Last updated on December 14th, 2025 at 04:04 am
Omni Crosswords – Word Game Review
Omni Crosswords is a Word game from Rohan Narayan, first launched in 14th September 2020.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 187+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Omni Crosswords Stand Out
Crossword app for iOS that is simple, free, and quick. Puzzles from major outlets are automatically fetched, so all you need to worry about is solving them!
Currently, these outlets are supported:
- Los Angeles Times
- USA Today
- The Atlantic
- Newsday
- The New Yorker
- NYT Syndicated & Mini
- Universal Daily
- Vox
In addition to using your keyboard for text entry, the solver includes features such as error highlighting, skipping over completed squares, skipping to the next clue, and many more customizable settings. The solver includes a timer, so that you can compete with your friends! There's lots of settings to personalize your solving experience. OmniCrosswords also comes with dark mode supported – it follows the system preferences or you can edit the setting yourself. There's also a statistics view where you can see your solving statistics over time.
OmniCrosswords now supports uploading custom .puz files!
Optional Setting: Games automatically sync between multiple devices with Game Center.
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Omni Crosswords is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Added support for Vox puzzles
- iOS 26 updates
Download & Availability
Omni Crosswords is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Omni Crosswords on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Googled best crossword app with no annoying ads and this is the first thing that was suggested through Reddit. Thank goodness we found this because its the PERFECT app. The layout is awesome and straightforward. No childish reward system aspect, and no annoying ads. We love that you can choose from real crosswords from various legit sources. So freaking cool. Kudos to the creator of this app.
Ive been using this app for a long time but ever since the NYT paywalled the mini crossword, Ive been using this app more frequently. One thing to improve might be the automatic row selection. If it was a bit smarter and looped back to words you havent filled out and avoided boxes you have would be a great improvement. Overall, its an essential crossword app for us.
After WaPos online crossword puzzle player UI got messed upif you know, you knowI found this app via Reddits crossword sub. We really like the clean interface. We do wish there were a dark mode (update: our phone wasnt switching into dark mode correctly; this does exist!), and a visual cue for linked clues would be helpful. We also wish there were a mid-level zoom, as the full zoom is really zoomed in! Ill submit these comments on the website as well. We do really like that we can filter out the crossword puzzles we dont play (only NYT + mini and LA Times for us, thanks).
We love being able to just do crossword puzzles in peace, without the ads and extra stuff we dont really need. Thank you for this app and sharing it with all crossword fanatics.
We hardly ever write reviews Just wanted to say thank you for this app! Its helped us get off social media, and do something more profitable with our just 100% down time. Great crossword app.
The only bad thing to us is that its not available on android yet.
Hands down the best app Ive ever downloaded. If you are a crossword lover then we can promise you theres no better app than this.
If you love working crosswords you will have to have this app. It has quickly become one of the most essential apps. The only thing we wish that would be added is a setting to jump back to the first blank in an answer when you are filling it in, a tiny complaint and not enough to affect our rating. Thank you! Update: still love this app, would be wonderful if there was a method for filling in rebus answers.
Im giving this 5 stars because this app is our favorite. Someone on Reddit had commented that this app was a must-have for crossword lovers, and they were correct. Ive really upped our crossword game and Ive never been very good at them. Im so much more confident now as this app gives us a well-rounded experience. We used to only be able to finish the Monday crosswords, but after a month or so Im getting pretty decent at the end of the week crosswords. All the major crosswords are on here, and they come out pretty early in the day. Some, like the New Yorker, get posted late sometimes, but Im sure theres a reason for that and we dont mind at all. The ads are minimal. The options are fantastic. We love that you can customize your experience. We have some minor complaints but nothing that stops us from enjoying the app. -Itd be nice to have a toggle on the main screen that allows you to filter by day/date or by newspaper. -The zoom function only has 2 settings, zoomed in or out. We find that it zooms in too far, so we have to leave it zoomed out. Being able to control the zoom with your fingers would be better, or at least have 3 zoom settings. -The toggle to show or hide solved puzzles is nice, but itd be better if there was also an option for solved puzzles to go to the bottom of the screen or something so you can see what youve solved without it cluttering up your list. -The stats function is in beta, so this isnt a criticism, but the timed game stats are broken. We also dont find the bar graphs to be particularly exciting to look at. Im not one to write app reviews, but we love this app. Keep up the great work.
