If like me you like to stay up to date with the latest news then you’ve probably got a few news feeds on your HTC Desire by now. The News app built into the phone works great and everything I need to well laid out and well presented.
The only thing I can’t get to work is the HTC News Widget.
I have set all my news feeds to update automatically at various intervals (and yes my phone has “syncing” turned on) but not one of them will update unless I manually go into the News app or press the “refresh” button on the News Widget itself.
I will report this bug to HTC but in the mean time, has anyone worked out a way to cure it?
HTC Desire Fanatics 
May 10, 2010 at 9:46 pm |
Works for me.
Although syncing generally seems erractic, specially email (the widget front view sometimes doesn’t update for half a day whereas if I click through to the actual email app, it has). It’s one of these “not sure what it’s doing” kind of feelings.
But yes, it works for myself.
May 10, 2010 at 10:52 pm |
Hmm that’s annoying. Am thinking of putting together a bug list if I can find enough. If you know of any yourself and think it’ll be worth getting a list online then let me know.
May 8, 2012 at 5:10 am
i have a droid incredible 2 and the “news” widget wasnt working, but after getting the “google reader” app from the play store it suddenly began working hope this helps if you are still having the problem
May 10, 2010 at 10:32 pm |
Sorry i can’t help i don’t use the news widget myself… i find it annoying that it can’t connect my google reader account to it …
May 10, 2010 at 10:53 pm |
Yes you’d have thought that Google may have integrated Google Reader out-of-the-box on their Android phones but apparently not. I’m sure it’ll appear at some point and obviously there are other apps out there that’ll do it.
May 10, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Yep ‘m using newsrob atm. might get the full version if i can find it on slide me or the andappstore just tog et the widget :). Maybe wait a week for google io something might be released then
May 10, 2010 at 11:04 pm |
Seems to work fine for me, I remember it not working when I got it. I think I had to download each feed separately to make it work, forget how though.
May 10, 2010 at 11:09 pm |
I didn’t like the interface too much and also it had trouble finding my favourite feeds, and so I opted for News Room app instead. Beautiful interface – I thought in the end it was worth the steep $5.
As for sync problems, I initially turned off automatic refresh for the weather, but I can’t seem to reinstate it. Even if I select it, the option doesn’t get saved, so I’m stuck with manual refreshing now. Small blip.
May 11, 2010 at 3:50 pm |
Never worked for me – have to manage subscriptions, refresh, select all feeds each time I want an update.
May 12, 2010 at 3:32 pm |
The news widget works for me in general, but I also have to manually update it to stay current.
Thus far I don’t mind it syncing only on demand, but it would be nice if it worked automatically should I want it to.
May 14, 2010 at 6:46 pm |
Yes, that’s my main niggle – I don’t mind manually refreshing but it’s the fact that I *shouldn’t* have to…
May 13, 2010 at 5:53 pm |
The news widget does not works for me in general
May 13, 2010 at 5:53 pm |
Hi jon
I have the same problem as you.
May 15, 2010 at 1:46 pm |
Does’t work for me either. I have already reported this to HTC and they have come back with their standard response: Backup, format.
May 28, 2010 at 4:20 pm |
same problem.doesnt work anymore.
July 13, 2010 at 2:40 am |
Same here. The widget won’t load news unless I reboot my phone.
July 28, 2010 at 4:17 pm |
Besides updating, which I have a problem with too, it sometimes opens a wrong article. I subscribe to three feeds. Today I clicked one article and it opened the one below it, went back tried a few more times with that article, same result… Then clicked the article below, and it opened the one above it (which I wanted in the first place).
September 23, 2010 at 2:14 am |
mine stopped working as well, was not updating. Fixed it.
solution:
Restart phone.
November 23, 2010 at 1:21 pm |
I got a new HTC Desire HD
My news feed widget would not update update. Power down cycles, removing the widget and adding it back. Clearing data and the cache Unsubscribing and trying to resubscribe to the feeds. Nothing has worked, they all fail. Now after performing this soft reset I can’t even add the widget back. If I try to add it from the widgets it asks me to tap to select news feeds and tries to look them up but rapidly fails and goes back to the widget selection screen.
Freking sucks. HTC better be on to this one quick smart. Bunch of muppets!
November 23, 2010 at 1:23 pm |
My HTC desire has a similar problem.
