David Farnor | On 29, May 2014

The BBC has released a major update for its iOS and Android BBC iPlayer apps for mobiles and tablets.

The release means new BBC iPlayer now offers its “best-ever playback experience”, and makes browsing and discovering BBC programmes better across four screens – mobile, tablet, computer and connected TV.

The app, which has already been downloaded 26 million times, follows the launch of the new BBC iPlayer on desktop computers and connected TVs in March, a new BBC iPlayer interface on Sky last week and a new Amazon Kindle and Windows Phone 8 iPlayer app.

Improved features in the iOS and Android app upgrade mirror those introduced on the web version of the service, including a new Home screen, with a selection of curated and popular programmes, new Category pages, to make finding programmes easier, new Channel pages for each channel, subtitles for downloaded programmes, and – across all of the pages – its new Collections feature, which groups content based on series or themes.

Dan Taylor, Head of BBC iPlayer, says: “This update brings the best-ever BBC iPlayer experience to our hugely successful mobile and tablet apps, making the huge breadth of what the BBC offers – from Happy Valley to Match Of The Day, from The Trip to In The Night Garden – easier to find and putting the discovery of new favourites that you didn’t know about at the heart of the iPlayer experience. The BBC iPlayer mobile and tablet apps let you to take this experience with you wherever you go, with downloads enabling offline viewing – now with the added benefit of subtitles.”

The apps will be updated at regular intervals as new features such as Live Rewind and Continuous Play are added.

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