated updates cause I’m horrible at doing those on the smart phone and it’s worked great ever since, and the set up in car isn’t that great it’s an old Nissan pushing 300k Miles.

by Kneazl

I listen to NPROne every day. In the morning getting ready. When I’m making dinner at night. A lot of nights I even fall asleep to it. The rotation of stories is good and it does a good job of picking this based on what I like. I don’t use the search function a lot but I feel like that could be a smidgen better.

My only complaint, and tbh I don’t know if this is NPROne itself or my phone. There have been times when NPROne started out of nowhere even if it wasn’t previously launched. So I was in class or a meeting and all of a sudden “NEW ENGLAND PUBLIC RADIO IS RIGHT HERE. LIVE FROM NPR NEWS IN WASHINGTON IM JACK SPEER” now. Don’t get me wrong. Jack Speer’s voice could charm me down a live subway tunnel. But it was mildly embarrassing. So to fix it, I just turned of “auto play on launch” and that’s fixed it.

All in all 6/5 stars.

by Qncalifornia

It would be hypocritical of me to rate NPR1 anything less than 5 because even with its frustrating feature shortages, I listen round the clock. I get that the lack of controls/queue/15-sec-skip are to promote binging and “discovery” outside my usual subscriptions. If that’s the goal, then send me more variety in new/local/non-NPR shows. (Even add shows outside my lefty echo chamber :o). I’m over the fact that clicking “interesting” simply gets me more stories from that show or category rather than nuanced insightful predictions like Netflix (yo, non-profit budget).

Still, within the simple objectives of NPROne , there are some essential practical improvements. Many of us listen while driving/doing something else with hands and eyes. We can’t always share, rate or save before the story disappears, and the hmmm moment often comes at the end of an episode. We might not even see the name of the show that just ended so we can look it up. Please add the option to go back or at least see previously heard stories. We also wander away from our desks/attentiveness and want to know what we missed. I’ll put the rest of my suggestions in NPROne ’s suggestion box.

by Top Mojo

There’s a feature on your app I’m going to call it, “ Tap the screen now to hear more.” This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever encountered in my life. If I’m listening to a podcast you interrupted this I understand it’s no more than a commercial. But God for bid if I’m actually interested. To hear the stories I must be watching my phone at all times. It would be nice if you had a listen here button to show all the shows that you’ve advertise so people can see them. Other than that love NPROne . But to reiterate, you purposely make the top your things interesting good. No please give me time to tap on it. And I don’t mean just enough time to trip over the chair climb over the bed and try to get to my phone for it to disappear.

by Joayton87

NPROne itself is a nice idea but I can’t use it anymore as it’s an unbelievable data hog. I’ve listened to entire seasons of NPR podcasts, using about 500mgs total in the process- yet 30 minutes of using the NPR One app and it’s already sucked up 2GB?! I reset my cellular data counter on my iPhone and tested it again, after 25 minutes it used another 1.5GB. NPROne is either extremely poorly designed or had some major bugs.

Even worse it won’t remember where you are in a podcast. First it introduces you to new podcasts by starting with the latest episode, not at the beginning. Secondly, it won’t remember your place. I’ll pause a story, then when I come back to NPR one or hit unpause it starts anew with the latest headlines and there’s no way to know how far along you were in a story. So you have to skip around to find your place.

Please! Please add a rewind button! I miss shows that are offered because I can’t get my phone out of my pocket in time to tap the button.

by Dcdana

I LOVE NPR. But I really dislike NPROne. It’s soooo hard to navigate. I can’t find the shows I want or listen to them they way I want. I feel you keep forcing all you other shows down my throat & not giving me the opportunity to dive deeper into the shows I love & want to listen to. I keep deleting the ridiculous app. Then putting it back when you mess up my WONDERFUL, perfectly fine regular NPR app. Now I can’t fully listen to the shows I want there like morning editions a Saturday & Sunday. But I can’t easily find them &’once I do they don’t play the entire show as I would expect. I get sooo frustrated & now you lose a loyal listener to a program. Why are you doing this STOP, please STOP. I could add more to this list. But I’ll stop myself & see I f I can find the full show on regular Apple podcast or them just go to he internet & see if I can fully listen to the show. It really really really shouldn’t be this hard!!! Sorry Lulu another Sunday where I’ll miss the puzzler :(

by JamesTN865

NPROne started buggy, but I saw enough value from the personalized content feed to stick with it. As it got more stable was listening to it every day, and all day on weekends. I liked it so much that I programmed my favorite podcasts to stream through it, and spent a good amount of time rating content so it could learn my preferences, for example, science and astronomy. Things changed drastically after I started hearing more local station announcements. Suddenly it would get in endless loops saying “ and now for something from outside NPR” or it would not allow me to skip content that it had already forced me to listen to several times. I tried changing local stations in NPROne , and it helped for a while, but eventually it seemed to disregard all of my preferences and it was no better than listening to a live station stream. I gave up on NPROne realizing that I was missing favorite podcasts and NPR stories by relying it

by Austenfan80

I listen to NPR One all the time and love it, but like so many other reviewers here I wish the program worked better. It’ll sometimes randomly cut off bits of the program I’m listening to when it transitions between segments, and somehow it decided that I want to hear the podcast “Endless Thread” constantly. Worst of all is that it used to give me NYC news - my home station is set to WNYC - but in the last few months keeps switching to some local Michigan radio station called WEMU & giving me local news about the Huron and what’s happening in Ypsilanti and horrible neoliberal political commentary by someone named Alan Chartock, who should retire ASAP. It makes me grateful for the relative sophistication of WNYC content - sorry but it’s true - but drives me crazy bc I never want to hear that irrelevant claptrap again. I’ve contacted NPR One multiple times and none of their suggestions - like reinstalling - have helped. Aaaaaah!!