Downcast

I am so grateful for this app! I have been looking for years for a usable podcast app (since about iOS 12**) that would allow my simple use case of subscribing to one or more podcasts, repeatedly listening to them in chronological order on autoplay, and being able to manually choose when to delete the downloads — without ads, without downloading and/or playing stuff I don’t want, and without massive memory leaks** . This app, by contrast, for $2.99 lets me do all that and more! They provide settings for many useful features (# eps to keep, playback order, playback speed, and more), with the additional ability to both set global defaults and differ from them for individual podcasts if desired. They thoughtfully provide an option to subscribe to lesser-known podcasts via URL! The app is elegant and thoughtful yet intuitive! In fact, the way I would characterize this app overall is “intuitive and well-designed!” Many thanks! ••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• (**after which the apple podcast app seems to have created a massive memory leak that, in direct opposition to my settings, takes up 10-20 GB of space continually downloading eps I have deleted and deleting eps I have saved and continually veers off into playing random things despite my having that disabled and in direct contravention of a number of other settings. It’s as if they only use case they implemented is to play the five latest eps of your subscriptions — except my partner says that doesn’t work, either!)

I have been using Downcast for over 5+ years, and it is the only Podcast software I use! It is so easy, and the it provides the User a robust amount of app Settings that allows them to customize their listening experience to what best meets their needs. Some of the podcast I listen too require Passwords, and the “Downcast” App makes it very easy for the User to access their paid podcasts using the Username/Password features. I give the App 5-Stars because I think it is by far the best podcasting App out there. But, it is not perfect - as if I could add of change one thing, I would make the Search for new podcasts feature more robust and show more podcasts than what it provides by default. Sometimes if you do not have the RSS URL link, searching for popular podcasts may not show up in the “Search for new podcast” features. Even though this is annoying, what “Downcast” does overall - this little annoying issue isn’t enough for me not to still give the Overall App 5-Stars. If you want a very customizable podcast listening experience, you cannot go wrong with using this App. Again - I use this App everyday and it really has stood the test of time!! This is my one and o lt podcast listening software experience, and I want to thank the Developers for their awesome work on the App.

But I still have feature request that seems to go no where: episode queuing. I subscribe to WAY more podcasts than I can actually listen to, and I seldom listen to every episode of any podcast. I go through my new episodes every time I update looking for new episodes and decide which ones I might be actually interested in hearing. I would like to be able to instruct the app to play any episode NEXT while I’m listening, thus building a queue of various episodes to play from different podcasts based on what I am most interested in hearing. Currently, I have no way to note or designate what I want to listen to next in the app - the best I can do is note what podcast and episode to play next in Notes or jot it down. The lack of such a simple convenience mystifies me. It seems like such a simple thing to be able to string together a queue of episodes to play in desired sequence without having to stop and hunt for a new episode to play after the one I’m listening to ends. I like to listen when I’m doing other things, often with my hands, and it is annoying to interrupt my flow repeatedly to search for and start the next episode I want to hear. Please give me this feature!