Review Insights · Google Play
Blue Iris
Perspective Software · 2,768 ratings · ★ 2.5
2.5
★★★★★
2,768 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 73 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"notifications"
17 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "no notifications and cannot play videos" - Patrik Ugrin
2
"work"
11 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
3
"works"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Paid for an app which is most of the time not working. It's better to use the BI ip address in your browser. In chrome you can make a download for easy use. Works better and faster." - Casper Hanselaar
4
"camera"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The functionality of this app compared to almost every other free camera app you can download from the ones who harvest your data is awful especially considering that it costs $10. when this is the thing that I suggest to my clients when th…" - Michael Scalera
5
"years"
9 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
6
"blue"
9 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
7
"iris"
9 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
8
"blue iris"
9 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
9
"update"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have had this for 7 years or so and disappointed that there is no update to this app. I don't understand why my other detection apps work flawlessly and I don't have to pay as much as to have Blue Iris and those apps have improvements." - Hina Chow (Hina Chow)
10
"better"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Paid for an app which is most of the time not working. It's better to use the BI ip address in your browser. In chrome you can make a download for easy use. Works better and faster." - Casper Hanselaar
11
"doesn"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Please make the app re-initialize when resuming from being in the background. having to close and reopen it every time you get an alert just to view the alert doesn't provide a great experience." - Kevin Hull
12
"since"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Old interface but works but with some bugs. Since August, there is no notifications on the phone and that is really a problem for a surveillance software. Maybe the time has come to look for an alternative?" - Roine Stenberg
📋 All 73 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Paid for an app which is most of the time not working. It's better to use the BI ip address in your browser. In chrome you can make a download for easy use. Works better and faster.
This application never receives updates. The interface looks and feels like something straight out of the 90s - outdated design, clunky navigation, and far from user-friendly.
Hands down the beat scalable DVR home/business security CCTV system for the cost. ROI is in minutes. I last reviewed this 11 years ago. now in 2026, this app is lacking basic features like displaying live video. submitted a ticket to see what can be done, the app is completely unusable right now.
does not work to connect to Blue Iris 6 with self signed SSL cert from Blue Iris itself
crashes endlessly. no fix. reading the reviews likely never planning to fix the app. sad considering. Web ui works fine though. just annoying.
The functionality of this app compared to almost every other free camera app you can download from the ones who harvest your data is awful especially considering that it costs $10. when this is the thing that I suggest to my clients when they want cameras installed and I get CONSTANT questions about how to do x or y which are very basic tasks and are not intuitive by any means it is very frustrating. in addition to all of that the app is not consistent across Android and Appl, please do better
blue iris sucks the app regularly crashes and has to have the data cleared weekly! email servers don't work. alert images never come in. techs probably look in the forums just to get you the wrong answer!
App is so basic and weak compared to the desktop version
Blue Iris is circling the drain. The Android app gets more and more unreliable as time goes on, and the video rendering is even worse. It's been 4 years; let's fix this, or time to move on.
Please make the app re-initialize when resuming from being in the background. having to close and reopen it every time you get an alert just to view the alert doesn't provide a great experience.
Old interface but works but with some bugs. Since August, there is no notifications on the phone and that is really a problem for a surveillance software. Maybe the time has come to look for an alternative?
WHEN IS THIS BEING REPLACED OR UPDATED?? People keep asking and nothing has changed for years. I'm ready to move on, the app is becoming unreliable. Notifications are slow, playback choppy, failure to log in, etc.
what a piece of s***. Literally struggles to do anything and crashes 90% of the time. Not only is this a paid app, but I also pay for the yearly subscription for my blue iris server. Is this what we deserve for our money? Disgusting!
Greedy company. Synology, Reolink, Hilconnect all more reliable. I've been installing these systems for 10 years now and I've seen the software become poor. I can't maintain systems that keep breaking due to the company breaking the software so customers have to buy a new subscription!
Ui is very slow and buggy even on pixel 9. Video shop even on local lan. It's not a network issue since it's working fine from the web app or from my camera app that connect to cloud. Don't waste your money.
Can't believe this rubbish is chargeable. The installer you get from just adding the Web app of UI3 to your phone is much better than this, and that's free to do. You can't even scrub your timeline on this app. Waste of time and money. Just use the Web app
Horrible app experience
Worked fine until one day it was simply no longer accessible through the app. Not worth the money. Avoid.
