Overcast App Reviews

Love the update but for one thing. Love the update! The app is fast and responsive and doesn’t lag and crash constantly anymore!!! I’ve been an Overcast user for nearly the 10 years it’s been around. My only complaint about the update is that my list of podcasts still shows “current” podcasts that have no new episodes I haven’t listened to (or deleted) yet. I prefer to only see podcasts on the list that have a new episode I need to listen to. I’m not sure if there’s still a way to do this with the update, but I poked around the settings and I don’t see any way to fix it. I follow tons of podcasts and this means I have to click on every single one to see if there’s actually an episode there I haven’t listened to or of the list is still blank. Please fix this and it will be a 5 star!!!!! Edit: also think it’s absurd that there’s no longer an option to stream podcasts and you’re forced to download them before listening. I’ve been listening to podcasts for a decade+ and have never downloaded, only streamed, with zero issues. Now I’m having a major lag time to start episodes because they’re downloading first, and I’m worried about phone storage with the number of podcasts I listen to. It’s also very difficult to find the sleep timer now.

Many good features. Really like this app. First off, all podcasts sound good, really good, thank you. I appreciate the custom timer feature - not just set amounts to choose from. The tiny app size is nice, even though phone storage is getting huge. The view that shows which specific section (chapter) of the podcast is playing is really neat. Speed and voice control are good. Mark as played is helpful. Dark mode is nice, and is even a choice for the app icon (with a subscription). The privacy page for each show is nice (seems like some shows still need to make one). If possible, would like volume control on the lock screen (without having to use the control center). A "Pause all downloads" button or the like would be nice. It'd be more convenient for the Unplayed, and All pages of a podcast to stay pinned at the top of the podcast list when scrolling down, so that it'd be easier to get to the unplayed section, and then maybe even get back to the same scroll position on one of those pages after switching to the other. Would like to be able to use the widget to navigate to an episode's chapter, and adjust the sleep timer. Would like to have a convenient way to re-arrange playlists. The unplayed, active, and archive pages are good but, it's be nice to have a page that essentially makes a 'pinned' list combining all selected podcasts whether they're 'active' or not. Interested to see what improvements will be made. The app is worth the subscription.

Honestly, reviewing because it said in settings they would never interrupt to ask for a review. This app is the best podcast app I have used. Way better than the stock iOS podcast app and is incredibly thoughtful in its details. When you pause, it skips back a second or two so your brain can pick up where the conversation was when it resumes, and using the skip ahead buttons will adjust to land between words. It will speed up or cut out intros, and while digging through the settings I couldn’t help but notice the option in there that also informed me they wouldn’t ask for a review with a pop-up (like every other app all the time!) so it inspired me to make this review. I also noticed that with a premium subscription you can upload your own files which is perfect for listening to old radio shows I have archived but playback of a 4 hour show is nearly impossible without an app designed to handle long format talk based files, and this is going to be perfect. I didn’t realize it was an option and thought premium just took away ads. That alone isn’t worth paying for to me, but now that I saw this they are going to have a new customer.

Baffling. I have been a long time Overcast user - Smart Speed has saved me 1969 hours beyond speed adjustments, for what it’s worth - but this may be the final straw for me. I adjusted to the last major update after several months but I never felt like it got back to being as good as it was before the last major revision. At that point I stopped subscribing, but I kept using it since it was still the best podcast app, even if it was worse than it was before and I had to fundamentally change how I used the app. This update I’m actively looking at new podcast apps. It’s not just little things at this point - my queue doesn’t drop or delete episodes after they’ve finished or when I’ve clicked the checkmark to mark listened, and it looks like the “unplayed” view is just gone - or maybe it’s buried under six levels of menus and I haven’t found it yet, but in any case it’s lost all ability to tell what shows have a new episode. I can’t easily add episodes into my queues or rearrange them, I’m not sure why, and “play next” seems to be totally broken. Previously played episodes get downloaded and played from the start with no explanation. I simply don’t understand how this is any way an improvement for anyone. I hope against hope the clumsy UX changes will be fixed, but things are trending in the wrong direction, so you might just want to look at alternatives.

