All your favorite NPR audio content
NPR One is a great place to catch up with today’s latest news and more. Explore local stories and much more in this audio-only app.
Audio first
Although NPR already has its own news app, NPR One differentiates by being audio-only. Don’t download this app if you’re expecting to read the latest news. Instead, if you want to listen to your news and other stories, NPR One is brilliant.
When you first launch the app, you’ll have to log into your NPR.org account. You can also sign up with Facebook or Google. The first screen you see after you log in is a stream of news. Tap play and you’ll get the latest headlines in audio form.
There’s tons more content to explore and NPR One will get smarter as you use it. You can tag specific recordings as “Interesting,” helping the app recommend stories relevant to your interest.
Lacking some features
The app is extremely basic. You can only stream, so don’t expect to download stories for offline listening. There are three buttons at the bottom for 15 second rewind, play/pause, and skip. The skip button moves you to the next story, not through a track. To scrub through a track, tap on the status bar and drag your finger. I would have liked to see an option for 15 second skip forward like in some podcast apps.
You can share stories you like with the share button at the top right. The app integrates with other apps you have installed on your phone.
You’ll also find the search button at the top right. Search by topic or by a specific podcast. Search works well but its results are a mess of generic looking cards, making it hard to distinguish between them.
Beyond that, there’s not much else you can do. It would be nice to see an option to adjust audio quality if you want to preserve your bandwidth.
Refreshingly simple
If you’re an NPR lover, you’ll love this app. There’s a ton of great content to keep you engaged for hours. Discovery needs some work but overall, NPR did a great job creating a solid core experience for audio lovers. If you’d rather read your news, check out the NPR app instead.
