LA Daily News

Review by eFreeware

Keeping up with a city as sprawling as Los Angeles is hard when the coverage you care about sits scattered across feeds, newsletters and whatever social platform you happen to check. The LA Daily News app, from MediaNews Group, is built around the idea that you should be able to gather local reporting in one place and shape it around your own interests rather than someone else's front page.

It has been on Google Play since February 2012 and has been updated as recently as September 2026, which suggests a publication that still treats its Android app as part of the daily routine rather than an afterthought. The app is free, carries ads and offers in-app purchases, and sits in the News & Magazines category with an Everyone 10+ rating. It has passed 10,000 installs and holds a 2.6 average from 87 ratings.

What makes it interesting is the combination of a conventional news feed with a replica edition of the printed paper and a handful of casual games. That mix points to readers who want the texture of a newspaper alongside the convenience of a phone, and I will walk through what each part actually offers.

A feed you shape around your own interests

The feature the developer leads with is the Your News tab, which provides personalized recommendations based on preferences you set. You choose the topics you are genuinely interested in, and the app then builds a feed around them. The pitch is that this lets you bypass the volume of everything published and home in on the stories that matter to you, which is a reasonable promise for a metropolitan daily that produces far more copy than any one reader can absorb.

The follow mechanism works at the article level. When you find a topic you want to see more of, you select follow on a story, and related articles gain relevancy and appear more often in your feed. Unfollowing works the same way, so the mix can be adjusted as your interests shift rather than being locked in at setup. That is a sensible design for news, where a topic that consumes you one month may be irrelevant the next.

Push notifications are tied to the same idea. You choose the topics that trigger alerts, which the developer presents as a gentler alternative to constant notifications. For anyone who has abandoned a news app because it pinged constantly about stories they never opened, that level of control is the difference between keeping notifications on and turning them off entirely.

Saved stories, swiping and the replica edition

Articles can be saved to revisit at another time. Notifications nudge you back to those saved items or point you toward related stories, so the reading list stays active instead of being forgotten. Whether you appreciate that nudge depends on how you feel about reminders, but the option exists.

Navigation is built around a top bar that lets you move between sections by tapping or swiping, and a swipe left gesture opens other articles within the section you are already reading. That second gesture is a small thing that changes how a session feels: instead of backing out to a section list after every story, you can move straight into the next one. It suits the way people actually read on a phone, in short bursts with a thumb.

The E-News option covers the newspaper experience. For readers who grew up with the print edition, the layout itself carries information that a feed strips out, and having it inside the same app as the article view means you can move between the two depending on mood.

Offline reading is available as well. You enable it from Settings, and reading preferences for offline use can be customized there too. That matters for anyone who reads on a plane, on the subway or anywhere else the connection drops.

Puzzles and games between the headlines

The app also serves a variety of games. The selection includes Sudoku, Solitaire, Jumble, Crossword and Puzzles, which is a familiar lineup for anyone who has flipped past the comics to the puzzle page. Putting them in the same app as the news is a deliberate choice: it keeps you inside the LA Daily News rather than sending you to a separate puzzle app, and it gives the app a reason to be opened on a slow morning when there is no urgent news.

I would not treat the games as the main draw, but they broaden who the app can serve. A reader who checks the headlines and then spends ten minutes on a crossword is getting two habits out of one install, and the developer clearly sees the puzzle page as part of the newspaper's identity rather than a novelty.

What the app asks of you

There are a few requirements worth knowing before you install. The app is free, but it contains ads and offers in-app purchases. Subscribers are asked to restore their account through the Restore Subscriptions button in Settings under Subscriptions, and the developer requests that users log in again after this update to keep enjoying the app. If you already have access, that step is worth doing early rather than discovering halfway through an article.

The update note also mentions a new author view on articles and a fix for an inadvertent unable to load this content message. Neither is dramatic, but they suggest ongoing maintenance of the reading experience rather than a static app.

The rating picture is worth stating plainly. A rating like that says little about the quality of the journalism itself. It is simply the number attached to this app.

Getting the most from a daily news routine

The features here reward a small amount of setup. Choosing your topics in Your News, deciding which ones deserve push notifications and following a few subjects at the article level will shape what the app shows you over time. Done once, that work turns a general feed into something closer to a personal edition, and it is the part of the app most likely to determine whether you keep it.

Saved articles and offline reading pair naturally. If you enable offline reading in Settings and set your reading preferences, stories you have saved become something you can work through later. The E-News replica is the other piece I would try early: if the printed layout appeals to you, it changes how you use the app, and if it does not, you have lost nothing by checking.

The games are best treated as a bonus rather than a reason to install. They fill the moments when you have already read what you came for, and they fit the newspaper metaphor better than a separate download would. Anyone who wants only headlines can ignore them entirely.

A local news app for readers who want the paper too

The LA Daily News app makes most sense for people with a genuine stake in Los Angeles coverage: residents who follow local politics, schools, crime and neighborhood issues, and readers who want a daily paper's worth of reporting without carrying the paper. The combination of a customizable feed, a replica edition, offline reading and a puzzle page covers the habits of a traditional newspaper reader fairly completely.

It is free with ads and in-app purchases, subscribers need to restore their account in Settings, and users are asked to log in again after the update. The 2.6 average from 87 ratings is the kind of signal I would note without overreading.

If you want a single Android app that handles local reporting, the printed edition and a crossword, this is built for exactly that. I would install it, spend a few minutes on topics and notifications, and decide from there whether the daily mix suits you.

What's new in version 10.0.62

Added new author view to articles Fixed inadvertent "unable to load this content" message