Variety App Reviews

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Worst App Ever. Crashes, shows no content, tried on two iOS devices with the latest software and it was useless. I wasted time messing with it that I will never get back.

No access to mag issues for direct subscribers!. A bizarre app in that it does not seem to allow linkage/login to “print + digital” Variety subscription accounts, only Variety subscriptions made via the Apple app store - a ridiculous limitation resulting in inability of direct (Penske) Variety subscribers to access the “Issues” feature.

Dumb!. Hate this. Can't access my premier subscription, keeps crashing and no features to search or filter through the news. I just want to access my premier subscription via the app.

Great info, lousy app. Love the info but please fix this to work smoothly.

Redesign removed any and all usefulness. I simply can’t understand why the app would be redesigned to just have one general feed without any option to read by topic (TV, Film, Digital, Business, etc.). As someone who works in the media industry and reads Variety daily, it’s incredibly sad and I have deleted this app from my phone. Instead, I have to use my mobile browser to read articles from the web page. This is literally the first app review I have ever written but this UI/UX is so poor that I felt compelled to do so. Whoever is the CTO should immediately implement changes - I would imagine app engagement has totally collapsed. This is digital media 101 and calls into question Variety as a leading player in media itself.

Not a fan of the new format. Always loved the Variety app but not a fan of the new look/format. Used to be able to see snapshots of 10 or so top stories and now, with larger previews, you can only see 1 or 2 when you first open the app. Much more difficult to get a quick look at stories and decide which ones you want to read more about.

Needs Features!!. Can’t understand why this app doesn’t have a search window so you can look up names and older articles. There’s also no way of accessing your account info if you’re a Variety subscriber. Please update this!!

Great content -- but unable to share story links. Variety, always great content, but the share button does not include a link back to the story---you are leaving a huge portion of readership off the table with this dysfunctional feature. Please fix ASAP.

Manager. Love this app ❤️

Crashes and stutters. Love the content but the app experience is chronically poor and that drags the rating from 5 to 2. It is simply very buggy. Suspect it is due to ad media not loading properly which is sloppy and poorly tested development. The app just needs to do 2 things, deliver content and deliver ads, gets neither done. Fed up.

this app is an embarrassment. Not sure why Variety bothers to publish articles through this app. It’s unusable. It’s slow to load simple TEXT. When it does, it lasts for about 4 seconds then goes blank. My iphone actually heats up when trying to handle the instability of this app. There are literally hundreds of news-based apps that work great. Is it really that hard for Variety to get this together? If not, they deserve to go extinct.

Awfull app crashes constantly. To rate this app with one star is giving it way too much. The ads are so annoying and the interface constantly crashes and restarts. I literary hate this app. It is a torture to access it due to its mediocre interface.

Unusable. Even after the most recent update, this app still struggles to function. Many articles disappear in the middle of reading them, leaving you with a blank white screen. Hyperlinks lead to nowhere. Everything is incredibly slow, and pages constantly reformat as you’re trying to read. The list goes on. Coming from the premier source of entertainment news, I’m surprised how terrible this app is. Please get it together, Variety. You have the content you just need a usable interface!

iPad version freezes at start. What a missed opportunity for Variety

So Disappointed. I’ve rarely been so let down by an app redesign. Variety used to be the only news app that properly functioned for offline reading - once refreshed the latest news downloaded automatically, everything would load. Now nothing is automatic and stories take forever to load. It’s now a worse version of every other junky news app. So sad to see an essential part of my commute gone.

Navbar too tight on iPhone 13 mini. Its very narrow at the top and sometimes It takes several tries to press a new category. There is a large margin at the bottom so its a bit frustrating that everything is crammed at the top.

It works for reading the articles. That’s about it.. The main attraction of the Variety app is to be able to read Variety. And that works just fine. But nothing else works. You can’t share, videos never work, photos rarely load, and the galleries tab has never worked. Every time I click it..the apps crashes and goes back to my home screen. Also...they should bring back comment sections.

A voyeur’s best friend. The content is great.

Variety. Site keeps crashing!!!! Please fix it!

