In the early days of podcasts, I enjoyed a couple radio shows distributed that way. As they went away, I find podcasts just a huge waste of my time. Judging from the commercials I occasionally see for podcasts, I’m convinced I made the right decision.
If there was ever an app that suffered from an impoverishment of marketing (especially relative to its richness of well designed features) it’s Pocket Casts. Its mental model is more or less exactly how most people would expect to use podcasts and it works great. It’s beautifully iOS native. It’s well maintained and for years and years has remained essentially bug free. And yet hardly anyone I know uses it. I’ve tried em all and it’s far and away the best.
That said, Listen Later is very tempting and I’ll be giving it a shot, though my last experience with Apple Podcasts, which was my player of choice for years, was really frustrating. Have they fixed the way the queue in Apple Podcasts works yet? That was always fundamentally broken.
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Started with Apple’s podcast app where I heard about Overcast, tried it and never went back! Much prefer Overcast because of its Smart Speed — it’s saved me 426 hours and Voice Boost.
Downcast. Chief reason is that it has no back end (server) component; it’s all on-device (and, optionally, on iCloud). It lacks a few little features–smart speed and voice boost–neither of which I’ve found particularly essential. Major gripe is iCloud syncing issues unless you’re very careful, but then, iCloud is a major gripe no matter what because of Apple’s silly rate-limiting nonsense. Many buttons and knobs to push in the app, a real power tool, permits footgun if not careful but also control, e.g. to mass download episodes, precisely control the playback queue, import media files, and so on. One-time purchase on each platform (Mac and iOS), long-term bliss. Love it.
Before that I was on Apple Podcasts. Yes it is mediocre in the extreme, no doubt about that, but it’s hard to argue with the strong platform integration (especially if you use HomePod) or listen to paid podcasts. I could never vilify it as much as some others have, even though its (non-optional) analytics collection and tight Apple Podcasts directory storefront integration irked me intensely, and it had a long and inglorious history of syncing issues. It also has fewer options for handling media files (no multiple-selection of items or import/export or storage outside its sandbox which was not the case for iTunes), and there is no (direct) support for importing/exporting podcast subscriptions either. So it’s basically a platform play. Nevertheless it does work and I’ll not take issue with peoples’ choices to use what works.
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I use Apple Podcasts on my Mac and Overcast on my iPhone with roughly equal time on both. Why don’t I use Overcast exclusively now that I can run it under macOS? Good question and I don’t have an answer. As Preet Bharara says “Stay Tuned”.
I also use BBC Sounds app on iPhone but just for one podcast, In Our Time.
Does BBC Sounds even count as a podcast app? I mean, no notifications, no way to view only unlistened podcasts, etc. It’s only a “podcast” because The Beeb says so.
Been using Downcast for ages; don’t see any reason to change.
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The only podcast I listen to is Sam Harris’s, and that just while I have a nice long straight razor shave. I get it straight (pun intended) from his website.
Hi, I use iCatcher which has sometimes a litte strange interface but until now I have not found another podcast manager with so many features.
Best,
Bernard
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You can get In Our Time in any podcast app. I listen to it in Overcast.
I’m a stick-in-the-mud still running iTunes (12.9.5) on macOS Ventura.
As I’ve probably mentioned several times in these forums, I have yet to find a suitable replacement that meets my needs.
Being an information junkie (“the first step is admitting you have a problem”) I’ve accumulated thousands of podcasts and videos containing information in various areas of interest to me (along with some entertainment, of course). iTunes continues to serve as a ‘database’ manager’ for such media. It also allows me to manually add media files that are not available thru normal ‘podcast’ channels. Smart playlists serve as the tool to query the database to find media related to whatever topical information I’m seeking. Part of the equation is adding ‘show notes’ to the (long) description field, and/or adding ‘tags’ in the Comments fields.
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Yes but the BBC makes the current episode freely available on BBC Sounds. So far as I can tell, the podcast app versions are delayed for week or more unless you pay a subscription.
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I switched to Overcast years ago after getting fed up with Apple Podcasts.
Since Tesla has added direct support for Apple Podcasts in their car OS, I have now (sorta) switched back to Apple so that the phone and car stay in sync.
I rarely use Spotify for anything, but I am surprised that no one has mentioned using Spotify for podcasts.
I wonder if TidBITS readers think of Spotify as a music app, rather than a more general media app, or if TidBITS readers tend not to use it at all.
(There was a time I used Spotify for music, but I’ve drifted away from it.)
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I’m really happy with Downcast. I adopted it before Overcast came out. I tried Apple Podcasts in the strange reel-to-reel tape UI days and it didn’t serve me well (even though I was one of those people that had actually used that kind of tape). I did try Overcast when it came out because so many people liked it, but I ended up preferring Downcast’s way of doing things. IIRC, I started listening to podcasts on my iPod touch and I still work with podcasts the same way today: never streaming, always downloaded from Wi-Fi and played from device. For this kind of use, Downcast is excellent. Which reminds me, it’s time to send them a tip in the app (since they do not charge any kind of ongoing fee).
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I use Apple Podcasts on iOS, mainly in the car. I don’t actively manage a whole bunch of podcasts, mainly to listen to the Mac Admins pod every week. I guess I used to devote more time to pods, when I commuted to work more frequently. I feel like it could be organized way better, and easier to find what I want to catch up with. The biggest issue I have with it is that podcasts frequently jump forward or backwards arbitrarily in the timeline, and it’s a real PITA when you’re driving. To be fair, it seems to be happening less often, but did happen just this morning, so…
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I use Overcast. For what it is worth, while building Listen Later, I’ve ran into numerous odd bugs in every podcast app. For example Overcast gets confused if a podcast feed has two episodes with the same title. The newer one never gets displayed. It also requires a title to show the episode. If you enter a dummy custom podcast URL for testing purposes, the Overcast server seemingly tries to fetch it forever. I am curious when it will stop. 
You can add a custom podcast URL to Apple podcasts only once. If you delete it, you cannot add it again. As a workaround, I add a random string to the URL to trick the app. After the latest iOS update, the app also cannot stream Listen Later podcast episodes although every other app can. (Something I still have to fix. )
Side note, the number one feature I want to add to EVERY music, podcast even browser app… basically to ANY app that stores and displays lists. PUT THE LAST ITEM I ADD TO THE LIST, TO THE TOP OF THE LIST.
Every app I use fails in this, there is no exception. The latest song I put to my playlist goes to the bottom of my playlist as the 159th song. You gotto be kidding me.
At times I want to apply for jobs at Apple, Google only so that I can implement this feature in the apps I use and then quit.
OK. My rant is over. I’ll see myself out.
Cheers,
Yalim
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Ditto all that. I’ve tried them all and prefer Downcast.
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The main reason I picked Pocket Casts years ago was that it was easier to listen to podcasts from older to newer. I think that has gotten easier with other apps since then, but I’m too lazy to try something new.
Well, to be fair, Spotify only became a podcast app later, after being best known as a long-established player in music streaming.
Amazon Music is also a podcast app, in the same way. I know this because they can’t get enough of telling me, in ads served by Acast-hosted podcasts, that as a Prime member I’m entitled to listen to many podcasts ad-free. A shame then—or maybe not—that Amazon Music is a total crock of an app in every conceivable way. After that, I’ll gladly take the ads!
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