iCatcher! Podcast App

I've been using this app for many years, and it is by far the best podcast app out there. It has tons of features and configuration options. Support of the app is also great and not only for reporting issues, but also feature requests. I recommend this app to anyone who wants a great app for podcasts. UPDATE:this app just keeps getting better and better with each frequent update! 5 stars!! UPDATE UPDATE: Loving the new night time mode. Great app. I recommend it for your podcasts. UPDATE: it’s a bunch of years later, and this is still the BEST podcast app out there. Always getting updates and added features (some feel like Easter eggs. Lol). Amazing app and a must have. UPDATE: just had to use the feature where there is a playable audio file on a webpage, copy the link and then import it. Works like a charm. Very useful feature. Love this app and have had it since almost day one of it being on the App Store! UPDATE: Still loving the app. 2023 Update: still the best of casting app around. The developer really cares for their app and it shows. STILL loving this app all these years later. THE best podcast app out there.

I really like the functionality of iCatcher. From the smart playlists to refined selection filters to keeping track of unsubscribed podcasts to defining exactly how many new episodes I want to download to setting a start and end offset so I can skip the opening and closing credits (and ads), and much much more… So why only four stars? Well, there could be some improvements. For instance, the only playback speed under x1 available are ½ and ¾! Meanwhile, I can play faster at 1½, 2x, 2½, 3x, etc, which I never do. But if I want to go to 3/4, I have to cycle through all the higher speeds before getting to what I want. Meanwhile, I have to rewind to listen to what I missed. And then, there are bugs… The app does not play well with iOS. It crashes periodically, leading to a rebuild of the episode database. When I press the play button on my ear phones, even if that was the last app I used, I get sent back to Apple Music, instead of iCatcher. I have to manually open the app, which is not safe when I’m driving. The episode list of unsubscribed podcast does not get refreshed, so I can’t search through it unless I delete the podcast then subscribe to it. Then unsubscribe. And these are just a few of the minor annoyances. I hope they clean up the whole thing.

This app does one thing very well: it does not collect your user data. Other than that, I’ve been using this for months now and it is very frustrating to use. It has a million features, but half of them don’t work consistently, and the other half are often quite confusing to figure out. For one thing, often it will decide that it can’t play an episode that you were in the middle of that you were previously playing. It will give you some error and ask you to re-download or force quit or just dismiss the error. Sometimes I’ve gotten it to play the episode later by deleting it and manually re-adding it to a podcast list. Other times that just doesn’t work and I just can’t listen to that episode ever again no matter what I try. It doesn’t have a basic recently played list. It has supposedly that will auto fill, but this also doesn’t actually capture all of the episodes you may have recently played. It will randomly tell you that a podcast you were subscribe to isn’t available. This just scratches the surface. I really wanted to like it, because I believe it’s the only one that I found that doesn’t collect my user data. But it has a lot of problems, and the fact that I’ve just spent the last 15 minutes trying to get it somehow to play the episode I was in the middle of the other day, makes me want to delete it entirely. I think it’s time for me to search again for another player.