We’re Launching a New FanGraphs Mobile App
We are launching a new FanGraphs mobile app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices. You may remember our previous attempt at an iOS app over a decade ago, but this is a completely new app that more closely reflects our website, built with a native mobile experience specifically for phones in mind.
The app is free to download, but similar to our website, it has ads unless you are signed in as a FanGraphs Member. Any customization features in the app will also only be available to Members.
As we launch today, the app has player pages, scores, and standings available. We plan on adding more features from the site in the future.
The search page is probably be the easiest way to find a player you are looking for. Within the app’s player pages, we have a quick look screen, season stats, splits, and game logs:
The scores screen has that day’s scores, along with the win probability each game’s teams. You’ll also find the lineups for games that haven’t started yet along with each game’s win probability graph, play log, box score, and line score:
The standings screen has current division, league, and MLB standings, as well as our playoff odds:
I wanted to review a few settings you can change within the app.
The app supports your mobile device’s text size accessibility options. Additionally, you can choose to make the font size on the data grid smaller to give you more columns of data on a given screen. This can be found in More >> App Settings:
We created a recycled header option for the season stats and game logs. This puts the stat header every X number of rows, so you don’t have to scroll to the top to read which stat you are looking for. This can be found in the controls for either the season stats or the game logs:
For Members, we’ve also included custom dashboards for player pages, which are set on the site:
While we were developing the app, we spent a lot of time thinking about how the mobile and desktop uses for FanGraphs might be different. Phones aren’t as conducive to heavy research as a web-based desktop experience, but there are plenty of times when you aren’t near your computer and want to use the site. We are trying to create the best experience for that, whether it’s discussing the postseason picture while out with friends, or checking in on how a particular player’s season is going while you’re at the ballpark.
As we continue to build the app, we’ll look to usage data and user feedback to determine what features to add next. Among the features we are considering for the app’s next iteration are articles, leaderboards, prospect information and RosterResource features. We are also considering adding push notifications, but we want to know if our Members want them and what use cases they might want them for. Please let us know what would be most useful to you when you are using FanGraphs on the app.
I wanted to give credit and say thanks to several people. Luke Hooper designed the splash screen, graphics, and icons for the app. He took the ideas we had and brought them to another level. David Appelman created FanGraphs and has developed the site for over 17 years. Much of the app was built upon the data loaders and data APIs that he has created and maintained. Meg Rowley helped with all of the focus groups and with the concept and decision-making throughout the app’s development. Her feedback and influence on all aspects of the site and the app is ubiquitous and appreciated. Finally, extra thanks to all of FanGraphs’ staff and industry contacts, as well as the substantial number of my friends, who served as beta testers or participated in a focus group.
We hope you enjoy, and thank you for supporting FanGraphs!
I build things here.
Looks great! Any chance you can build Ottoneu and FG/Rotographs articles into the app too?
This is awesome!! Well done!
great!!!!!!
The first time I ever instantly downloaded something from an “ad” – even if that ad was an article. Thank you, ya’ll really are amazing <3
I think this is basically the first app I’ve downloaded for my phone that is for fun rather than travel / navigation / saving stuff I’ve taken pictures of as pdfs (okay that’s just the one).
This is awesome, already downloaded it! Will the stats pages work offline? I’d love to be able to reference player stats/splits at any time
Offline capabilities are something we are considering. Right now the app still needs an active internet connection to load current data. Pulling in player data for all players is quite a lot to download, and would have to be updated at least once a day. But we’ll look into it as a member feature, especially if enough people want it.
Let’s go!
YES!!!!
Awesome!
I’m struggling to think of times when I might want push notifications – no offense meant, just I see the app as a really valuable resource to look things up (and a way better method of deciding what game to watch, vs. MLB’s official site), but not necessarily a source of news?
The way to go might be to think about what news FG can push to users which won’t be considered “news” by the other apps we all have downloaded (MLB, The Athletic, etc.). A really big shift in playoff odds? Somebody on pace for 10 WAR?
And of course I don’t think anyone would mind pushes for major publication events (new year’s ZiPS projections, prospects week, new trade value rankings, etc.).
