Review Insights · Google Play
NYTimes: US and Global News
The New York Times Company · 199,768 ratings · ★ 4.7
4.7
★★★★★
199,768 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 34 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
"article"
9 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Here's a gotcha to watch for: Subscribers are allowed to share 10 "gift articles" per month. Articles use the same share icon that's common everywhere, but by default, the app assumes you're sharing a gift article. I like to share articles …" - Doug Kanter
2
"subscription"
9 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "keeps on trying to get you to purchase a subscription" - Thomas Soley
3
"reading"
8 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Says it is free, but 2 seconds into reading the first article I keeps going to a paid subscription page. Now I can not read anything without paying, which I do not intend on doing as it was supposed to be free." - mason wolf
4
"read"
7 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "website says read this piece for free on our app. App requires payment to read article... shady scam to collect information to sell to advertisers." - TJ T
5
"articles"
6 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Here's a gotcha to watch for: Subscribers are allowed to share 10 "gift articles" per month. Articles use the same share icon that's common everywhere, but by default, the app assumes you're sharing a gift article. I like to share articles …" - Doug Kanter
6
"been"
6 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App restarts frequently. The app will suddenly return to the main page, causing me to lose my place while reading an article. This has been an ongoing problem for at least 5 months." - Justin
7
"months"
5 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Here's a gotcha to watch for: Subscribers are allowed to share 10 "gift articles" per month. Articles use the same share icon that's common everywhere, but by default, the app assumes you're sharing a gift article. I like to share articles …" - Doug Kanter
8
"free"
5 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "website says read this piece for free on our app. App requires payment to read article... shady scam to collect information to sell to advertisers." - TJ T
9
"pixel"
5 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The app is buggy. frequently crashes and more often in the middle of reading a story flips to the homepage. this has been going on for at least the past 3-4 months. yet the cost keeps going up! I'm starting to question the value, especially…" - The Great Artiste
10
"keeps"
4 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "keeps on trying to get you to purchase a subscription" - Thomas Soley
11
"page"
4 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Says it is free, but 2 seconds into reading the first article I keeps going to a paid subscription page. Now I can not read anything without paying, which I do not intend on doing as it was supposed to be free." - mason wolf
12
"crashes"
4 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Lost my longest streak ever playing a game because the app crashed when I was playing late at night. By the time it was back up it was past midnight. This app crashes a lot, especially when reading articles. It also seems to be my #1 most b…" - Michael
📋 All 34 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").
Here's a gotcha to watch for: Subscribers are allowed to share 10 "gift articles" per month. Articles use the same share icon that's common everywhere, but by default, the app assumes you're sharing a gift article. I like to share articles to my browser so I can bookmark them in a certain way. For two months, I used up all my gift articles by sharing them with myself! So, NYT, you should change the default gift article behavior to OFF instead of ON.
keeps on trying to get you to purchase a subscription
Says it is free, but 2 seconds into reading the first article I keeps going to a paid subscription page. Now I can not read anything without paying, which I do not intend on doing as it was supposed to be free.
App restarts frequently. The app will suddenly return to the main page, causing me to lose my place while reading an article. This has been an ongoing problem for at least 5 months.
The app doesn't recognize my subscription. NYT told me to contact Google Play. Google Play told me to contact NYT.
Account required to see what is on the website. The opposite of convenience. not what apps should be.
The app will refresh itself every few minutes. It doesn't matter if you're reading or listening to an article, it's gonna refresh back to the top page. So unless all you do is read headlines, this app is completely worthless. Uninstalling.
The app is buggy. frequently crashes and more often in the middle of reading a story flips to the homepage. this has been going on for at least the past 3-4 months. yet the cost keeps going up! I'm starting to question the value, especially since the devs haven't fixed it. Pixel 8
Automatically renewed my subscription at a much higher rate, after LESS than one year of a discounted subscription
The New York Times does not suck, but its app does. This app uses background data like there's no tomorrow, even though I limit it to manually fetch only when asked. It makes my Pixel 9 get hot and uses up all the battery for no apparent reason. It's been this way for a long time. No one from the NYT app development team reads the reviews here, I suppose.
