10TV WBNS Columbus, Ohio

Review by eFreeware

10TV WBNS Columbus, Ohio is the official app of WBNS, the CBS affiliate serving the Columbus area, and it comes from TEGNA. It is free, it sits in the News & Magazines category, and it collects breaking news, live video and weather into one place for people with ties to central Ohio.

The main reason to consider it is focus. It is built around one market: the stories, forecasts and newscasts that matter to residents of Columbus and the surrounding counties. If that is your area, having the station's own coverage on your phone is a straightforward convenience.

What you get day to day

The app's core is a feed of local reporting, updated as stories develop. You can follow breaking stories from your region, look through photos, news clips and raw video, and explore the investigative work the station puts together. Notifications for breaking news can arrive in real time, which is the part that matters most when something is unfolding nearby.

Weather is treated as a first-class feature rather than an afterthought. There are daily and hourly forecasts for your city, outlooks from the station's meteorologists, and interactive radar maps you can pan around. You can also sign up for government-issued severe weather alerts for your area, which is a meaningful addition during storm season in Ohio.

Live video rounds out the package. Newscasts and breaking coverage from 10TV can be watched as they air, so you are not limited to reading a summary written after the fact. For anyone who wants the broadcast itself rather than a text version of it, that is the feature that will get the most use.

Following the topics that matter to you

There is a personalization layer on top of the general feed. You can discover topics that interest you and mark favorites so that updates arrive with some relevance to your life, rather than a single undifferentiated stream of everything the newsroom publishes.

The app also carries material that is easy to overlook in a generic news reader. School delays and closings appear as they are announced, which is the sort of thing parents check on winter mornings, and there are behind-the-scenes photos and updates from the station's anchors and reporters for readers who follow particular personalities.

Sharing is built in as well, so a story or video can be sent directly to friends and family. That is a small thing, but it is the difference between reading a piece of local news and being able to pass it along to someone who needs to see it.

What it asks of you

The app is free to download and carries advertising. There are no in-app purchases, but you should expect commercial messages alongside the news. That is the trade for a free product from a local broadcaster.

Its usefulness is tied to geography. This is the official app of one station serving one metropolitan area, so the reporting, forecasts and alerts are all pitched at Columbus and its surroundings. Someone with no connection to that market will find little here that a national news app would not already provide.

The content rating is Everyone 10+, and the app has been on Google Play since March 2014, which makes it a long-running product rather than a recent experiment. The most recent update, dated October 5, 2026, is described simply as bug fixes and improvements.

How it stacks up against the numbers

The app has been installed more than 100,000 times and holds a 4.2 average across 5,464 ratings. For a single-market news app, that is a healthy figure: it suggests a steady base of local users who keep it on their phones rather than deleting it after a week.

I would read those numbers as a sign that the core job, delivering local news and weather reliably, is being done adequately. They do not tell you anything about how the app will feel on your particular device, and a 4.2 average leaves room for the usual mix of complaints that any ad-supported news product attracts.

What the figures do confirm is that this is not a niche curiosity. A meaningful number of people in central Ohio have decided the station's own app is worth the space on their home screen.

Who this is built for

The clearest audience is anyone who lives, works or has family in the Columbus area and wants local coverage from a source they already recognize. If you watch 10TV on television, this is the same newsroom in your pocket, with the addition of alerts, radar and live streams.

It also suits people who need weather they can act on: commuters checking the morning forecast, parents watching for school closings, and anyone who wants severe weather warnings pushed to them rather than discovered on a broadcast. The interactive radar and the government alert signup are the two features that make the app useful beyond reading articles.

Readers who follow the station's anchors and reporters, or who want investigative journalism from a local outlet, will find material aimed at them too. The personalization options let you shape the feed toward those interests instead of taking everything the newsroom publishes.

A local news app that knows its market

10TV WBNS Columbus, Ohio does one job and does it within clear boundaries. It brings the station's breaking news, live newscasts and weather tools together in a free app, and it leans on the fact that its coverage is specific to one city rather than assembled for a national audience.

The trade-offs are honest ones. You get advertising in exchange for paying nothing, and you get a Columbus-centric product that will feel thin if you live elsewhere. Neither is a flaw so much as a description of what the app is.

If central Ohio is home, this is an easy install: a 4.2 average from more than 5,000 ratings on a product that has been maintained for over a decade is a reasonable signal that it delivers what it promises. If you are looking for general news coverage with no local anchor, the app's whole design works against you.

What's new in version 50.29.1

Bug Fixes and Improvements.