Review Insights · Google Play
The Great Courses
The Teaching Company · 3,848 ratings · ★ 3.5
3.5
★★★★★
3,848 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 65 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
"content"
22 negative reviews mention this · 34% of all complaints
★★★★★ "buggy app. keeps restarting 10 seconds into playing a track. better to buy the same content via Audible, whose app works." - Gabriel Rossman
2
"courses"
21 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "This app offers the worst experience possible. Do not spend good money on these courses as the app makes them inaccessible. Despite having a download button, the app won't load your configuration file if you are offline. The idiotic online …" - Paul Stewart
3
"doesn"
12 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "so bad. press 'later' for an update and it doesnt work. why are you putting updates out so often" - Jason
4
"android"
12 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Love the content but the app is terrible. I have a habit of closing the app completely when I have to stop because it will often decide to start playing again on its own, playing hours of lectures to no one. Combine that with the fact it do…" - Ryan Tanner
5
"work"
11 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "buggy app. keeps restarting 10 seconds into playing a track. better to buy the same content via Audible, whose app works." - Gabriel Rossman
6
"terrible"
10 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "This is a terrible app if you downloaded anything. The downloads are in a hidden folder that you can't get to without rooting your device and there's no apparent in-app way to delete downloaded course material. Will eat disk space until the…" - Lynne B
7
"course"
10 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "This is a terrible app if you downloaded anything. The downloads are in a hidden folder that you can't get to without rooting your device and there's no apparent in-app way to delete downloaded course material. Will eat disk space until the…" - Lynne B
8
"download"
9 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "promised free downloads. That was NOT the case. Goodbye." - Tom Schrader
9
"watch"
9 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The courses and professors are excellent - the only reason I’m still subscribed. The Android app is buggy with very poor UX. Right now I can’t even resume videos from Continue Watching or the home screen because taps don’t work at all. I re…" - Denis Oliva (tecsined)
10
"lectures"
8 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Love the content but the app is terrible. I have a habit of closing the app completely when I have to stop because it will often decide to start playing again on its own, playing hours of lectures to no one. Combine that with the fact it do…" - Ryan Tanner
11
"better"
7 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "buggy app. keeps restarting 10 seconds into playing a track. better to buy the same content via Audible, whose app works." - Gabriel Rossman
12
"company"
7 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "In January 2023 they said an Android TV app would be available "in a few months". It's now three years later and still nothing. I'm about ready to give up on this company." - Rich M.
📋 All 65 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").
buggy app. keeps restarting 10 seconds into playing a track. better to buy the same content via Audible, whose app works.
so bad. press 'later' for an update and it doesnt work. why are you putting updates out so often
promised free downloads. That was NOT the case. Goodbye.
This is a terrible app if you downloaded anything. The downloads are in a hidden folder that you can't get to without rooting your device and there's no apparent in-app way to delete downloaded course material. Will eat disk space until the app is entirely deleted. No help pages. Great course material but no usability.
This app offers the worst experience possible. Do not spend good money on these courses as the app makes them inaccessible. Despite having a download button, the app won't load your configuration file if you are offline. The idiotic online requirement means you can forget about learning anything if you are out walking/driving and you lose your internet connection, rendering the whole infrastructure Great Courses useless. The devs should attend a Great Course on how to program a better app.
Love the content but the app is terrible. I have a habit of closing the app completely when I have to stop because it will often decide to start playing again on its own, playing hours of lectures to no one. Combine that with the fact it doesn't work with Android Auto and it becomes pretty inconvenient. Going to go back to using Audible as soon as my subscription is up.
Robotic teachers make for boring presentations...but the worst part is being charged even when after stopping the subscription. Thievery
Not working
the content itself is great so far, and it is definitely worth the price. there's nowhere else that I'm going to be able to find a 17.5 hour course on the vikings. however, the app needs serious work and barely functions. my main complaint is that the app seems to take a bluetooth device being disconnected as a cue that the user wants to play the content, resulting in situations where I pause the content for a meeting, connect my work laptop to my headphones, and have to figure out where I was.
i don't know what happened to this app, the interface navigation used to be easy and straightforward. but the home page was turned into a dummy prank page and you can scroll but can't click on any of the courses, you have to painstakingly search for the course even when it's right there in the home page. this is the worst prank ever, and I wish you would end it I don't understand this problem, all my Android devices has this issue so it's not device specific, but seem to work fine on iOS
The courses and professors are excellent - the only reason I’m still subscribed. The Android app is buggy with very poor UX. Right now I can’t even resume videos from Continue Watching or the home screen because taps don’t work at all. I reported this to support over a week ago and never got a response. Using this app is frustrating and honestly makes me want to cancel after years of subscribing.
I can't get my purchased lectures.
Scam app!! No Reply from their official email or over here! I have a complaint App freezes every other minute when I m playing any of the eposode! I have downloaded the videos and when try to play them, it freezes every minute. So I have to click on the play button every time in order to play them My app is already updated and internet is fine Also I'm playing downloaded videos so no question of any new issue. Kindly refund
Worst user experience. Content is superior of course, or I would have uninstalled
cannot download lessons to chip, only to phone.
the forced plus "upgrade " is an absolute downgrade. now i cannot play downloaded material unless I have a strong internet connection . so what's the point? note that this was not an issue with the previous application . now that is sell focused it is terrible. i have a few dozen courses. Will not buy one more until this issue is fixed
I changed e mail addresses and now it's impossible to sign in. I'm convinced whoever designed this made it deliberately impossible on purpose because they want to keep people dumb and don't want them to learn anything.
