Overcast: Podcast App

Update: lots of improvements to bring back usability and performance to the app. Thank you for bringing back streaming and swipe to see episode details, and for all the performance issue fixes. I’m renewing my subscription after all! 💛 Old review: Takes too many unnecessary taps to get a specific task done. The usability is now quite poor. Overall issues: - streaming a podcast no longer exists - the top 2/3rds of my screen are now real estate taken up by controls I don’t use and don’t care about - for my use case, I play episodes oldest to newest and I barely use playlists Inside each podcast: - after useless real estate, only 2 podcasts are above the fold in the list - scroll to find podcast I want. Tap it. Delete the newest episode. Switch to All tab. Tap to expand more options for an episode. Tap again to download. Too many taps, all for want of an episode. - tap the episode to play - oh never mind - I have to tap the expanded menu’s button to play. Ugh. - expand the player, intending to read the episode description. Oh look. MORE tapping. Tap an info button instead of quickly swiping to access description. - setting a podcast to download from oldest to newest, at 5 episode limit, doesn’t automatically download the oldest episodes - when completing an episode, the old ones are deleted as they should be, but no new episodes download to replace them I could spend all day pointing out all the unnecessary new tapping, and the new bugs. I don’t want to. You were loved, Overcast 💔 Time to check out the competition.

when the apple podcast updated with ios16 to suddenly save a MASSIVE amount of data to my phone, i needed an alternative. overcast has been more than a replacement: it is the holy grail of podcast apps. #1 star feature: your standard skip ahead and backwards buttons on your headphones or car are correlated to the skip ahead 30 seconds and backwards 15 seconds. how can apple not get on this? no longer do i need to suffer through ads while driving because i can’t look at my phone to skip ahead. this app makes podcasts truly hands free. #2 star feature: playlists. while apple would only allow you to create a playlist with the clunky “play next” button (that if you closed out the app would likely forget), overcast’s playlists feel intuitive and even group episodes automatically by podcast. i love planning out what i will listen to throughout the workday. again: so hands free, as i can plug in my headphones and never need to worry about what will play next, which apple often made me feel. #3 star feature: the search bar within each podcast. want to relisten to an episode and you vaguely remember the title or a line from the description? not only will you be able to search and find the episode, but when you tap on your result, it takes you to where the episode is in the podcast’s timeline. as someone who tends to listen to episodes in order, i like being able to remember context around an episode i go back to relisten to. there’s a lot more overcast has to offer, but these are the three that have been absolutely life changing for me. thanks overcast 👍

I made the switch to Overcast over a year ago after Apple overhauled their native Podcasts app in a way that I absolutely hated. I have never looked back. Overcast is superior in every regard. There are generous global settings you can fine tune, and you can alter any individual podcasts/series to differ from your global defaults. There are numerous ways to sort both shows and episodes. You can pin favorite shows to the top of the main list for quick access. A simple but clear little blue dot lets you know if a show has new/unplayed content. You don’t have to use playlists to listen to consecutive series episodes (either from oldest-to-newest or newest-to-oldest), but if you like making playlists Overcast has got you covered. There’s a basic main queue available as well as the ability to make endless custom playlists. You can also mark specific episodes with a star and then view all starred together in a single list. I use the star to keep track of episodes that are particularly hilarious, moving, shocking, and/or shareworthy. The bottom line from a prolific listener who consumes 3-10 hours of spoken audio daily: I’ve been using Overcast for well over a year now and couldn’t be happier with the experience. If you’re on the fence just stop the nonsense and get down from there before you fall and break something. There’s a better way to podcast, and this is it.