The news feed widget would not update. Power down cycles, removing the widget and adding it back. Clearing data and the cache Unsubscribing and trying to resubscribe to the feeds. Nothing has worked, they all fail. Now after performing this soft reset I can’t even add the widget back. If I try to add it from the widgets it asks me to tap to select news feeds and tries to look them up but rapidly fails and goes back to the widget selection screen.
HTC better be on to this one asap. Bunch of muppets.
November 24, 2010 at 5:40 pm |
Have you got the standard HTC Desire or the HD version? Snce the standard Desire had e 2.2 software update i no longer have this problem…
December 2, 2010 at 5:01 pm |
Did the same thing with my Desire Z, running froyo — so yeah, the HTC News app and widget is still horribly broken.
December 2, 2010 at 8:11 pm
How odd, maybe they’ve only fixed in on the Desire’s firmware…?
December 2, 2010 at 11:33 am |
I have the Desire HD with 2.2 and have exactly the same problems as described. Have also tried to erase data, which means that I can’t even reinstall the widget. Does anyone know how to uninstall the News Widget completely and to reinstall it. I’m still wondering why it doesn’t work, since it worked fine the first few days … and I can’t figure out what I have changed in the configuration just before it stoppet working.
I have bought another newsfeeder (RSS Atom) which works very good, but it’s not a widget, and the design is not as sexy as the HTC News widget
December 2, 2010 at 8:13 pm |
All I can suggest is to try rooting your phone and installing a custom but HTC Sense-based ROM on your phone.
I don’t know any way of re-installing system apps without having your phone rooted I’m afraid 😦
December 8, 2010 at 5:24 pm |
hi
just got the desire z htc, i loaded the free talking tom application and it worked for 3 days, randomly it wont load now any ideas???
also on the top of the screen do the download icons for the apps stop there once downloaded cause they are annoying me
December 9, 2010 at 6:29 pm |
All I can suggest is to uninstall the app and then re-install it. If you go to your Downloads section in the Market app then you can select Talking Tom and then there’ll be a button at the bottom to uninstall it. Once that’s done, try rebooting your phone and then downloading the app again and re-installing it. Good luck!
December 9, 2010 at 6:30 pm |
Oh and if you want to get rid of the download notifications just pull down the top bar and then press the button that says “Clear”
January 7, 2011 at 7:37 am |
i have a same problem, please e-mail me what to do
January 9, 2011 at 7:47 pm |
Give your phone a software update to version 2.2 and it should solve the problem 🙂
January 20, 2011 at 2:34 pm |
I’ve got a Desire HD and the News widget and app itself are annoying me! At first it wouldn’t update at all, then I tried to unsubscribe to certain feeds both through the phone and via Google Reader (to which it is synced) but it said ‘Unable to unsubscribe’ when I tried via the handset. Even though I’ve removed all feeds from Google Reader the app hasn’t updated. Now it is telling me for all the feeds that are left on the phone that there are ‘no stories’. This is the buggiest application I have ever had experience with. Aside from factory resetting my handset does anyone have any ideas how to resolve the situation?
January 22, 2011 at 9:31 am |
Is this the HTC news widget you’re talking about? If so, the Desire HD version seems to be different to the standard Desire as we don’t have the option of syncing with Google Reader. All I can suggest if you reset the News widget by doing the following: Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications — now find the News widget under “All” and clear its data. Let me know how you get on!
March 5, 2011 at 2:55 pm
I did what you said and now the news app won’t even work. So what now?
March 5, 2011 at 6:19 pm
@beej Did you clear the data in the News / News & Weather / News Widget app? It turns out that you can’t delete the data in the Widget because there is no data.
I’ve just cleared the data in my News app and it reloaded fine.
February 25, 2011 at 12:10 pm |
what do i do to stop reuters the news from sending me messages on articles
March 1, 2011 at 10:40 pm |
Do you mean in your News widget?
March 3, 2011 at 8:15 pm |
I tried to reset the News widget on my new HTC Desire HD by doing the following: Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> News widget under “All” and cleared its data. Now it wont even let me select the widget as it show no subscriptions?
March 5, 2011 at 6:13 pm |
Try adding some new news feeds when you go into the News widget. Press the “add feeds” button at the top of the screen hen it loads up.
You’ll need to add the URL manually such as http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml
May 6, 2015 at 12:51 pm |
Hey there…….can u help me WD did task……..I HV a HTC desire 310 n its news plugin isn’t working ……….even after updating it couple billion times …….please help me ……