Once Great, but Desparately Needs Help!. Update: Upon further review, this app will no longer download episodes via wi-fi AT ALL! Set it to wi-fi only, turn off cellular data, and it’s completely useless! So, if you want to use Overcast much, you better have an unlimited data plan. In addition to this, the developer offers ZERO technical support; he even tells you this in the app info like we’re supposed to feel sorry him. Well, I feel sorry for folks stuck with a podcast app that won’t download podcasts! Someone needs to fix this festering pile of poo for me to continue using it. Original Review: I’ve used Overcast for years and absolutely loved it, until recently. This app has a major issue with episodes getting stuck in “waiting to download.” They won’t download until you actually play them, and if you aren’t on wi-fi at that time, tough - just smoke right through your cellular data plan. I’ve tried everything I can imagine to fix it, and nothing works. This issue has been cropping up for YEARS now, and the developer hasn’t addressed it. It’s too bad, because it is a great app, otherwise. But, this is a dealbreaker - especially if you listen to a lot of podcasts, as I do.

OVERCAST is the BEST podcast app!’. I got so frustrated with the Apple podcast app (constant changes that only worsened the user experience, increasingly non-intuitive “features” and controls), that I shopped around and found many positive comments about OVERCAST. Sure enough, OVERCAST has made me a happy listener once again, and I now can’t imagine using a different app for podcasts. My feed of podcasts is ridiculously long; some are regular listens, others I visit occasionally. The OVERCAST app helps me organize my pods and track my usage, has great features that no other app has, and sticks to its winning formula. (When it rolls out a new feature, it’s clearly explained and actually makes for an actual improvement.) You’ll note that there are visual ads at the bottom, which I find unobtrusive, and these occasionally suggest a pod worth checking out. (You can also get rid of of those ads for a very modest fee.) This app was clearly developed by someone who thinks about the user/listener experience, and cares about quality and clarity. Sending kudos to OVERCAST from podcast fan in Boston!

Great app - well not as great. I have used this app for years and have been pleased with its progression until now. The latest redesign has not been user friendly and there are bugs introduced that are very annoying. For the us particularly annoying is the Queue is no longer reliable at downloading podcasts. I use to be able to load up a bunch of podcasts and it would play the. One right after the other. That is no longer the case. It will randomly have a podcast that doesn’t download, and these are podcasts that I have listened to for years without any download issues. It’s now broken with the update. Once was what stable is very unstable now. Hopefully this can get fixed soon to restore this valuable feature. ————— I have used this app for quite a while and it has just gotten better over time. It’s easy to use and is responsive. On most occasions, I’ve never noticed a lag from when I select and episode to play and when it starts playing. Other apps of this type that I’ve used exhibit a noticeable delay. My one feature request is to provide a way to quickly find podcasts that I’ve started but have not yet finished. I have different podcast tiers. When a tier 1 pops up, I stop my tier 2 to listen to the new one. I would like to easily go back to the previous podcast.

Thank you!. To me listening to podcasts should be quick, easy and done without thought. Overcast is providing just that. You have all the functions you need in the free version and the adds are not intrusive. For me it was well worth the $10/yr to support the future development. Even though I consider myself an early adapter and enjoy changes to improve a product, I basically stopped listening to podcasts after the iOS update which changed the podcast app drastically. It is possible I am more forgiving to bumps in the development process when it is a small company or new product, neither of which describes Apple. With that said overcast does have some limitations that to me do not hinder the daily listening experience. The biggest I have noticed is searching for podcasts I am not always able to find what I’m looking for. An easy solution is to copy the url from Apple podcast app, use that in the search and there is no problem finding it. I also haven’t figured out a way to better organize all of my podcasts.

Still the Best & Still Seeing Updates. Been using it for quite a few years now. Smart speed is great, the design is clean, it’s lightweight and responsive, the price is low for what you are getting, and ads are not intrusive if you go with the free plan (and may actually be relevant since they are only for other podcasts and doesn’t just throw you to the Adsense wolves). The recent update and transition to Swift UI has changed things to be sure and I’m not the biggest fan of horizontal playlist scrolling or the sleep timer being moved behind a second tap. But the app has seen a half dozen minor tweaks and bug fixes responding to community feedback in the past few weeks and more are certain to come. 5 stars because it’s still the best out there AND actively being worked on by a developer who is monitoring feedback after a transition to make fixes and adjustments quickly based on feedback. This app started out as a reasonably barebones but clean podcast player and added features over the years to become the best. I have no reason to expect that the quality will not continue to increase after the lateral move this update represents.

