The Independent 4+

Nearly there!

I’ve been reading the Indy since it first appeared and was an early adopter of digital. Having also used other news apps I can say this combines live news with a digital paper (if you want that option) well.

The content continues to be excellent, avoiding click bait headlines and providing a balanced view of the world compared to others.

The one and only frustration is the inability to comment on articles from within the app. Having to go the the website to do this is a drawback. Otherwise, excellent.

I’m trying to tolerate the user experience but failing

I signed up to a a three month trial early winter and didn’t renew as the user experience such as app layout, caching and refresh is terrible. I had an offer to renew for another three months and I’m still in that three months. During that time the user experience has declined further. The layout in the app is just dreadful. If I view from my laptop browser I can select sub-headings and view articles. It seems as though the app is the lite version with minimal content. The biggest issue is refreshing of content. My mobile is stuck on articles from five days ago and will not refresh. iPad simply won’t load anything, just blank. The standard of journalism is excellent hence 3 stars but the app is awful. In a time when survival of a news outlet depends on digital perhaps the best newspaper in the UK is heading in the wrong direction. Either there is not sufficient investment or the wrong team are running the show. I subscribe to the Guardian too and though I’ve tired of their click bait reporting the digital experience is amazing. Please sort it out. The UK without a decent readership of The Independent will be a poorer place.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! We deeply respect your advice, and we will try to combine your feedback with our app development, in order to provide better user experience. The Independent team

The Independent App is no longer useful.

I have used the online Independent for many years, in fact have subscribed since it went online. I had always recommended it to others as the way an online paper should be produced. Sadly I can no longer say that.

Since the last update (I write in April 2025) I have been unable to find the correspondence page, and find the whole format frankly unusable. There used to be a single page with a thumbnail of each article by section which was very easy to navigate. Now, it appears I have to scroll endlessly through articles, some of which seem out of date, without any sort of overview of the contents. I am not in the slightest interested in videos or audio. If I wanted those there are many other places online. The new online Independent has become an utter shambles!

I used to be a (modest) contributor to the letters page, but I can no longer find the letters page so have stopped trying. Were it not that my wife has retained the previous version of the app and continues to use it. I would have cancelled my subscription. That time may well yet come.