With the missing puzzles back this app goes back to four stars for us. It still overheats our phone like crazy.
This app has been great over the years. Recently its dropped a bit. Understand its free but so few of the puzzles are coming through. Its been a joy in the past, hope things pick up again.
UI holds it back and the play with another player part only prompts them to download the app even if they have it so you cant work on crosswords with someone at the same time. Otherwise its an awesome free crossword feed that has replaced our other apps.
Is it fair to complain about an app thats free and brings you two handfuls of crosswords every day? Probably not, which is why we give it four stars. From a content perspective, its obviously a five star app. The UI is decent. We wish it would loop you back to incorrectly filled cells when error tracking is on, and that rebuses were supported. Occasionally, the import has something misaligned but that then adds an additional layer of trying to figure out the theme. Our main beefand this would make it a one-star appis that it needs optimization so badly. Our iPhone starts heating up within seconds of launching this app and the battery starts draining at a rapid pace. Im not a software developer, but we dont understand how something as simple and not graphics intensive can pull so much power.
Great app with variety of mainstream media puzzles updated daily. Very resource intensive however. Battery can only withstand 2 or 3 puzzles before requiring recharging.
The hints get cut off because theyre too long. It would be nice to be able to click the hint and it shows the whole thing. Aside from that, its great that there are no ads, and it updates daily.
Was super fast and slick, then after updating to iOS 18 it immediately started running at one tenth the speed. Great app, hope this helps the dev sort it out.
Cant get it to advance. Its stuck on last Sundays puzzles.
Good app for aggregating crosswords from a variety of sources. We are more interested in the harder and/or longer puzzles from Newsday, LA Times,Atlantic or Wall Street Journal. Ive been getting these puzzles since we installed the app a year ago, but they stopped coming in about 2 weeks ago. So the app is useless for us. Still gave it 3 stars.
Great app! We get tired of NYT crosswords so this is a nice option when we want to change it up. Occasionally the NYT crossword has clues for the wrong part of the puzzle which is frustrating (such is the case with todays). Also the rebus function doesnt seem to workyou can rebus but the puzzle wont accept the answer even when correct. Overall this is one of the best xw apps out there.
Edit edit: While our phone doesnt behave as described below very often nor as strongly, it does seem to be related to being plugged into the charger. When charging, the phone still behaves like theres water on the screen sometimes. So, we re-rated the app. Probably going to redownload it eventually, we like it much more than other crossword apps. Still bizarre that it does this more often and more strongly in this app. Would also love an update that fixes the battery drain/heat and allows us to swipe to change clues. Edit: Since updating the app, our phone starts acting erratically when we do a crossword. Not every crossword, but a handful of times now (enough for us to finally trace it to this app), Ill be working on a crossword and our phone will start behaving as though there are rapid taps and swipes on screen. Worse, it continues to do it for a while outside of the app. We thought our phone was breaking, then we thought somehow our case was causing it (which led to us buying a new case). We finally realized it only happened while playing a crossword (and then afterward for a while), and doesnt happen if we stay out of this app. Ive deleted the app. Ill update this review if we continue having the problem even without this app (as theres a possibility Im pinning the blame on this app when its not the cause.) Original review: Been using this app for a while now and mostly love it. The biggest longtime issue is it drains battery very fast, makes our phone pretty warm, and occasionally relaunches without having saved our progress on a crossword.
Apps heats up iphone during use and drains battery quickly. Probably need more efficient coding.
Worked better before, other than making the phone really really hot and using a lot of battery. It no longer loads the LA Times, Atlantic, or New Yorker puzzles. Adding WSJ would be a welcome improvement as well.
The puzzles are great, but our phone overheats if we use this app for more than 20mins. We have an iPhone 15pro running IOS 18.3.2.
There is absolutely no reason for this app to use as much battery per-minute as Facetime. Possibly this is a real bug, but we are wondering if there is some dumb crypto thing running in the background.
Destroys our battery, and makes our phone hot. Otherwise, its an enjoyable app.
This app is great! But we completely agree with the other review that it needs optimizations. This game is always our top battery user despite us not spending much time using it. It also makes our phone hot. There's no reason for a crossword app to be devouring battery.