Still the best one. The recent update brought changes to features, and also a much snappier app. I really like the new placement of audio controls and chapters. I disable one tap play because I often like to look at notes first. The removal of streaming options I miss only a little, but understand that big podcasts (that I don’t listen to) dynamically insert ads, making predictable streaming impossible. If you love podcasts, this is the one to get. It has great discovery and organization tools, but the audio enhancements are "must-haves" that really set this apart - don’t hesitate to drop the $5. Smart Speed clips out pauses so stealthily, I never notice except that I am shaving 5 to 15 minutes off of each podcast. Voice Boost uses a dynamic compression and EQ scheme that maximizes intelligibility, absolutely perfect for listening in a car or to enhance uneven production. No other app does this, not even close. I thought might miss streaming (Overcast downloads episodes in order to implement the audio enhancements) but the seamless WiFi background sync is even a better solution - whatever I see in Overcast is by definition ready to play, regardless of my cellular connection. Bravo.

2 steps forward, 1 step back. My previous review after the big update is below, but I’ve added another star now because several of the key features have been reinstated, albeit in less user-friendly ways than the original version. Unfortunately now new problems are popping up, most notably that the app just randomly crashes and completely closes itself out in the middle of podcasts. When I reopen the app I have to re-find the episode I was on and figure out and fast forward to wherever I was when it crashed. On top of that, this app is suddenly massively draining my phone’s battery incredibly fast, so I can’t even listen to podcasts if I won’t be able to charge my phone right afterwards. ………. This was my favorite podcast app by far until the update took the features that were most important and useful to me and either removed them or made them significantly harder to use. It’s very clunky and unintuitive now and much harder to navigate. Plus most of the changes just flat out make it less functional — The worst ones are that the link to navigate back to the podcast from the individual episode is gone, and the “play next” feature is gone. Sleep timer is less flexible and harder to navigate. And everything takes more tapping to access, whereas it used to be easy to swipe and access a lot of features.

Pretty great!. What I love about this app is how customizable and user friendly it is. You can pick different color schemes for the apps, get super particular about what order to display shows and episodes in your feed, create playlists (the main reason I got this app and deleted the regular “Podcasts” Apple app), etc. There are so many options without it becoming overwhelming so kudos to the creators! My one gripe is that I wish the “Add Podcasts” section of the app would be updated more frequently. It seems like the suggested podcasts in the “most recommended” category or “comedy” category, or any of the other categories hardly ever change. It’s always the same list of podcasts with one or two new ones thrown in. This makes it difficult for me to find more podcasts and ultimately spend more time on the app. It would also be great to get suggestions for other podcasts that are similar to what I already listen to (ex: “if you liked x podcast, you might also like y podcast”). This app does not make easy to discover new podcasts/podcasts that are similar to the ones I already enjoy, and that’s the only way in which the Apple “podcasts” app is superior to this one.

Much better than Apple Podcasts. I used Apple’s podcast app religiously through several updates and switched to Overcast a few years ago. Apple finally got to the point where I could barely find the pods I was subscribed to - due to the entire app being geared around recommendations of what they are promoting. No thanks. I’m sure it’s gotten worse but I haven’t looked back. Overcast is the app you want in order to curate your own selections and design your own playlists by category or whatever you choose. Very customizable and the whole thing is geared around your subscriptions. The app has all the nice features for navigating, organizing playlists, searching, customizing your download preferences, playback speeds, sleep timers. There’s nothing else I would need other than possibly the ability to customize notifications per individual podcast. Took me awhile to finally start using the smart playlists feature but once I did - it was a game changer. Highly recommend setting up playlist categories using multiple smart playlists and combined with your episode retention settings - you no longer have to spend any time setting up a queue again. You can still do it for custom listening sessions or one-offs, but if you have a lot of subs or like to bounce around based on your mood, it’s an excellent feature.

The Best Podcast Player. Edit: The best just got better. Finally added a playlist for favorited/starred episodes. Adding more personalization choices was a bonus. I have had Overcast for a while and think it is the best podcast player on the market. The options available for creating custom playlists are what puts Overcast at the top of the list. The ability to include or exclude podcasts or just episodes of a podcast and being able to set priority podcasts are great options I didn’t know I needed. I definitely recommend Overcast to friends and family every chance I get. Once in a while I will try other podcasts apps but quickly come right back to Overcast. Other podcast players either don’t have the same features as Overcast or don’t do them as as well. Overcast’s smart speed and speed boost seem to work much better than the same features on other podcast apps. The only complaint I have is the handling of favorited episodes. When you tap the star button on an episode it will mark it but that is it. You still have to search through the entire catalog of a podcast to find that episode. I would like to see a category or playlist that favorited episodes automatically goes to.

