WBAL-TV 11 News and Weather

Review by eFreeware

WBAL-TV 11 News and Weather is the mobile app of the Baltimore television station of the same name, published by HTVMA Solutions, Inc. It carries local and national news, sports, traffic, politics and entertainment coverage, along with a weather section built around the Baltimore area. The app is free and ad-supported, with no in-app purchases.

The reason to consider it is focus. Rather than aggregating headlines from everywhere, it is tied to one station's newsroom, which means its alerts, live video and forecasts come from the team that produces the broadcasts. For anyone whose daily life runs through Baltimore and its suburbs, that local grounding is the main draw, and it is what separates this from a general-purpose news reader.

It has been available since May 2012 and was last updated on September 29, 2026, with recent release notes describing routine maintenance rather than new features. The rating sits at 4.7 from about 3,000 ratings, and installs have passed 100,000.

Breaking news that reaches you first

The core of the app is breaking news delivery. Push notifications flag developing local stories, and when something significant is happening the app offers live streaming coverage with updates from reporters in the field. That combination of an alert followed by live video is the pattern most people will use during a storm, a major traffic incident or a developing court story.

There is also a two-way element. You can send news tips, photos and videos straight to the newsroom, and the station may put that material on air. For someone who happens to be near an event, that is a direct line to the people covering it, which is not something a general news app typically provides.

Stories can be passed along by email or posted to social media from within the app, so sharing a local item with family or a neighborhood group takes a couple of taps. The rest of the coverage is what you would expect from a station newsroom: sports, traffic, politics and entertainment, updated as the day goes on.

Weather tools for the Baltimore area

Weather is treated as a section in its own right. You get current conditions for Baltimore along with hourly and seven-day forecasts, and the forecast follows you wherever you happen to be rather than being locked to the city. That matters for anyone commuting in from a surrounding county or checking conditions before traveling.

The interactive radar is the part I would expect people to open most often. It zooms in as far as street level, and you can pan the map around to watch weather systems as they move toward your area. For judging whether a line of storms is going to reach a particular neighborhood, that level of zoom is more useful than a regional map.

Weather alerts and updates appear alongside videocasts from the station's meteorologists, so there is both a written alert path and a video path to the same information. If you prefer hearing an explanation to reading a warning, the videocasts cover that.

What you need before it is useful

Setup is minimal: the app is a free download, and its features work from the app itself. Push notifications are the one thing worth deciding on early, since breaking news alerts are only useful if you allow them. If you would rather not be interrupted, the news, weather and radar sections still work as something you check on your own schedule.

There is no purchase to make. The app does carry advertising, which is the trade for a free download, and there is no paid tier to remove it.

The one practical condition is geography. This is a Baltimore station's app, so its value comes from Baltimore-area news and weather. Someone living elsewhere will find national coverage and general forecasts, but the local reporting, alerts and radar detail are built around Maryland, and that is where the app makes sense.

Who gets the most from it

The clearest fit is anyone who lives in or around Baltimore and wants a single app for local headlines, severe weather and live coverage. If you already watch the station's broadcasts, this is the same newsroom in your pocket, and the alert-and-stream pattern will feel familiar.

It also suits people with a reason to keep track of the area from a distance, such as those with family in the region or anyone who travels through it regularly and wants to know about storms or traffic before setting out. The radar's street-level zoom is the kind of detail that helps in both cases.

If you want a broad news reader that pulls from many outlets, or weather coverage for a different part of the country, this app's single-station scope means it will not carry the same weight. That is not a flaw so much as the nature of a station app, and it is worth knowing before you install.

The verdict on WBAL-TV 11 News

For a free, ad-supported app tied to one local newsroom, this covers the ground well: breaking alerts, live streams, a tip line to the newsroom, sharing, forecasts and an interactive radar that goes to street level. The 4.7 average from roughly 3,000 ratings suggests the people using it are satisfied with what they get, and the 100,000-plus installs put it in the range of a well-established local app.

I would point Baltimore-area residents to it first, particularly anyone who wants weather warnings and live coverage from a source they already recognize. It is a straightforward install with no purchase involved, and the advertising is the price of that.

If your interest in Baltimore is occasional, or your news diet runs across many outlets, the app's single-station focus will feel narrow. For the audience it is built for, though, it does the job a local station app should do.

What's new

We update the app regularly to keep things working smoothly for you! Like us? Give us five stars! Have feedback? Use the in-app contact screen in the menu or send us an email at [email protected]