The San Diego Union-Tribune 12+

This SD U-T app has improved a great deal in recent weeks but the previous editor/owner’s version had two excellent features missing from this app: 1–the ability to text a copy of an article to share, & 2–the ability to select text to “look up, translate, or see” further details.

Hopefully, these two soon will be added to an updated version of the app!

As the title implies. Offline reading only works if you download the digital paper while being online and then never close the app. If you close the app, or the OS closes it because of memory or processor usage, it’s not possible to access the offline paper because the “Sections” tab options don’t load unless the app is online.

I’m writing this as a review because I tried to submit this as a bug, but the contact/support button in the app directs me to a page asking me to subscribe, which I obviously already do, and provides no contact info, at least not within the app.

Also, the bug where saving the paper offline on some days makes it crash the app until you delete the offline copy is still present, I reported that months ago. I only get to actually have an offline copy maybe 4-5 days per week.

Alden has been degrading the functionality of this app ever since they bought the UT. The fresh coat of paint is not hiding the fact that the UI has become increasingly less flexible and less intuitive over time, and there are numerous crashes, freezes, and blank screen bugs that seem to increase in frequency with every update.

I’m going to keep trying to support our valuable local journalists with a subscription, but it’s getting harder to justify with the increased difficulty of even being able to consistently access the digital version of the paper that I’m paying for.

I was getting used to the last update and then it was changed again. This update is clumsy and slow to load. I don’t like the arrows you have to click (sometimes several times) to navigate to the desired view. The font on my iPad is very small and if I make it larger it doesn’t carry from one article to the next. Thus, in article view I have to change the font in every single article, and before I scroll down, because the font option is only at the top. The font option in the settings does not work. Also, the photos in article view don’t include the captions, so I have to switch back to page view if I want to read them. It’s clumsy and ineffective. Surely you can do better than this. I’d take the last update over this one. Please fix this app and make it user friendly!!