Terrible search, worse navigation. Very disappointed after switching from Apple podcasts and giving this a try for nearly one year. The search simply doesn't work - you'll never find the episode you're looking for. If you are just exploring and type in a name of someone that you know has podcast episodes, they almost never appear unless they are very well known. If you type in an exact or nearly exact match you might get the search result, but when you click on the episode it will direct to the list of all episodes for that podcast rather than the episode you clicked on. Until about two months ago there was a hack where you could then click on "unplayed" and wait a moment and the episode would suddenly appear, but it no longer "works". Worst of all, if you then press the back button to see the original search results, to check another result for example, they're gone! It takes you back to an empty search bar. I can't believe how much time I wasted on this terrible app. I contacted support and also asked the dev via Twitter but received no reply. I'll spend my premium podcast dollars elsewhere.

UPDATED: for a single dev, very responsive. My issues below have been resolved, thank you! I must say, I am impressed by this devs ability to quickly respond. Great work and great app. —- I have a special playlist setup in overcast for news podcasts. These podcasts get multiple updates per day, so, I really only want the latest ones in the playlist and don’t need/want to listen to any that I have missed, as they are now “old news”. I set this up by following the podcast, and then in the podcast settings, I would set the “episode limit” to 1. I created a playlist and added each podcast to the playlist. Worked. After the update, however, only one of the podcasts has been limited to 1, and all the others download everything. I’ve tried removing and re-adding the podcasts, changing the settings again, nothing works. I just have to go through the playlist and delete all of the unwanted episodes, which is getting annoying, especially since some of them release about once an hour! I don’t want to reinstall the full app because I have some other playlists that I have where I do t want to lose where I am in those series. I tried reporting the issue via email as well, but, this is a volunteer app, and free, so, I get it. But, it is still a bug.

Finally A Platform That Let’s Me Organize. I’m so glad I found the Overcast podcast platform! I’ve tried a couple others but they never did exactly what I wanted. I listen to different styles of podcasts on different days depending on my mood and attention span. Sometimes I need hype and sometimes I just want easy listening. I can organize my saved list to set up my playlist ahead of time so that my preferred order happens without me having to snatch up the phone and change the podcast in the middle of what I am doing. A couple other perks are the vocal boosts and speed of play options. Only con I am experiencing is no matter what I do, I am not getting new episode notifications consistently. I get sporadic updates for some shows and no notifications for others. I have checked all my notification settings and everything is set like it’s supposed to be. I’m having to bounce over to Apple podcasts and check my recent uploads over there to know what I need to add to my saved list on Overcast. I hope this gets fixed soon! After that snag is fixed, this platform will be perfect!

I finally get it!. I’ve been a podcast junkie for over a decade. Before the iPhone, I would download them on iTunes, burn them on a CD and play them in my car. So the built-in podcast app on iPhone was a revelation. I feel like that all over again with Overcast. First, I was blown away by its ability to speed up pauses to make podcasts play quicker without sounding sped up. I don’t mind a little sped up, so I also liked the wide range of speeds to choose from. The real winner was the smart playlist though. THE SMART PLAYLIST IS AWESOME. I tell it which show I want to hear first, which second, etc., and it automatically keeps the playlist up to date, adding new top-priority shows to the front of the line ahead of older lower-priority shows. (I used to make “up next” playlists each day in the old app. No more!) Finally, just today I discovered custom settings for each show. My news podcasts can rip through at 1.8x speed. My narrative ones I can set for 1.2x speed. The app remembers. I don’t ever have to mess with it again. I LOVE this app!

Rework update. I wanted to counter the negative reviews regarding the new update. Overcast has actually been working better for me personally. The app used to crash a lot, and streaming barely worked. I used to have to manually download many episodes because of broken streaming. I approve of the decision to turn streaming into a “download-on-demand” option, and I haven’t had any crashes since the update. I do think there could be some improvements to the UI. It takes a lot of taps to get to podcast settings. If I’m listening to an episode, and I want to adjust the “skip intro” setting, I have to back all the way out of the episode/playlist, find the podcast in the main list, open it, tap the ellipsis, then finally open podcast settings. It’s not very intuitive, and I hope this gets smoothed out in the future. This is clearly still a work in progress, but I regret not subscribing sooner to support a sole developer who puts a lot of work into making the best podcast app (IMO), even if it isn’t perfect.