App needs lots of work. This app needs lots of work, I’ll start with the fact that if you try to share a story to Facebook or Twitter, it takes you to a page that tells you to download them and there is no way yo tell it you already have them. I see this a lot on apps on the iPhone. Frankly it’s just plain stupid to not have the app go straight to the Facebook or Twitter app and Apple should be enforcing this.

Pointless Pointless Pointless. This app is pointless. We have a handful of annual Variety subscriptions in our office and that annual cost is higher than what it would cost to buy some generic app design that will handle subscription logins and pull content from the Variety database. This app is a reflection of Variety's inability to understand digital content and how easy it is to make money with one's and zero's.

VIP+ Membership is useless on iPad. The app is useless for the $40/month VIP+ subscription if you signed up online (not the App Store). Just access it through Safari and save yourself the headache.

Useless. Won’t open

Multimedia Always Fails. I’ve never once had a link pointing to multimedia content work. I’ve tried for years while using each then-latest iPhone. App doesn’t refresh content predictably or rapidly. Never has. Never able to find where I left off when returning to an article left open.

50% of the time, this app just shuts down, out of the blue. Out

where did the slowdown come from?. This used to be one of my favorite apps until it started freezing, taking a minute or more to load. It will often crash and have to be restarted, only to still take minutes to refresh. Please update!

Worthless…keeps freezing!. The content is great, but the app freezes after one use. Tried rebooting my iPad, downloading again, etc. Freezes on a regular basis. Too bad.

Yikes. It'd be nice if this app didn't crash or freeze every time I try using it. And it'd be nice to offer the option to copt links, or have the article at least open in a web browser so I could copy the link myself and share it. But I guess the app developers Variety hired are strapped for cash or just couldn't be bothered to supply basic functions in a mobile app. You'd be better off just going straight to the website off a web browser, because the app is essentially useless and just takes up space. One star.

Updated and now the app is irrelevant. This awful update inspired me to write my first review. I used to be able to scan sections for quick headlines. The new format is useless. It’s a home renovation gallery of washed up athletes and actors. Deleting the app

Worst App. This App needs to be upgraded. Worst app on my phone. If it’s not upgraded soon I will be deleting it. The gallery section is even blank.

Got the low down (down low?) NO DOUBT!. Just what I was looking for. Tons of reviews you can just swipe through with a nice big image to capture your interest. There's a quick little blurb you can skim and if you want more just swip up and you get the whole story. Nice work- APP-tastic!

Impossible to Use. The Variety app is impossible to use. It is extremely laggy, seems to make my phone hot every time I use, and is an endless barrage of advertisements.

What is this?. After installing message popped up: “Notice Doesn’t have OneTrust data to show Banner user interface. Please fetch OneTrust data first.” What the heck is that! Can some one please explain?!—thanks. Rating reflects difficulty to run the app. I’m a Variety reader and would like to be able to use the app.

Awful upgrade. I wish could go back to the old app. Scrolling through latest headlines, Separate tabs for reviews, television and film etc. Now you just read story after story without a choice. And it takes forever to load. I’ll be deleting this shortly and will get my news elsewhere.

Buggy ads. I couldn’t finish an article because the ads kept restructuring the page as they loaded, until the page goes dark and I have to reload it and start over.

Much Improved - fast and user friendly. Variety is my go-to for entertainment news. This update is a big improvement, it’s faster, easier and has new features. I love that I can customize my newsfeed.

Unstable. The app doesn’t stay open. It closes within seconds of opening. I will delete it if you don’t fix this problem.

MISSING: Real Time Alerts Feature. The app states there are real-time new alert push notifications you can turn on via the settings menu. This is 100% false. There is absolutely no way to do this. There is actual absolutely no alert feature at all. I’ve emailed support 5 times with no response, so I’ve decided to leave a review to inform others that are expecting this feature. If I’m incorrect, please reply to this review with instructions on how this can be done & I will revise the content. Below is what they state, but the feature is completely nonexistent. “REAL-TIME NEWS ALERTS: Keep up with breaking stories as they happen with push notifications, easily toggled on or off in the app settings menu. “ In fact the screenshots show a “bell” icon next to the “gear” icon, which does not exist in the actual app. Please respond with how to active the real-time news alerts. Please. Thank you.