Okay, I just thought of a push notification I would like. If NERD scores ever came back, an alert before the day’s games start saying “NERD Score Game of the Day: Team vs. Team, 9 out of 10. Preferred broadcast: Team.” I miss NERD.
Wouldn’t mind getting push notifications 30 mins before a chat!
I second this. I was also struggling to think of something I would need push notifications for, until now.
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely don’t want to make a feature that isn’t used. Editorial uses like the big features debuts, chats, or even customizable author or topics notifications are things that I’ve brainstormed.
Customizable author/topic/chat notifications is a really interesting idea. Just don’t tell the authors the notification power rankings!
Runs really smooth, this is great.
Feels like the next addition has to be the leaderboards.
For someone not prone to downloading a lot of apps, are there strong reasons to download this one over just using the website as is?
Just from my 5 minutes of use, I can say the player pages are SO MUCH easier to read and load much quicker.
I just downloaded it just to see what it was like because I also am not prone to downloading many apps. There are three tabs at the bottom of the app–a search for players, a scores page, and a standings page. It seems a little easier to do each of those three things but it’s not dramatically so. However, it is far, far easier to read.
I suspect that I will not download it to our house iPad because we’ve got a much bigger screen there and I don’t need it, but I am glad I downloaded it for my phone.
I tried out the app earlier today, it ran much faster than trying to access the website on my phone.
Christmas in August. Thank you, Santa!
My pleasure!
Just downloaded and signed in. Off the cuff reactions:
Thanks for doing this – really appreciate it!
Thank you!
Once we have editorial content integrated, we’ll definitely have a more content-rich home screen. I’m also hoping to include member customization features for that home screen, because people have different preferences on what to see or the information density.
Yeah I would say that the leader boxes (currently Aaron Judge / Kevin Gausman) are just not necessary at all. I would definitely put the most recent 3-4 articles on the landing page instead, maybe one “hot” article in addition to that.
Yeah, this is basically where my head’s at. I don’t visit fangraphs to get a daily update on the WAR leader. It’s something I check monthly, if that. It’s probably miscast as the lead.
Definitely agree. I have FG website on my home screen rather than app – just so I can read the articles when I don’t have access to my PC.
Big fan of what you all have done with this so far! I echo some other comments that adding articles would be my biggest requested change. As a smaller note, making some of the tables more easily sortable (such as the Playoff Odds tables) would be nice.
Thanks again for all that you all do!
Developing the sortable UX is on the roadmap towards leaderboards!
Seannie D my man! App looks great on my iPhone.
lets goooooooo
At laaaaast!!!
Very good so far! If the box scores are up to par I can finally stop using the at bat app
Also please please add HR & SB for hitters and Win, Save, era and whip to pitchers in the box scores. 5×5 fantasy baseball I’m sure is a huge driver of your user base
Thanks, that’s good feedback and something we’d like to do.
The web site is enough for me but if you’re going to do apps (which seems reasonable) you may want to broaden your Android distribution beyond just Google.
Amazon fire tablets and sticks are selling by the tens of millions and, more importantly, Windows 11 now supports Android apps (where they serve as widgets, effectively) and they use the Amazon App store. That opens distribution to hundreds of PC users. Useful if you doimplement chat alerts.
So unless you intend to do a PC app, distributing through Amazon will increase your reach. Google is not the only significant Android App store anymore.
Just a thought.
Downloaded and looks pretty good. But right off the bat I would say that all the boxes on the home screen could stand to be at least 50% smaller dimensionally. Everything is the size of my earbuds case while only containing a name a the amount of accrued war.
Leaderboards are really difficult to manipulate on a phone, so I would appreciate adding those! Thanks!
I’m rarely on my laptop, so most of my searches are in my phone. Trying to look at multi-year splits or select a specific team using the drop-down menu in the current UI with a phone is nearly impossible. I’ve been waiting for an app for this reason alone for a long, long time!
This is the type of product I want to work on. Congrats to the tech team. This is looking awesome!
Hell yes!!!
Ostensibly enthusiastic!
Just a massive, massive improvement on the mobile site interface for looking at stats. Incredible work!