Very dated app that doesn't seem to get updates anymore. I regularly have to close the app and reopen it to view streams. It needs better options and/or widgets to launch into different camera groups.
slow and crashes repeatedly now, doesnt show thumbnail of cameras, I have multiple sites i connect to and they all have the same problem with different versions of BI on them with different ISPs.
It's now 12/06/2025, there's still been no update to this outdated app, which I would assume has been like this since it was first released in 2013. The iOS version is such a better user experience, streams are better quality, actually play without just stopping and the app doesn't look like it was designed over 10 years ago. Ken, you make bank from Blue Iris, invest back into your product! This is my last 2 star review from 21/10/2022: Desperately needs an updated UI and a lot of bug fixes.
None of the buttons in the app work on Android. Which means I cannot set up the app. I just wasted my money!!
It's just bad. Nothing works as expected. Notifications are hit and miss. Even worse there seems to be no fix in sight since these problems have existed for months.
The design choices for this app are straight out of the 90's. Horribly unintuitive and lacking the basic functionality all the other security camera apps have.
Last update 7 months ago. If you open the microphone on a view with multiple cameras it crashes. Startup and the moon is in retrograde it crashes. hit back button to go from single camera view to multi camera view it crashes. try to save video it crashes.
this app will freeze when coming out of background or viewing more than 3 clips please update
Who designed this app? Guessing a high school student. At minimum, not a professional. The app is just, weak. It's functional to a degree, and the UI is decent. But ... You open it, check some cameras, then switch to another app. When you return to Blue Iris, it no longer connects to cameras. So each use of it requires you to terminate the app. Performance on searching and skipping through history videos is really bad. When a clip ends it shows a date of 2015 lol
This version is unusable now on my pixel 7. It just keeps freezing and locking up.
Garbage. Does not work
Support doesn't even respond anymore. App is garbage. WebUI from a phone on the cellular or wifi works just fine but the app is a slow piece of junk. Pretty disappointing. Don't download it and use the webUI.
Horrible android app. Windows program is great. The fact that the developer is charging up front with no free trial is your WARNING sign. Navigation is broken, clip playback is buggy, user interface is terrible. Buyer Beware. I paid $10 to save time and effort on building my own remote solution. I am forced to additionally spend time + effort to build my own solution anyway. Booooo!
No longer works with my Samsung tablet. Controls are unresponsive.
Bad app, not worth purchasing. Fails constantly, even on different phones. It looks like it was developed 10 years ago and functions the same. Just simply doesn't compare to other camera monitoring apps at all.
Doesn't work. Use a web browser.
I cant believe how long its been since my last notification on mobile.. a year? NO notifications on trigger and no updates to app since 2023. Biggest issue is cameras load very slowly remotely yet fast on LAN. No auto restart and weather have to use separate utility called BI Tools. Never renewing again run for the hills this company is a nightmare and they are very greedy everyone deserves a free upgrade if any customers are left!
Notifications stopped working since few months ago.
App has really been in steady decline. Alerts are spotty at best. Really could go for a refresh.
This app is terrible. If I click on a camera, it shuts down. Once it drops you, you have to wait an undetermined amount of time. It is a total waste of money. Don't buy this app.
Drops connection all the time, fails to load alot. Web page works much better
Was working fine until recently, now freezes, even though its a paid app they refuse to support it unless you have an active paid support agreement
App just exits when open camera stream.
Could it be worse? The UI overall is really hard to use. Want to filter by a camera and a specific time frame? Well good luck. Sure, you can play back a clip, but not likely one that you really wanted to.
NEW POST - Still UTTER GARBAGE and has been for years. Crashing all the time. Reinstalling it and it crashes when adding the license number. Use the UI3 on the browser instead. GARBAGE AGAIN... OLD POST - I just bought BI V5 as my v4 was like 5 years old. But what has happened in the 5 years since i used it? The pc app is okay but the mobile app is a joke, really. Why this decline? The web-based UI3 works way, WAY better.
Long time user, notifications no longer work after last update. App is still slow to respond at times, or just freezes. Just use the web server, it is better in every way.
Push notifications broken ffs... I can't believe developer isn't fixing this...
Notifications still not working after latest update
The developers are morons how have you managed to balls this up even more
The author should give everyone refunds for this terrible app. Constantly buggy.
Notifications stopped working
Once again Push Notifications have stopped working, App is useless without.
+ 23 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
31%
Positive (4-5★)
8%
Neutral (3★)
60%
Negative (1-2★)