Trades on the fly!. Still the grand dame of E-news

You get what you pay for, I guess.. Apparently this app hasn't been updated in a year and a half (still not optimized for iPhone 5, which is really annoying), and has more than a few frustrating limitations (starting with no search function, and no ability to "load more" than the 20 most recent articles per section). Compared to Variety's mobile-optimized website, this app is kind of a dinosaur.

New look is not good. New iPhone app is not easy to use and doesn’t allow us to flip through the top articles and instead we have to scroll through it all. Ugh. Don’t like it.

Article disappears....... ......right after you open it in the app. Please fix!

so slow to load and small font on section page. Why is the app so slow - as if the app is frozen - when the app is started? (You are probably busy on loading gallery photos in the background, but why don't you do that if I click on gallery section!?) Why can't the font on the front page and on each section's page be changed like while reading an article? Why are the titles in each article all capitalized? It so hard to read!

Keeps crashing. This keeps crashing, won’t load properly and needs a redesign. Uninstalling.

Battery Drain. The most deal breaking aspect of the app for me is how rapidly it drains the battery of my phone, which points to the fact of how badly optimized this app is for iPhone. I love having a variety app on my phone, but not if it’ll sap one per cent of my battery per min. Please fix this.

Great Content, Awful Look. Same content as online and easier to access, but the look is not even close to the refined and beautiful website. Although the articles are the same, I will stick with the website because the app is not aesthetically pleasing.

Nice. This app must've been recently updated because all of the problems regarding links taking you outside the app seems to have been addressed. App has full articles and even when you click a link for a related article it opens that one up fully within the app. So far very nice.

Poorly done. This app needs a complete redo. I can’t believe they decided this was a good setup. There is no search option. There is absolutely no way for subscribers to view the magazine digitally on the app like you can with literally any other magazine out there. I don’t find this app user friendly whatsoever. PLEASE update it!

Very unstable on my iPad. Most of the time while trying to read an article this app suddenly closes and the iPad returns to the opening screen. It’s the only app among many that I have that does this. This app needs a major overhaul.

An infinite variety of awfulness. Just upgraded from the not very good older version. Endless scrolling to get to all the headlines. No longer able to look for news in a particular section — look at all the news or none. The articles used to be more readable in old app than on the awful website, but this is now web based in app reading experience with slow load times and an all around awful reading experience. The Variety app has long been awful, and this is just a new variety of bad. Wish I could go back to the older version for pre-iOS 10 that was a wee bit less bad than this.

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What’s happened?. Okay, I appreciate the fact that we are getting these great reviews and show biz news for free - fair enough. But what was a terrific app has become lumbering and terribly slow to load. Please fix!

Slow and buggy. Awful app. Loads slow and reloads while you’re reading (presumably to load more irritating ads!).

Totally ruined a great app...???? It’s awful, slow with no quick overview in context. Awful, awful, terrible, why totally ruin a very good app? Slow, no quick overview of the stories, now no tv, film and other segments.. so why use this now??? Major backward step for an icon.

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Soooo slow. Problems loading pages. This has to be the worst app design ever. I’ve never had a problem like this with any other apps. Incredibly frustrating. It’s always fingers crossed to see if the page will load after getting the white screen of death. How can it be so hard to fix this? Every other comparable app seems to be able to do it. If Variety wants people to look at their material they ought to consider using a company that knows what they’re doing.

Banners Constantly Covering Story Content. Never used to be this way. Suggest firing all existing app programmers and hiring fresh blood. Someone high-up told the programmers to change things. They listened. We suffer. Shame on all of you.

Devastatingly Slow. This app, for all intents and purposes, would be a shining example of quality craftsmanship if not for the stuttering, hobbled pace of it all. It’s like trying to run in a dream; you certainly see where you want to go, but an invisible grasp slows you and frustrates your goals. I might as well be jogging in quick sand.

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Great once in. I love the content but it almost without fail crashes the first time you open it and then the second time it just takes a while to load.

Lousy app. How can you go from good to useless? This app is the perfect example.

Not Worth Installing. Very disappointed in this app. The interface is klunky.

Can’t use app without notifications on. Every time you launch the app you are prompted to go to the control center and change the notification settings. Currently, my notifications are turned off for this app, which is my choice. If the notifications are turned off by the user, the third-party app should not continue, prompting the user to turn on notifications. Fix your code. The latest 17 OS doesn’t fix this.

