News Channel 5 Nashville

Review by eFreeware

Local news is scattered across so many places that it can be hard to know which version of a story to trust, and national outlets rarely cover the school board vote or the storm cell heading for your county. A station's own app is one way to close that gap, since the reporting comes from the newsroom that covers the area every day.

News Channel 5 Nashville is that app for WTVF, the Nashville station, and it comes from The E.W. Scripps Company. It is free to install, it carries ads, and there are no in-app purchases to consider. The app has been on Google Play since April 2014 and shows a 4.0 average across 3,302 ratings, with more than 100,000 installs.

What the developer puts first is the combination of breaking news, live video and weather, which is the mix most people want from a local station. I'll go through what each part does, what the app asks of you in return, and who I think will get the most from it.

Breaking news and the two news feeds

The headline feature is breaking news. The app sends alerts and posts stories as they develop, which is the reason many people install a station app in the first place. If you live in the Nashville area and want to hear about a highway closure, a severe storm warning or a developing court story before it reaches a national feed, this is the mechanism for it.

Inside the news section, the developer splits reading into two lists. Top News gathers the day's most important stories as chosen by the local news team, while Most Recent shows whatever was published last. That is a sensible division: one list answers what matters today, the other answers what just happened, and you can pick whichever matches your mood.

The app also follows your device's display setting, so Dark Mode and Light Mode switch with the rest of your phone rather than needing a separate toggle. It is a small thing, but it means the reading experience matches whatever you have already set up elsewhere.

The developer frames the app as a way to connect with the community, with coverage that explains local issues and shares solutions rather than only reporting problems. That is the pitch, and it points to the kind of stories you can expect beyond the headlines.

Live video and on-demand clips

The second pillar is video. The app carries the station's live streaming channel around the clock, so a newscast or continuous coverage is available whenever you open it rather than only at scheduled broadcast times. For anyone who has cut the cord or moved away from the area, that stream is the closest thing to having the station on in the background.

Alongside the live feed, there are on-demand clips pulled from recent newscasts. The developer's framing is that you decide what to watch and when, which is the useful part: if you missed a segment that matters to you, you can go back to it instead of waiting for a repeat.

I would treat the live channel and the clip library as complementary. One is for following something as it happens, the other for catching up on a specific story after the fact. Between them, the app covers both habits without needing a television.

Weather forecasts and interactive radar

Weather is where a local app often earns a permanent spot on a phone, and this one covers the usual ground. There are daily video updates from the station's weather team, hourly and daily forecasts, and conditions for your location.

The interactive radar is the part I would expect people to return to most. It lets you track rain, snow and storms as they move, which is more useful than a static forecast when you are deciding whether to leave now or wait half an hour. The most recent update added further weather map features along with bug fixes and performance improvements, so this is the area the developer has been actively building on.

Between the radar, the forecasts and the video segments, the weather side is thorough enough that you would not need a separate weather app for everyday planning in the Nashville area.

What the app asks of you

The costs here are straightforward. The app is free to download, it is supported by advertising, and there is no in-app purchase system, so nothing inside it is gated behind a payment. That combination is worth noting if you have grown tired of news apps that push you toward a subscription after a few articles.

The trade-off is the ads, which come with the free model. You are also relying on one newsroom's output, which is the point of a station app but does mean the coverage reflects that team's editorial choices rather than a broad wire service.

There is also a geographic assumption built in. The news, the live channel and the weather team all serve the Nashville area, so the value tracks closely with how much that region matters to you. Someone checking in occasionally from out of state will find less here than a resident will.

The app is rated Everyone 10+, which reflects that news coverage can include material not aimed at younger children. It runs on Android and has been updated as recently as August 31, 2026.

Getting the most from it

The simplest way to use the app is to let the breaking news alerts do the work and open it when something happens. That keeps the app in the background for most of the day while still giving you the one thing a local station does better than anyone else: fast word on something happening nearby.

When you do open it, the two news lists give you a quick route in. Checking Top News gives you the day's agenda in a few minutes, and Most Recent is there when you want to know what has changed since you last looked. Neither requires much scrolling to be useful.

For weather, I would treat the radar as the default view during storm season and the video updates as the supplement when you want a person explaining what the map shows. The hourly forecast is the practical one for planning a day out.

If you travel or move away from the area, the live channel is the part that keeps its value, since it does not depend on you being local to follow the coverage. That is a reasonable reason to keep the app installed even if your day-to-day reliance on the local news side fades.

A local app that knows its audience

News Channel 5 Nashville does one job and does it without much decoration: it puts a Nashville newsroom's reporting, live video and weather into a free app. The breaking news alerts, the two news feeds, the round-the-clock stream and the interactive radar cover the main reasons anyone follows a local station.

If you live in or around Nashville and want local coverage from the station itself, this is a straightforward install, and the free, ad-supported model with no purchases keeps the decision simple.

If you are outside the area, or you want national and international coverage in the same place, the app's focus will feel narrow, because that is what it is built for. For the audience it targets, though, it lines up well: news, video and weather in one place, at no cost beyond the ads.

What's new

Additional weather map features. Bug fixes and performance improvements.