Continuous Play? - UPDATED. EDIT - still couldn’t get Apple Podcast to work so I stuck with this awhile. I found out where continuous play is, and you have to add episodes to allow them to play or something? Still believe the app is not intuitive, and could really benefit from a touch-screen walkthrough when first installed and opened. It’s kind of ridiculous that this doesn’t already exist, given the amount of features this app seems to have. Robust application with some good features, but those features are lost to users without some kind of explainer. Original: I’m playing catch-up on a podcast I just started listening to that has been around for two years, so there is a lot of content to get through. I used to listen to it on Apple Podcasts, but for whatever reason that app has stopped working on my phone, and after looking at reviews for Overwatch I thought I’d give this a try. If Continuous Play exists, it’s not intuitive, nor does the app seem to have a feature where it will automatically pick up where the listener left off in a show. As soon as I downloaded the app I went to Settings and toggled ‘Continuous Play’ on, but it isn’t doing anything. I’ve tried playing the podcast from the episodes pages, creating playlists (the Smart Playlist is a joke), nothing works. The app just stops after it plays whatever episode your selected. Will be troubleshooting the issues with Apple Podcast and deleting this app immediately.

Fantastic. No regrets!. 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.

Doesn’t connect to Internet.. This morning I paid for premium subscription. Later the same day when checking for my daily dose of recently downloaded podcasts, there were none?! When checking podcast history or trying to leave feedback within app, I kept getting the message “No Internet Connection - the Internet connection connection appears to be offline.” My phones other apps (social media, safari, mail, etc.) are using WiFi just fine. I checked to make sure both WiFi and cellular data are checked. I cancelled my subscription to see if that was the problem. Doesn’t seem to have made a difference. I turned phone off and then on - that didn’t solve the problem. I hate to have to shop around for a different podcast player. Can anyone help me? UPDATE: Upgraded rating from one star because my podcasts started downloading again! I am happy about that. Thanks fixer! I had preferred this player to others I have tried (I like to create multiple playlists.) and am glad I don’t need to change. However, I am waiting to see if the download issue arises again before re-paying for my cancelled premium subscription.

Pretty good rewrite. Overall this is a quality podcast app with a developer who serves his users with a demonstrated commitment, over time, to their interests; a rarity that you can hardly ever find outside indie software. This review is for the Swift UI rewrite released around July 2024 (as of mid-September). I'm a longtime user of Overcast, running it on an XS Max (released late 2018). My podcast library is about 76 GB (which is a lot). For a long time, Overcast had been nearly unusable on my phone, because my podcast list was so large. It'd often crash or go unresponsive. This rewrite fixes those performance issues. The past couple months, Marco's fixed a lot of the July release's fiddly UI qualities. I like the extra vertical space for show notes. Swiping left and right to get to them feels natural and convenient. There are a few bugs still remaining: I'm a subscriber, but there's a visual glitch where ads briefly load and then disappear on the now playing screen sometimes. Playlists do not yet seem to reliably play in the background if the episodes haven't all been downloaded ahead of time. I'm sure those issues will also be fixed soon, though.

Episode Limits Broken Still. -Update: I spent 2.5 hours onboarding fresh with a competing app and couldn’t be happier. Was a good 10 years with Overcast but I’m on to greener pastures. Not giving a 1-star lightly (sorry Marco, I listen to ATP and am still here). I tried to give the updates a bit to land with me and overall I can’t shake the feeling the developer chose to make his life easier at the expense of his users. But the real trigger is that when I went to go try out alternatives I noticed the export option was conveniently removed in the update and is “coming soon”. Can’t shake how junky that feels. I get dev priorities but that’s a low confidence move to make a big change and then throw up a barrier to exit on top (and they’re your priorities to make!) The episode limit setting is something I heavily rely on and is still totally broken after several updates. Removing streaming is a huge QoL downgrade and forces me to not listen to pods I otherwise would because I’m stuck with bad cell service. The UI is so much more plain and boring (even if it is a smidge zippier). The new UI for chapters and show notes is just plain ugly. I’d normally give this 3 stars and move on but pulling the rug out on users trying to evaluate alternatives is not respecting your users and acting like any other big company.

