We analyzed 100 negative reviews from the top 5 Distance Calculator apps on the App Store. Here's what users hate most.
Ranked by frequency — how often each complaint appears in negative reviews.
45% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"I can't get any of the options to work. Every city I enter is not recognized. I thought maybe the cities I was entering were too small so I tried the big ones (SF, Seattle), the app still stated there was a problem"
"For over a year every time I try to use the app and input city from and to and find distance I get message 'can not locate city try another city'"
18% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"I continue to get a message each time I try to use the distance calculator, telling me that Google maps can't be loaded and do I own this website?"
"Has something changed? I can't use this anymore since i always get the response that google maps can't load. Please help."
12% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"This app is completely useless. Cannot search with it. You are expected to know exactly where to drop your pin."
"Why can't I search an address and then pin it from there? You're expected to know where on the map you want to pin and then drop it there, which makes no sense since if you're like me, you haven't memorized the world's Atlas."
8% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"But it keeps crashing on me. I tried distance between, put in first address it doesn't show it...I have to locate it myself on map...then it crashes."
"I cannot put more than a few pins down before it switches off. And it's not my phone because the other applications don't do that."
6% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"I use a newer iPad cover with the keypad, meaning the iPad is in landscape mode. This app only works in portrait mode, making it virtually unusable."
"App stopped working on iPad still working on my iPhone. I tried to get an update but that only made iPad viewer portrait only so I can't see it until I take it off of the apple keyboard."
11% of negative reviews mention this issue.
"I use to love this app. It now gives me an error code. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many time. I sent an email to developer with no response."
"Very disappointed that there is not a support system with this software unable to get maps to display keeps on giving me error."
Design and usability issues driving negative reviews.
Users have to input the same start/end locations multiple times to access different features like distance vs. travel time, causing significant friction
"Can provide distance, but not travel time at same time. You have to re-enter both locations. Just stupid application. I uninstalled it immediately"
The app automatically modifies city/state information that users carefully enter, leading to incorrect calculations
"I'm very annoyed that, when you put in a city/state and then select that on the bar & you can plainly see that you have the info in there correctly, it will change your info & then calculate the mileage!!!!"
Text is too small on older devices with no option to increase font size for readability
"The size of the words is quite small on my iPhone 6. Would be nice if you could add a setting to increase the size of the letters."
Missing basic map controls that power users expect, like orientation lock and disabling auto-location features
"New update had a poor layout. -why can't we turn off the dumb 'auto locate' feature? -why can't we lock 'north up' feature? Please have someone that actually uses this app do the next update."
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