6abc Philadelphia

Review by eFreeware

The 6abc Philadelphia app is built around a single, specific idea: local news for the Philadelphia area, delivered as both text and live video. That combination is what sets it apart from a general-purpose news reader. The developer, Disney, offers it free on Android, and it has been on the Play Store since May 2013, which makes it one of the longer-running local news apps around.

It is aimed at people who already follow this station's coverage and want it in one place rather than spread across a browser and a TV schedule. If you live in or near the city, commute into it, or have family there and want to keep up, the pitch is straightforward. The app carries a 3.9 average from more than 22,000 ratings and has passed 500,000 installs, so it has a settled audience rather than a brand-new one.

What I find most distinctive is the streaming channel. A 24/7 feed of Action News plus on-demand clips is a different proposition from a text feed with the occasional video attached, and it shapes how the rest of the app is organized.

Live video, on demand and in a corner of the screen

The headline feature is the streaming channel, which runs Action News continuously. Alongside it, the app collects exclusive video clips and lets you watch Action News on demand, so you can catch a segment you missed rather than waiting for the next bulletin. For anyone who treats the station as their main source, this is the part that justifies installing the app at all.

The picture-in-picture option is the detail I would single out. It keeps live video playing while you use other apps on your phone, which means you can follow coverage without parking yourself in the video screen. I would expect that to appeal most to people who want the broadcast running in the background while they answer messages or check a map.

None of this replaces a television in the living room, and it is not meant to. What it does is put the station's own video where a phone can reach it, which is a narrower and more useful promise than a generic video hub.

Search, topics and the sections worth knowing

Beyond video, the app organizes coverage in two ways. The explore section lets you search news topics, and a search bar takes a keyword when you already know what you are after. Browsing by topic covers areas such as I-Team investigations, Safety Tracker and Politics, among others. That structure suits readers who follow a beat rather than skimming whatever is on the front page.

Weather gets its own treatment rather than being folded into the news feed. You pick your locations and get hourly conditions and a seven-day forecast for them, with StormTracker6 Radar maps and more detailed weather information underneath. Severe weather and traffic alerts are part of the same area, which is the sort of thing that matters before you leave the house on a bad morning.

My News is the third leg. You choose the topics and locations you care about, and the app assembles a feed from those choices. Alerts can be customized the same way, covering ground from entertainment news to sports updates. The idea is a front page that reflects your interests instead of the editor's running order, and it is the feature that rewards a few minutes of setup.

What it asks of you

The app is free to download and carries advertising. There are no in-app purchases, so nothing inside is gated behind a payment.

The other requirement is your attention at the start. My News and the alert system only do their job once you have told the app which topics and locations matter to you. Skip that step and you get a general feed, which is fine but not the point of the feature.

It also assumes an interest in one market. The coverage is Philadelphia-focused, with national stories alongside it, so the value scales with how much that area means to you. Someone checking in once a month will get less from it than someone who follows the region daily.

The most recent update is a maintenance release with bug fixes and improvements, which suggests the app is being kept current rather than left as it was.

Getting the most from the feed and the alerts

My advice is to treat the first run as configuration rather than reading. Open My News, pick the handful of topics you actually follow, and set your locations. Everything downstream, from the personalized feed to the alerts, is built on those choices, so a few deliberate selections early save a lot of scrolling later.

On alerts, I would lean toward restraint. The app supports customized notifications for topics and locations, and severe weather and traffic warnings sit in the same system. Choosing a narrow set of topics and the places you genuinely travel through keeps the warnings meaningful; a broad selection turns them into noise you learn to swipe away.

For video, the picture-in-picture mode is worth remembering rather than discovering by accident. If a live stream is running and you need to do something else on the phone, that is the moment to use it. And when you want a specific story rather than the stream, the search bar and the explore section are faster routes than waiting for it to come around.

A local news app for people who follow Philadelphia closely

I would recommend 6abc Philadelphia to readers with a real stake in the region: residents, people who work in the city, and anyone who wants the station's video and forecasting in one place on a phone. The streaming channel, on-demand clips and picture-in-picture support give it a clear reason to exist beyond a text feed, and the combination of StormTracker6 radar with customizable weather and traffic alerts covers the practical side of living somewhere with real seasons.

The trade-offs are modest but worth naming. It is a free app, and its usefulness depends on how much you care about this particular market. The personalized parts also need input from you before they pay off.

If you already watch Action News or check the forecast for the Philadelphia area most days, this is a sensible thing to have on your phone. If the region is only a passing interest, the app will still work, but it will feel like a lot of machinery for occasional visits.

What's new

This release includes various bug fixes and improvements to continue providing a best-in-class news experience.