In general I like the new look of Overcast on iOS but played podcasts aren’t disappearing from the All Episodes playlist. I have stuff from late June (but probably played it sometime in July) and the settings are all to delete played episodes 24 hours after playing.
Anyone else having this issue and/or found a fix? My search skills aren’t turning anything up.
Thankfully I have not had that issue but I’ve had lots of issues with playlist order not sorting right.
This was a premature upgrade that should have waited further testing in my opinion, just to hit an arbitrary tenth anniversary “deadline” that nobody knew about or cared about. I spent the first two days having episodes stop playing rather than going to the next episode in the queue, and now three weeks needing to manually sort playlists because new episodes add at the beginning rather than the end.
My problem has been more noticeable in CarPlay which when I moved to a new podcast the old podcast is displaying while the new podcast is playing. I have reported it to the developer and await for a fix.
I have the same issue. Had to go in and delete a couple weeks worth of played episodes. I use the setting to keep the episodes in the playlist for 24 hours after they are played.
Did deleting work after that, or is it an ongoing issue?
Overcast has become almost unusable for me. Doesn’t keep the order I put a playlist in, doesn’t reliably download the next podcast when the previous is finished. It’s allowed to use cellular data but almost never does on its own. I need to find the time to set up Podcasts and see if that works for me, and if not, search the App Store for something that works the way Overcast used to.
I’m not having this problem. Played podcasts are removed automatically from my All Episodes playlist. I have it set to delete as soon as I finish a podcast. Note that you have to take a podcast all the way to the end (fast forward if you need to) for it to be deleted automatically. My ‘All Episodes>Playlist Settings’ sorts ‘Newest to Oldest by Podcast’ and that’s how they appear.
My main screen ‘[Gear]Settings>Nitpicky Details>Stop After Each Episode’ is turned off and it does automatically start the next podcast when I finish one. Again, either listen or fast forward all the way to the end.
My occasional downloads on cellular work fine.
It was turned off. It was a bug with Nitpicky details / Play top episode next that was fixed with the first update after the refresh (2024.7.1; it’s now up to 2024.7.2). There was no communication, however, that there was a bug in this until the update was delivered.
I’ve sent feedback about all of my issues but what I would love to see is a list of these known issues that are currently being fixed, because I don’t know whether he knows about these bugs. Marco has mastodon and threads accounts for the app which I follow on both services. Crickets.
Interesting. I’m running version 2024.8 (1015).
Ah, I do have 2024.8. I was going by the Settings / Send Feedback page, which doesn’t list the 2024.8 changelog.
The reviews in the App Store are so bad that I have made a point of not upgrading. The biggest fail for me is that it can no longer stream podcasts so everything must be downloaded. And of course that would rapidly fill up my devices and since the bulk delete capability was also removed maintaining my collection would be a nightmare.
Note to self: never release an app that 1) removes important functionality without notice (looking at you FireFox) and 2) no amount of real user testing is ever too much - test, test, test!
There is a good explanation for this: because of dynamic ad insertion (e.g., ads that are dynamically added to podcasts as they are downloaded, rather than when the episode is created, without consistent listening times for the ads), incomplete downloads as you stream can be problematic if you pause and the restart the episode.
So, for example, if you begin to stream a podcast that adds a 0:45 ad at the 1 minute mark, and listen until 5:00 and pause, if the full episode has not downloaded and you restart the stream later there may be an ad inserted at the 1 minute mark that is 38 seconds rather than 45 seconds, so if you restart at 5:00 you will have missed 7 seconds.
Marco Arment hinted that he heard a lot of complaints from people about the app not properly restarting an episode at the right place, and this was often the reason. So he has decided to stop supporting streaming and instead require a full episode download before playback begins, so the app can properly track when to restart play after a pause.
That said: other podcast apps support streaming, so there must be a way to manage this.
FWIW, the 2024.8.1 update that I downloaded yesterday (August 11) seems to have fixed the problems I was having with playlist queue management. I’d still have preferred he wait until other features like OPML export/import were completely done before releasing this update.
Doug, thanks for the info.
A quick perusal of the 1 star comments in App Store and elsewhere suggests that many users are very unhappy about the inability to stream podcasts. Marco should revert to offering this as an option. If it breaks things for some users they can just download everything. But forcing -everyone- to download all podcasts because -some- users were having a problem seems draconian. Absent the reversion my membership will not be renewed.
Right, if you need streaming, then Overcast is not the app to use, at least right now.
If you want to really read or hear why, rather than relying on my poor memory of what Marco said, there is a transcript of the ATP episode where he explained his reasoning: at David Smith’s podcast transcription search site (start at 1:04:42) or, of course, you can listen to the ATP episode 596 starting at that timestamp. (ATP 596: A New Foundation for Progress — Accidental Tech Podcast for links to different podcast apps or direct play.) Re-reading that transcript I get the idea that Marco is hoping that he won’t need to support streaming, but he does say:
So I decided let me try removing streaming because then think of everything I can remove. Think of all the different states. I can remove the buffering state. I can remove certain failure modes. I can remove all these retries. I can remove certain problematic behaviors that I have to deal with with this. It just makes everything so much simpler. So right now there is no streaming support. If you tap an episode that is not downloaded, it loads in the Now Playing screen, it downloads it, and then it starts playing. And in practice, you will probably not notice this very much. Because again, things now, they’re so fast for most people, and podcasts are so small, it’s fine. I recognize this is a risk. And the reality is too, my data shows that something like, it’s less than 10%, but it’s not that much less. It’s like 8 or 9%, something like that, of my active users use streaming mode by default. That’s not a lot in terms of percentage, but that is a lot of people. And I don’t want to massively set them on fire. So if you’re a streaming person, again, similar to the design changes, I would ask, give it a shot. See how this goes for you and let me know. If it’s really terrible this way, I can try to figure out some better solutions, but I think it’s fine this way.
Which suggests to me that he may support streaming again, since, as you say, people are giving him grief for it (with ratings and I am sure with feedback.)
I’m frequently listening to Overcast in places where I have no internet connectivity - when I am out running or walking, driving, etc. - and I live in relatively rural areas with really spotty cellular coverage, so pre-downloading of any playable media is something I need, and streaming is just not for me.
I still have the problem. I assume it will be caught in a release soon. I just go in and delete a bunch from time to time.
The Overcast update released a day or so ago has restored streaming and now allows different sorts for the unplayed and all episodes modes.
So far the last two updates have fixed all the issues I was having. I don’t stream, so that doesn’t mean anything to me, but I was having issues with playlists not sorting correctly when new episodes were added.
OPML export and import is still missing, so there are still features to add back.