Marco Polo - Video Messenger

60 of 100 · reviews
4.8of 5 · store
2,152,239ratings on the App Store
489reviews read

An editorial reading of the saved reviews

Marco Polo is an async video messenger for family and close friends: record a video, the other person watches when convenient. The core works, but captions have been moved behind a paywall, recordings sometimes cut off mid-message, and transcripts recently disappeared.

Screenshots

What people use it for

Families and close friends who want to see each other's faces but live in different time zones

What reviews praise

The video-voicemail format removes the pressure to reply immediately and keeps communication feel personal even across large time zone gaps.

What reviews complain about

Subtitles and transcripts have been moved to a paid subscription, cutting off deaf and hard-of-hearing users.

What users experience

7 excerpts from the breakdown. These are individual cases, not a verdict on all users.

Best app to keep in touch with loved ones. Especially when you live on opposite coasts/ different time zones. So convenient. Message whenever & watch when you have time! I love Marco Polo!

Marco Polo has helped me and my friends stay completely connected during this busy phase of life, so when we are able to get together in person there's no "catching up" it's just having fun together!

My wife is deaf and can only watch our family Polos with captions! Very ableist and a dirty trick by the developers and needs to be reversed! Even people who aren't deaf or hard of hearing may like this feature to watch a Polo without the sound as to not disturb others.

The easiest way to communicate . . . . . . "text messages" lead to misunderstanding a lot!

I wish it was free to close the app while listening to the video I want the ability to put the phone in my pocket while listening with my EarPods without the video stopping

It's really a huge disappointment. My whole family loved Marco Polo. It was our preferred method of keeping in touch. We would use the Sharecast feature for video updates of our kids. The ability to upload videos, the unlimited storage, even the transcripts of Polos was great.

Hopefully this is just a bug, but the absolute best feature and the reason me and my developers where using pro and sharing was the transcript copy feature. This has been removed and it is rather frustrating.