The Desert Sun

Review by eFreeware

If you follow the news in the Coachella Valley and want it on your phone rather than folded on the driveway, The Desert Sun app is built for exactly that. It is the mobile arm of the paper, published by USA TODAY Co., and it carries the same mix of local reporting, photography and video that the newsroom produces.

The app is free to download and sits in the News & Magazines category. It has been available since August 2012 and shows over 10,000 installs on Google Play, with a 2.8 average from 207 ratings. Those numbers tell you this is a niche product rather than a mass-market news reader, which is roughly what you would expect from a single regional title.

What you get is access to the paper's journalism, a customizable reading experience and a set of tools for keeping up without sitting at a desk. The rest of this review walks through what the app does, what it asks of you, and whether it fits how you already read the news.

The reporting you are actually installing it for

The core of the app is the paper's own journalism. The developer lists in-depth reporting, things to do around town, and sports coverage that runs from high school teams up to the professional ranks. That is a fairly wide local brief, and it is the reason someone would choose this over a general news aggregator: the stories are about the place you live, not about the world at large.

Photography and video get equal billing. The app is pitched as a home for strong visuals alongside the written stories, which matters if you follow local events, high school athletics or community issues where a photo or a short clip carries more than a few paragraphs. The developer also describes the experience as streamlined and fast-loading, which is the kind of claim worth taking as an intention rather than a measurement.

For anyone who already reads the paper, the appeal is continuity. The same coverage you would find in print or on the website is packaged for a phone screen, which is convenient when you want to catch up on local news in a few minutes rather than work through a full edition.

Alerts, scores and weather in real time

Notifications are one of the app's more useful features. Alerts for breaking news, scores and weather can be adjusted to match what you follow, the developer says. In practice that means you choose which categories are worth interrupting your day for, so a high school football result does not arrive with the same urgency as a storm warning.

This is the part of the app that works best as a companion rather than a destination. You do not have to open anything to learn that a game ended or that the weather has turned; the app tells you. For readers who care about a specific team or a specific corner of local news, narrowing the alerts keeps the noise down.

The obvious trade-off is that notifications are only as good as your settings. Leave everything on and you will hear from the app often; trim the list and it becomes a targeted feed. Either way, the value depends on how much you want the paper reaching out to you rather than waiting for you to check in.

Reading on your own terms

The app includes several ways to make reading more comfortable. You can save stories for later, adjust the text size, switch on night mode, and read offline. None of these are unusual in a news app, but together they cover the main reasons people abandon one: text that is too small, a bright screen at night, and a connection that drops when they want to read.

Saving favorites is the feature I would expect to get the most use. It lets you build a personal queue of stories from the paper's coverage and come back to them when you have time, rather than losing them in a feed. Combined with offline reading, that makes the app usable in more situations, whether that is a drive through the valley or a flight.

Text size and night mode are small conveniences that matter more than they sound. A news app is something you might open several times a day, and being able to set the type to something your eyes agree with is the difference between reading a full story and skimming the first paragraph.

The eNewspaper, and a catalog beyond one title

The eNewspaper feature reproduces the print edition on your phone or tablet, which suits readers who prefer the layout and completeness of the paper as it was assembled. It is a different way of reading than the story feed, and some people will use one almost exclusively.

Access is not limited to this paper's edition. Subscribers can also read USA TODAY and over 200 local eNewspapers, opening up a much wider set of publications. If you travel within the country or have ties to another region, that breadth is a genuine addition rather than a footnote.

It is worth separating the two halves of the app in your head. The story feed is the local paper's daily journalism; the eNewspaper section is a replica reading experience with a much larger catalog behind it. Which one you value more will depend on whether you read news as a stream or as an edition.

What it costs and what it asks of you

Access runs through a subscription. Confirming a purchase charges it to your Google Play account, and it renews monthly or yearly unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends.

The app also carries advertising, and in-app purchases are offered. Anyone weighing it up should treat the free download as a trial of sorts: you can see how the app feels and how much of the paper's output you actually read before deciding whether a subscription is worth it. The app's settings include a subscription support section with details and customer service contacts.

The rating picture is the other thing to note. A 2.8 average across 207 ratings, with 71 written reviews, is low for an app of this kind, and it is the kind of figure that suggests readers have mixed feelings. That is worth knowing before you commit to a paid term.

The most recent update, from September 2026, covers bug fixes and stability improvements. That tells you the app is being maintained, but it does not change what the product is: a regional news reader with a subscription behind it.

Who this fits

This app is for people with a real stake in the Coachella Valley's news. If you live or work there, own property, follow local sports or simply want to know what is happening in your community, the paper's reporting is the whole point and the app is a convenient way to reach it. The alerts and saved stories are there to fit that coverage into a phone-sized routine.

It also suits readers who like the eNewspaper format and want more than one title in it. The combination of a local edition with USA TODAY and a long list of other local eNewspapers is the strongest argument for a subscription here, particularly for anyone who moves between regions or keeps up with news in more than one place.

This app suits readers who want local reporting from one newsroom, along with its sports and weather coverage. It is a single paper's product with a subscription attached, and its value rises and falls with how much you care about what that newsroom covers.

A local paper in your pocket, with a paywall behind it

The Desert Sun is a straightforward proposition: the paper's journalism, its photography and video, alerts you can tailor, and a set of reading tools that make the app comfortable to use. The eNewspaper section adds the print edition and access to USA TODAY and more than 200 other local editions, which is a lot of reading for one subscription.

The caveats are equally clear. The free tier is a monthly sample rather than full access, a subscription renews automatically unless you cancel in time, and the app carries ads. The 2.8 average from 207 ratings is a reminder that a news app lives or dies on how its readers feel about it, and this one has not won them over universally.

My recommendation is for readers who already value this paper's coverage. If the local reporting is something you would pay for anyway, the app is a reasonable way to get it, and the wider eNewspaper catalog makes the subscription easier to justify. If you are only curious about local news now and then, the monthly sample of free articles is enough to judge whether the full subscription earns a place in your routine.

What's new in version 8.13.2

• This update includes bug fixes and stability improvements.