BBC: World News & Stories

BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.

Contains ads

About this app

THE BBC APP: News, stories, audio, videos and live coverage from our trusted global network of journalists.

BBC STORIES: The latest, breaking news headlines, articles, podcasts and videos, including coverage of world News, UK News, elections, BBC Verify, BBC In-Depth and more. Stories and videos covering business, innovation, culture, arts, travel, Earth, and much more.

LIVE COVERAGE: Follow live news updates and live global sport in our Live section.

BBC AUDIO: Listen to, save, and follow BBC podcasts such as The Global Story and World of Secrets. Browse schedules and live stream BBC Radio 4 or BBC World Service with option to live rewind. From news, politics and culture to true crime, history and science, you can find the latest episodes or dive into the BBC audio archive.

WATCH BBC NEWS: Users in the US and Australia can stream live breaking news from around the world 24 hours a day on the BBC News channel.

BBC VIDEOS: Watch BBC News videos, BBC Sport videos, and video stories about climate, sustainability, science, health, technology, entertainment, and history.

BREAKING NEWS ALERTS: Sign up for breaking news notification alerts from BBC News, delivered straight to your mobile device.

FEATURES:
• Log into your BBC Account to save articles, podcasts and videos for later on the app and BBC.com
• Watch videos and listen to audio over both cellular and wifi
• Follow podcasts and save episodes
• Choose your settings to allow the app to automatically update in the background
• Control audio playback with sleep timer and live rewind
• Increase your font size for improved readability
• Choose dark mode for a dark-background reading experience
• Share stories, podcasts, and videos to social platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, and send to friends via SMS and email
• Opt-in or opt-out of breaking news push notifications, you decide

ADDITIONAL INFO:
If you choose to receive push notifications, a unique identifier relating to your device will be stored by Airship on behalf of the BBC to provide you with the service. You can choose to unsubscribe from push notifications from BBC in your device’s ‘Notifications’ screen.

Our data processor AppsFlyer collects information on behalf of the BBC for attribution and analysis purposes. You can opt out from AppsFlyer tracking by filling out their ‘Forget My Device’ form: https://www.appsflyer.com/optout

The BBC will keep your information secure and not share it with anyone else in accordance with the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy. To read BBC’s Privacy Policy go to https://www.bbc.com/pages/privacy-policy

If you install this app you accept the BBC Terms of Use at https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/terms

Ratings and reviews

Awful, awful, awful. No 'play next episode automatically' option. When a user saves what they think is a podcast series to their saved items, it's actually just the episode of the podcast they were listening to. Finding an old radio show or podcast is nigh on impossible unless it happens to be near the top of the search results. Going back to an unfinished podcast means the Play button won't work, so you have to force close the app and navigate back to what you were listening to. I could go on.

This app is a mess, or is simply not built for accessing the content I am after: radio dramas, something that BBC continued to do well, long after American radio gave up the idea. On BBC Sounds they were navigable. Now some of them are still here, but at the bottom of the app under unclear category names and invisible to search. I look for the series, "Spores" and get sports scores!

The search button is hard to find, hidden in the three dots menu. when you tap the "See all episodes" link in the window for any given podcast, it shows you literally every episode of literally every podcast, and to find the episodes you're interested in you have to keep scrolling down until you find them. I love the BBC's content, but to quote the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the people who designed its app will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

What’s new

You can now highlight text in articles and use your device's built-in look up options like web search and read aloud. This release also includes general bug fixes and improvements.