This is really cool, seems to run great, excited to pull it up at the ballpark. For what it’s worth the Fangraphs sections I find myself pulling up on my phone the most often are articles, The Board, and leaderboards – in that order but articles by far work the best on the regular mobile site so while it might be nice to have everything in one place that would be a lower priority for me.
Agree completely. I like articles and the various standings/playoff pages, but those work just fine on the mobile site. The leaderboard and the Board pages are hard to navigate (though, not to brag, after trying to use them for years I have gotten pretty good at clicking on the right thing).
I think I’ll stick to the website. Appreciate the effort though.
Love it; articles and leaderboards are definitely what I’d want to see next.
Small thing, but personally I don’t like the fact that on a player’s page, you can swipe to switch between Quick/Stats/Splits/Game Log tabs. Or rather, I don’t like it in conjunction with the fact that you need to scroll horizontally to see all of the stats as well. I realize that it’s supposed to be if you swipe on the team/year it switches tabs, and if you swipe elsewhere it scrolls through the stats, but it’s easy to accidentally do one or the other, and it’s just a small annoyance when the tap-to-change tab option at the top of the screen does that job just fine.
But again, that’s just a minor annoyance and I think the idea and execution are both great otherwise! Can’t wait to see it get fleshed out more!
Thanks, we are considering adding an option to have a more straight-forward, less-glossy tab navigation. It’s definitely possible if enough people find this to be an issue, we’ll add that as an app setting.
Wooooo
Effectively elated!
Why is there no way to get to the Leaderboards? Certainly that must be one of your most popular pages, and it’s probably the first place I go 80% of the time I come to this site.
Another suggestion is that you don’t have a playoff standings. There’s playoff odds and regular standings but you definitely need a playoff standings, or I suppose wildcard standings would be the gist of it.
Leaderboards are on our roadmap. With all the controls and options, it’s a more difficult feature to implement, but we are working towards implementing them within the mobile app.
And we have a few standings / playoff odds improvement we want to make especially as the playoff race heats up in September.
Love the app I found it a week ago and when I watch old games on you tube I quickly look up the players numbers on the app, I hope you add the articles to the app as well down the line.
Personally, I would love to see custom teams make its way in there eventually
It’s a great idea. It looks weird on my iPhone, but I’m guessing the bugs will be fixed over time
Wonderful, it looks great. For scorekeeping, a display of plate appearance results for the day next to each player’s name in the box score would be wonderful–basically adding the “Live Stats” table from each player’s page next to their name in the box score would be so helpful.
As for future features, I know that a simple reader view of blog posts would be a game changer for me personally and if you had to direct resources to only one thing, that would be the most helpful. After that, adding leaderboard support would be the most helpful as those are the two resources on Fangraphs I use the most.
On push notifications, I think the ability to add notifications for new articles would be nice, but can’t really think of too many things I’d want from notifications.
Thanks for pushing this out, it’ll be a great resource to have on hand.
thank you guys, i have been waiting for this for a long time
Instant download. I still remember the old app, it was one of the first I ever downloaded from the app store back in the day. Glad to have Fangraphs back on my phone!
Not a bad start at all, though would agree with some of the other comments that the home screen is maybe not well used – the large tiles leading to the WAR leaders doesn’t seem that helpful. Personally, the main reason I visit Fangraphs these days is to look at the RosterResource pages, the depth charts and projected starters, and of course the prospects coverage on The BOARD – would really love to see the RR and BOARD integrated into the app.
So excited about this! It really looks great already. One piece of feedback, I would appreciate the ability to save certain settings. For example, when I look at a player’s splits, I always like to see the “advanced” section. However, even when I toggle that on in the app, it defaults back to only showing standard when I close the app and come back, so I have to toggle advanced on every time.
I’m so excited about this! I’ve been wanting a FanGraphs app for years, so this is exceptional news. I’m enjoying the app quite a bit based on my first few uses.