This is probably one of the best crossword apps on the store. Unfortunately it has one fatal flaw – after a few minutes of use our phone noticeably heats up and our battery starts rapidly draining. This problem existed when we first tried this app some years ago, and it is disappointing to see that this issue still persists despite some apparent attempts (according to the patch notes) at fixing this. We badly want to give this app 5 stars, but since using it is not really practical right now we cant. If this gets fixed we will amend our rating and review accordingly.
App isnt functioning. Is there an explanation? Thanks.
One of if not the best crossword app available. No nonsense ads or paywalls, just a great variety of puzzles all in one location. The only thing that could improve the app is a pencil or highlight feature while filling out puzzles, but still easily 5 stars.
Thank you so much for this! We love having our pick of puzzles in one app every day. Its the best.
Is there a problem with the Wall Street Journal? The last version that we see is 16 Jan. We really like the app but would like a few more publications.
Simple and clear interface with no clutter and no ads. The developer responds quickly to bug reports which is really impressive considering its just one person and the app is free. The options for customizing your experience in the settings are really nice too.
Super hard to find a game thats not ad-ridden, but this has none as far as we can tell and is generally really good.
We are subscribed to Newsdsay and we are Not getting those puzzles delivered in our app.
An excellent app that could use some improvements. Access to a ton of crosswords with amazing ease. In the game could be better: allow zooming, penciling, and prevent long clues from being hidden. What can you say though, a great choice for a free crossword app.
Started crashing today. Tried deleting and reinstalling but didnt work. When it did work it was a good app.
We absolutely love this crossword app, but there are so many bugs and it makes the app practically unusable. The puzzle list constantly freezes so we cant scroll and select a puzzle to play. Then if we do manage to get into a puzzle, it will freeze when Im in the middle of playing. We used to use this app every day and now we barely use it because we cant do anything :(.
We love this app but it stopped working this morning. Everytime we try to open, it crashes. Any thoughts? Hate to lose it. Thank you, Style4style.
Amazing app. We would love an offline mode to play crosswords on a plane though. Unfortunately we don't see a way to download a puzzle to play it in a little while. When we tried at the airport the list of puzzles went completely blank when it couldn't connect anymore. But for daily use this app is amazing.
Like the crosswords and the features of the app, but it goes fluky every once in a while. The latest glitch is that the app wont open up. Upon selecting app it opens for a fraction of a second and then disappears. Whats going on.
The app is great if you love solving crosswords. Plenty of available crosswords and its easy to use. The only issue is performance – our phone tends to heat up after 10 minutes of using the app causing us to have to switch off the app to prevent overheating. This also causes significant drain to the battery. If and when this is fixed, we would give it ten stars if possible.
The app has been broken for over a month now :/ cant do any puzzle without it freezing.
On our iPhone 13 Pro running the game for more than a few minutes results in a huge battery drain and a very hot phone. We love this app. Its easily the best crossword app on the store but in its current form we cant use it.
This is a really nice crossword app and have been using it for years. Recently though, it has been consuming tons of battery and the phone runs really hot. For fear of damaging our phone, we dont dare play more than 10 minutes :( Hopefully the performance issue can get resolved or we may need to find another app.
Battery drain is insane, our phone heats up and drops 20-40% battery in an instant while playing. When switching apps, puzzles get randomly reset to earlier stages, also happens when app becomes unresponsive. Please fix the battery issue most importantly of this app will be unusable.
Its rare these days to find an app thats genuinely free – no in-app purchases, no advertising, no upfront cost. And its even more rare for that app to actually be good. This is a fantastic app for the crossword lover. It provides access to multiple major newspapers crosswords, daily, totally gratis. It has all of the features you would expect a crossword app to have. We cant recommend it enough.
We love this! Loads of crosswords.
Even if you change theme from dark to light, it doesnt stay on light and turns it back to default to the phone theme.
It regularly resets the crossword back to an earlier state, so you lose all your progress. It works well as long as that doesnt happen.
App goes berserk and doesn't respond correctly to direction buttons. Can no longer tap on a single letter to correct it. Not all items respond in tools/set-up section. Also puzzle is no longer centered correctly on the screen – its covered at bottom by the keyboard on our iPad. Cant finish puzzles cuz keyboard wont stay out of the way. Puzzle doesnt respond to zoom-ins to certain sections either. Was previously enjoying it till this happened. Help.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.8
- Size: 11.94 MB
- iOS: 17.6 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Rohan Narayan]()
Last updated: 5th December 2025 | Genre: Word | Developer: Rohan Narayan