Charged a huge amount with no warning
This review is for the app and not the content: Articles are timed and I am often returned to main page from an article I am reading. This happens often and as far as I can tell, it cannot be turned off. Sometimes, it happens a second or two after I scrolled down the page of the article. I tried to report the issue, but the AI bot was useless.
unable to unsubscribe so hit with big annual renewal unexpectedly unable to unsubscribe and hit with an massive annual renewal fee
app uses way too much Internet data: a gb in one day, seriously? how does a paying customer deactivate all video and ads in this app? only want to READ
For the past 6 months I have not been able to listen to articles with this app on Pixel 10 Pro XL. Everytime I click "listen to articles", the app crashes. I submitted a ticket to technical support a few months ago and the issue is still present on the latest version of the app. I have cancelled my subscription as a result of this after being subscribed for several years.
PLEASE ALLOW FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO STUDENTS COMMUNITY OF SOUTH ASIAN PEOPLE
incredibly choppy and makes my phone hot
I don't like their subscription charges every 4 weeks. That messes up my monthly entertainment credit from Amex.
impossible to unsubscribe- and at $25 a month no less! Apparently you need assistance to decide you no longer require The New York Times because there is no option to cancel subscription or delete account on your own but only temporarily pause it, I called and I spent about 10 minutes telling the service agent to cancel the subscription and he just kept giving me a handful of months for free. I clearly stated "and then the charges stop?" and I was misled. Predatory and ableist.
I have been a NYT subscriber for a long tme long time. I tried to read NYT on my old Galaxy S7, but that phone did not have enough memory. I bought an S21, and I could read NYT for a couple years, but now NYT has increased the size of its app, and it will no longer fit on a Galaxy S21.
Sadly, it rapidly drains my battery to cook my phone.
expensive af
I got this app downloaded accidentally and can't figure out how to cancel it so I quit getting charged.
website says read this piece for free on our app. App requires payment to read article... shady scam to collect information to sell to advertisers.
Frustrating. The app keeps refreshing when I'm in the middle of reading things and then it's sometimes difficult to find the story again.
Lost my longest streak ever playing a game because the app crashed when I was playing late at night. By the time it was back up it was past midnight. This app crashes a lot, especially when reading articles. It also seems to be my #1 most battery draining app even though I don't use it more than 30 minutes a day (often much less). Not the best work NYT.
didn't see that the new version now has a radio button on share to gift articles. I wasted 50% gifting to nytimes subscribers 🤬
the app is unstable On my pixel 10 Pro XL with the latest version of Android running. if I want to listen to an article and I press play, it crashes. it says close app. it might play for a few seconds but then it just stops. this has been going on for quite a while and it's very frustrating. if it continues I may cancel the subscription. I did write it five stars at one point but it's deteriorating, especially on a flagship Android phone
Despite almost 40 categories of notifications, there's no way to customize Breaking News alerts. Nearly all the so-called urgent and important breaking news notifications are for things that nobody really cares about. Example: Netflix CEO stepping down is NOT worth interrupting my day or anyone else's day. The editors behind this app simply have no concept for what's important to everyday people.
Subscribe for advertising. Even if you pay, you get ads. Rolling ads, banner ads, auto-play ads. Jude Law ads. So....why pay?
can you please have the share free article setting stay in the last position used, have a user-defined default or have a different button altogether?
I love the NYT, but the app is terrible. I'm using a Google pixel 10 pro, and yet the app gets slower and jerkier the more articles I read. Scrolling ceases to be smooth (a major problem for reading) and everything loads more slowly. After about 3-4 articles I need to close and reopen the app to make it usable again. I'll still use the app throughout my day, but this is a major problem and severely hinders my enjoyment of their otherwise excellent reporting.
Ads on a platform you have to pay for? Total garbage
The app stability is fine, but I can NEVER find what I'm looking for. I will find an article on Google and when I try to go find it on the app using the exact headline, it's not even something returned in the search. Don't you want me to read your content?
Sentiment summary
94%
Positive (4-5★)
2%
Neutral (3★)
4%
Negative (1-2★)