On push notifications: Being able to customize push notifications for new articles would be amazing once they’re integrated into the app. Like being able to sign up for notifications for articles by specific writers, in a specific series (Trade Value, Top Prospects, etc.), or even articles that mention specific teams and players would be great. If RosterResource comes to the app, I think it’d be nice to be able to sign up for push notifications when your favorite team makes roster moves. It’d help fans stay on top of even the minor changes to their favorite clubs’ roster. Notifications for updates on top prospects, a specific team’s prospects, or just new write-ups for 50+ FV prospects would be a welcome option.
Other general feedback: When viewing a game’s box score, I think it’d be great if tapping somewhere on the win probability graph jumped you to that spot in the play log. It’d make navigating to later innings a lot faster. Swiping to see more stats in a table on a player’s page often led to me swiping to the game log or “quick” tabs instead of just moving the current table I was viewing. I think fine-tuning that could be helpful. I know articles and leaderboards are the top priorities for app implementation, but RosterResource pages would be great as well. I know they work much better on the website, but checking the probables grid and lineup tracker has been invaluable for me as a big fantasy player.
Oh! Also, push notifications for when someone replies to your comment on an article.
That’s a really stupid idea
(can you imagine getting a push just to see this?)
J.k. I actually like this idea.
Huge accomplishment! Thanks for making this available.
Small nitpick:
If I’m looking at a large-ish player stats table (say, right now I’ve got Max Fried’s career stats up) — I would love if the top row (that shows the stat categories) would “freeze” in the same way that the first two columns currently do.
Anyhow, this is great.
have you tried the recycled header option mentioned in the article? it’s not exactly the same as what you’re suggesting, but serves the same purpose
Awesome!
Sad to hear this, but I guess that explains why the site has been getting increasingly dysfunctional for me. Everybody wants an app then ignores the website functionality. There’s only so much room on my phone for apps.
I think customizable push notifications would work. Maybe a member can select to get a notification whenever an article is tagged with their favorite team or certain players that they select (the latter may be difficult). Perhaps a push at the start of a new series of articles like when you start Trade Value series or mid year top 30 prospects series or position killers series. Just for the first one, not for each one that comes out. Something like “Trade Value series begins with honorable mentions today!” I’ve seen people ask for chat start notifications too.
Of course when you can, get article and sortable leaderboards and the rest on there! Love that you guys have an app now. Very excited for the future!
Argh, it keeps telling me my password/log in is incorrect when it’s not.
Awesome! And I’m in agreement with the other commenters about articles the app, that’s would make things much more convenient!
Looks terrific. Congrats. I would personally prioritize some team-oriented stats. Specifically would love to see an expanded standings page. Aldo would like to see individual player stats grouped into each team. Thanks!
RE: Push notifications would LOVE to see them connected with the projection systems . Example Enable push notification if any player above a certain projection criteria is involved in a transaction.
Heck would love to get a push every time a player in the AL West has an article written about them. This is a huge undertaking by the site and I am pleased as punch it’s as fun and functional as it is on day friggin 1.
Obligatory back notgraphs and whatnot but this rocks 🙂
I would like push notifications for specific tabs in articles. For instance, if an article about my team comes out, I’d like notice. But I don’t want a notice for every article.
Another push notification idea would be selecting win prob push notifications.
if i’m watching a game and either team’s WP% goes above 85%, sent me an alert etc. That would be sweet.
This is great. Do you know if you will be adding things like 2B, 3B, HR and SB to the bottom of the box scores on scores section of the app?
FYI: The Current Standings in the More section actually link the projected standings.
I did discover you can pull up 2 player pages at the same time. You can pull up a WAR leader’s player page in the Home tab and another player in the Search tab. The player pages will remain open as you switch between the 2 tabs.
This probably isn’t on purpose, but it is nice to be able to easily flip between player pages to compare them.
I think I paid $.99 for the original app. Glad to see another one.
Amazing stuff Sean!
When does the Not Graphs App launch?
Love this! +1 to reading your articles in the app as well.
It’ll be great to see all the functions of the website built into it eventually.
I don’t know if it’s possible, but a feature I’d love to see on the app (and the website too) is a random player button. Sometimes I just want to look through player pages but don’t have a specific idea in mind, and would love to just be able to just hit a button and have a random active MLB player pop up.
Yes, please add the articles and comment section. An app should be able to replace the website.
Looking forward to continued enhancements.