Used to love this app, but no longer. **Update: app crashes upon launch. Useless.** App used to load articles quickly. Now it freezes for up to a minute or two before new articles appear. Video links don't play sound without headphones nor do they rotate to landscape. Please update!

RIP OFF!. Unlike the previous app, which let you read full articles, this app gives you a preview blurb with a link to the full article. That link opens Variety in Safari. Then, after you've read a couple of articles or reviews, it won't let you read any more. It immediately blacks out with a message that you have to subscribe to Variety for free to get 3 more articles. After that, you have to really subscribe--to the tune of about $250!!! I'm not an industry professional. I just like reading the news and reviews. 

Freezes. Never get to read it because it takes too long to open.

What's up with no updates.. I used to love this app until this past weekend when it stopped updating. What's up???

Not a good app. This app requires you to go to the website to read more than a few sentences.

Good app but.... This is a good app and I love that I get entertainment news not gossip. The only drawback is its share button. It doesn't give options to copy link, text or messenger. I don't want to always send it to Facebook just so one particular friend can see that story or email something not that important to their email.

iPad version doesn't work. I found the iPad version of Variety very useful when it was working, although it always crashed a lot. Now it crashes every time. I wish they would fix it as it is a fine app when it works. I first wrote this review months ago and the problem still isn't fixed.

No new content, offers same service as their Twitter feed. Nice user interface, but with less clicks and effort I can follow them on Twitter- no original content and no need for me to keep the app. Afraid this is going in the trash till the next version.

Constant crashing. While I enjoy the content provided by this app, I really hate not being able to read two consecutive articles in a row without having to reopen it after it shuts down. Come on, really?

Update. Update the app! The interface is incoherent with modern design and the functionality of the app is at the butt of the design. Great content, poor presentation.

Hard to open. Does not open half the time.

Awful!. Well I didn't realize how aesthetically pleasing THR app is until I downloaded this.

Worst Version Yet. Boo.

Just.Keeps.Crashing.. Love the pub, but app never opens...Just crashes.Please fix.

Useless app. This app requires you have a Variety subscription to read more than a paragraph or two. Don't waste your time unless your willing to buy one.

How to ruin a great App.. I held off on updating the old app as long as possiable after the reviews. I agree with everyone else. They ruined it. The best source for entertainment news is now a shell of itself. For me, it's way to much work to get anything out of it. HALF A STAR Half a star since it's easy to delete!

Great content, terrible accessibility.. This app is a great resource for entertainment news, but it consistently freezes and/or crashes every time it is opened. In dire need of an update on that front. Can't complain too loudly since it's a free app, but it's frustrating when one of your favorites is so very dysfunctional.

No go. Love the content, but hate this app. Previous versions have been too slow to open and crashed far to often. It usually took at least 10 tries before I get the app to open and load. Sometimes it never loaded. The latest update is the worst yet. It never opens for me. Goodbye Variety.

Informative but tough to turn on.. Informative & enjoyable. But, so tough to get it on. Freezes every time . I have to turn off and on a few times to get it running. Very odd for such a big named brand.

App desperately needs compatibility update. • Slow • Trying to play video crashes app • Able to read articles • Celeb obits needs to be its own section The developer hasn't touched the app in over 3 years. It needs to be compatible with current operating system.

Just ok. It's ok; not too bad. Not too spectacular. At least it's way better than that stupid Newsgator Variety app!

Return. Brief blurbs. Link to web content. Read web content. Reopen app. Find another article you want to read, follow link, reopen app.... Becomes tiresome very, very quickly. Full article or an easy return to app would be lovely.

Not great at all. Instead of full articles the app gives you uselessly short blurbs, and then provides a link to the website.

Needs work. Love Variety, but the app is terribly slow to update, and crashes almost every time you open it. I think it actually used to work better than it does now.

What a joke!. This app is absolute garbage. The pages turn by themselves and it's difficult to access the actually digital issues. I'm not renewing my digital subscription.

Good content, needs updated. This app is what you'd expect in terms of content -- the industry news and insights of Variety's excellent staff. The problem is that it needs updated and often is slow to load or crashes.