I REALLY wanted to pay for and use this app. A huge library of high quality ad-free content. Sign me up. But this app is laughably terrible. It is truly the worst audio app I have ever used. I don't know if it's this bad on iOS, but clearly no one at the company has actually tried to use it on Android.
Often does not work. Can't open lectures.
Amazing content for learning, but the user interface is dreadful. It's slow and clunky. I can't download whole lecture series, I have to manually select each individual lecture, which is irritating and just not fit for 2025. There are also interface issues and glitches across multiple platforms including android, iOS and on the Amazon Fire stick. Course progress will often be lost and revert back to some silly point two lectures ago. You take our money, but give us a broken app. Fix it!
Can't download videos onto SDcard. The app doesn't request permission and therefore I can't grant it.
So.. the content is amazing, of course.. but this is the worst player app I have ever used, by far. It doesn't remember my place properly (it sometimes jumps back a lecture or two), it doesn't work properly in my car (every few seconds it pauses for a few seconds and then starts back up), it randomly deletes my downloads, and many other problems. Great Courses! You are such a wonderful company! I know that you can do better than this garbage.
Well I got this message saying I had to sign in in 3 days or it will be canceled. I'm terribly sorry, after I opened my account with them, I opened it under my Outlook email. I you cancel it, I will have to report you to, first, The Great Courses people, then to the FTC for canceling me for no good reason. Until your company comes up into the present and allows those with other email accounts to use these apps you display, then I guess you will start losing customers.
Terrible app for a great product. App does not allow one to sign up. Keeps showing some standard boiler plate message
can't install on my android TV 😕 kind of disappointed and don't really want to go through prime video for an add on subscription to get what I want to watch when I should be able to subscribe myself, not through a third party..
can't get rid of the flipping ad
good for listening to books and others but paid .
app is constantly deleting my downloaded lectures making the whole app practically unusable
Ok.. the content is amazing.. but this is one of the worst written apps I have ever used. The doesn't work properly with my car, loses your place when trying to continue a class, randomly deletes your downloads etc etc etc etc. Great Courses: you are better than this. You are an amazing company. Fire your app developers.
I love the Great Courses, but this new app is terrible! I used to be able to download couses for offline use. Now I look at it cross-eyed, and the downloads dissappear. The software engineers have broken something that was working well. Customer support has accomplished nothing for me, and they fail to even respond to my partner who has similar problems. This is a wonderful company that is destroying its reputation via bad decisions.
I have not used it in a while. Upgrades have made this app practically unusable.
Buggy terrible app. It's particularly upsetting, because the old Great Courses app worked pretty well, but in an attempt to constantly market the Plus content I have pretty much lost access to my considerable purchased content. Very poor business decision, and shows a lot of contempt for their customers.
I love the Great Courses' content, but the latest update turned this app is a completely useless piece of garbage. The home page won't load. The search function doesn't do anything. It won't track lecture series I'm watching, let alone what episode I'm on. It deletes anything I download as soon as I close the app. Guess I'm not listening to lectures on my commute anymore.
awful. has to be installed every time I visit. why change what worked? please fix it.
I downloaded so many courses in my original TGC app to watch offline. my Internet is neither free nor unlimited. Now, I need to download it again, it is frustrating this thing doesn't let me access what I already have in my mobile.
Pathetic user experience. Save yourself the frustration of using this piece of junk software straight from the 1980s. The content is "great" but you'll soon forget what you just learned due to your ever building frustrations of just trying to navigate through the UI.
It seems to be that the new app is only available in portrait mode. That's no good for my laptop.
awful
I want to be able to access my previously paid for courses without additional fees
I wish they had never combined their platforms. Great courses plus is unorganized and not nearly as user-friendly as the old Great Courses was. If you plan to do the monthly streaming subscription, this may work well for you. If you intend to buy your courses and keep your own library, I would look elsewhere - I will be as soon as I finish the courses I have already purchased.
Told that I have to upgrade to access my purchased content. App does nothing but crash. I can't get to the content I have paid for. What were they thinking with putting up a glitchy app that doesn't appear to be ready for release?
The product itself, the lectures, are extraordinary. exceptional. But the app? It's terrible. It skips around. It stops. it's slow. you'll be listening to one lecture and boom it skips tl next for no reason. You have to really want to listen to a lecture to bother with this app.
it never goes to the app directly but back to the upgrade link. the app itself is poorly organized. the old app was far better. it had better playback control and was more intuitive.
I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the years with Teaching Company/ Great Courses. Now you want to charge $20 a month to watch the courses I own on my TV. I think not.
after payment it says there is an error at our end and doesn't give access to the course
The content, you can get elsewhere so I am rating the app. Two things that are needed for good streaming app is a controller in your notifications, and NOT LOSING YOUR PLACE everytime you close the lecture. It'd be tolerable.... if it wasn't TWENTY dollars a month. I will check again in 6 months. Until then, no subscription.
#1 Problem with this is: The app does not work on Android TV (Nvidia Shield Pro). It doesn't support the one place it would be great to have it on. #2 Problem: Even with a paid account, the app continues to show "JOIN NOW" nag screens. If you select the JOIN NOW button it just says you already have an entitled account... then continues to show the nag. Someone at Great Courses should watch one of their own Programming Courses and learn to code this up to better support the target audience.
could not even access the free trial
Content is great but the app is basically nonfunctional. I can't actually tap any of the course posters etc on the "home" page. It's as if they're just static images and not tappable icons.
In January 2023 they said an Android TV app would be available "in a few months". It's now three years later and still nothing. I'm about ready to give up on this company.
+ 15 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
60%
Positive (4-5★)
8%
Neutral (3★)
32%
Negative (1-2★)