NOW 12+

Need to update this. Weirdly, the pop up message mentioned below now does seem to redirect properly. It's settings within the NOW app not settings within the phone! It would have helped a lot of that pop up message had said "Head to Settings within the NOW app (not general iPhone settings) by clicking here or [explain how to get to settings in NOW app without clicking a button] Like a curates egg, good in parts.... Update as of 8 June 2023: Since my last review, app doesn't allow download on iPhone mobile connection without WiFi. [see note to developers] I still wish this app had a tick box next to each program/episode so I can log that I have watched it already. I end up clicking on episodes I've already seen. [Note to developers: when I try to download a film on mobile connection it pops up the following message: "No WiFi Connection - You've selected download on WiFi only. Head to Settings to change this and download over your mobile network". The settings button in the pop up message doesn't work, the message disappears and nothing happens. So I head manually over to settings to select Mobile Data but it's already selected - as it always has been as I don't have WiFi at home. I've downloaded the latest NOW app and also deleted and reinstalled it and the problem persists so it's an issue with the app. Phone is up to date]

So content is great. But I have several issues with whoever designed the UI. However the biggest issue is for some unbeknownst reason NowTv think it’s acceptable to charge me the most for a streaming service and then give me unskippable ads. Not 3rd party ads. Their own 30s long ads. That feels like a real middle finger, making me pay to get ads for shows I’m paying for.

Now the UI issues. 1). On PS5 the app often starts at the beginning of the show. 2). In the resume watching section, I can’t select the show and change the episode, I have to search for it. 3) the episode description cuts off. No way of reading the full description. 4). The resume watching section will sometimes just disappear. 5). The series episodes won’t load sometimes, unless you come out of the search and back in. They’re my Top 5 most annoying.

Overall, great app. The small annoying UI issues are one thing, but I’m particularly annoyed to be paying money for unskippable ads, hence the score. Happy to change it after NowTv decide charging me over £300 a year merits me knowing if I actually wanna watch their show or if I’m enjoying the one I specifically clicked on to watch instead.

Firstly, this app doesn’t support a single function of the Apple TV remote - you can’t click the left side of the wheel to go back 10 seconds, you have to pause, bring up some on screen controls, swipe to a rewind control, click that, wait ten minutes while it goes back ten seconds and then hit play. You can’t search using the Siri button, in fact, if you want to search in the app you have to scroll through 15 rows of content to get to the search button and that scrolling is painfully slow, one row at a time. If you get there, you can’t type using the usual onscreen character entry of course, no, you have to do it painfully slowly using the terrible one NowTV have provided. You can’t speak into the remote to enter text either. Video playback is terrible quality despite my gigabit internet connection, regularly stalls or the app just dies. Apple have provided everything a developer could need to create a perfect media streaming application and NowTV have decided to ignore all of it and provide their own janky versions.
All of this assumes you can actually launch the app in the first place, because if you use a privacy preserving DNS service like NextDNS then the app won’t even launch because of the sheer amount of spyware they’ve loaded it with.
Apple, please, if you care about your users at all, reject this app until they go away and fix it all to use the proper APIs provided.