Castro: Podcast App & Player

Used Daily & Unique: The iOS 26 refresh is looking more in line with liquid glass. I look forward to future iterations and refinements. Transcripts are very useful and helps avoid relistening to the same segment. Discover and advanced search, especially by episode versus podcast is spectacular. Show art full screen previews are very appreciated, especially with shows that feature dynamic art changing throughout the week. Show notes are even more useful and easy to navigate, along with the chapters selector. Episode management with episode limits is easy and stress free. Search in History, Library, and Starred is awesome for finding old gems. Sideloads is next level for listening to video podcasts that you want to save. The only features we lack are from podcasting 2.0. Features that worked perfectly that were inexplicably removed or changed drastically: I cannot see where I’m at in the podcast without the timeline on the playback screen. It was removed from the bottom of the app screen when in Castro, outside of the playback screen. The scrub bar is so thin now your thumb covers it. There is a ton of negative space left between the timeline and controls as a result.

This used to be my favorite podcast player, after using apple’s podcast app for the longest time. I even purchased the app back when it cost money to own and use, not sure if its free now or not. I loved the clean, hassle free functionality of the app and it was the only podcast player on my phone for the longest time. This was definitely a 5 star app back when they didn't require you to pay for a subscription in order to use all the functions of the app. Now, I understand that everything is moving to the subscription thing because every service tries to continue making money someway but I just opened the app today, went to the inbox and noticed that they added promoted adds at the bottom, which by the way totally ruins the clean look of the app but I also went into the options to see if this was something I accidentally turned on, but come to find out, its a new feature which can not be turned off without a subscription. This would be totally fine if this was a free app, but mined you, I purchased the app already and I have a problem with app creators who limit your functionality even after you purchased their product. So, because of this, the app has dropped down to a one until this is fixed. By the way, all functionality should be available for those that have already payed for the app. Your customers shouldn't have to pay twice!

I love everything about this app. The design—I love how compact the episodes are in the queue. So many other podcast apps are bloated design-wise, where you can only see 3 or so episodes at a time. I hate that. I don’t want to be inundated with info. I just wanna see the titles. I love the drag and drop (in particular the ability to move multiple items at once.) The inbox is brilliant. There some podcasts with multiple formats of which I only like one. This allows me to archive the others without having them dumped in my queue and downloaded. But my hands down favorite features are the archive & history. There are some podcasts that I don’t listen to on a regular basis but like to check in on every so often. This allows me to follow them so that I don’t forget about them but to go find an episode when I want to. And of course history. I’m usually on the go when listening and don’t have time to note episodes I really enjoy. With the history I can do back and see what I heard. Sometimes the impact of an episode doesn’t hit for a week or more. With history I can still go find them. Simple but essential. And the dates they were listened to on is saved as well! —just an impressive level of care. Fingers crossed for smart speed/silence skipping, a speed between 2x & 3x and custom playback settings for individual shows — nobody should listen to Song Exploder at 2x.