I didn’t know how much I’d value this app. As podcasting grows into a monetized industry that large global players distribute, advertisements have begun to ruin the listener experience. Overcast allows paid subscribers to customize start and cutoff times so you can bypass ads at the beginning and end of the podcast. One of my favorite podcasts routinely runs 3 minutes of ads at the beginning of the podcast, and recently ran 6 minutes of ads before the podcast actually started. Overcast allows me to begin listening at the 3:00 mark of that podcast so I can get right into the programming. While Overcast cannot bypass inline, in program ads, the program does allow you to customize the amount of time dedicated to the back skip and forward skip buttons, wisely defaulting to 15 seconds back and 30 seconds forward. Given that podcasts have become a primary form of entertainment, Overcast provides exceptional value in podcast playback and management. 5 stars earned.

simple and clean. came here after the last iOS update broke apple podcasts, like so many others. overcast is simple and has a nice clean easy to use interface, which is all I want. I love that the sleep timer can be adjusted to whatever time I want. love how easy it is to find and download the podcasts and episodes I want, especially since I’m almost never caught up on podcasts and so usually the most recent episode isn’t relevant to me. my two complaints are: - i wish the sleep timer counted down the minutes the podcast is playing, instead of just the real-time minutes that go by - I wish it was easier to save episodes to come back to, because occasionally there are episodes I want to refer back to for school and such. In apple podcasts there was a “saved episodes” folder, which was handy because it was out of the main feed for that podcast but was easy to find. I’ve tried staring episodes to refer back to on Overcast, but they stay in the main “unplaced” feed for that podcast and are irritating to have to scroll past to get to the actual unplaced episodes.

Nice alternative to Apple’s.. I’ve been well pleased so far. It isn’t always the most intuitive, but I’ve eventually figured out how to achieve most everything I’ve wanted to. The benefits of adding a show via RSS have become immediately clear. Being a subscriber to a show and getting early access episodes and bonus material right in my podcast manager makes it so easy to stay up with all my shows. The clip function has made it so much more effective to get friends interested in shows than years of recommending downloads ever did. The one thing that sticks out at me the most: sometimes I want to keep an episode for a while so I can go back and reference it later, however, although the episodes are marked as “played” the show doesn’t drop down to the “Played Podcasts” section. That doesn’t seem to happen until the episodes are deleted out of the library. This makes it difficult to know when a new episode is available; this show doesn’t release episodes according to a schedule, I have to randomly check to see if there’s anything new in the episode list. It feels nitpicky but it’s important to me. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I listen while I’m working. The less amount of time I have to spend poking around in menus, the better.

So close to perfect!. I love this app. It’s sleek; I appreciate the typeface used on the interface. It looks modern and is a welcome change from the same old font Apple uses for everything. Organization is clean and relatively intuitive once you get used to it. Definitely a WORTHY replacement for the stock Podcasts app, which I used for years before I found this gem. My only problems with Overcast pertain to the Apple Watch app. There seems to be more of a delay when hitting pause or start, and sometimes the pause/start button doesn’t work at all, which is horrible when you need to have a conversation with someone, or you’re at a drive-thru, or when you need the sound to stop immediately for whatever reason. That button needs to work reliably. Second, it would be REALLY COOL if the Digital Crown could be used as a volume control, like in Apple’s “Now Playing” app. It’s really convenient, and would be the next best thing to a reliable pause control. All that said, Overcast is vastly superior to the stock Podcasts app, and can still be controlled from Now Playing, provided the Overcast app is deleted from the Watch. One thing the Overcast Watch app has going for it is it’s MUCH prettier than Now Playing. It can certainly use some improvement, and I’m confident that will happen, because this is a GREAT app!

Ruined, try Castamatic. Sorry, but it’s taken a giant leap backwards. Each episode needs to be fully downloaded before it plays and it’s quite buggy so it’ll finish downloading after a pretty long wait but it’s incomplete so you’ll find the roadside Episode is “complete “ at a few minutes when the it should be his hours. Sleep timer is terrible and clunky. Hard to navigate, so much for fluid interaction, you’ll have to practice finger gymnastics. Not a fan of the “next up system” , if you have a lot of podcasts be prepared to scroll for days to find it and not sure why my playlists which should include all new podcasts doesn’t include all of them. Searching for specific episodes takes you to direct matches but then when you select it takes you to top of that podcasts list. Developer decided to rush release this before it was ready to celebrate his 10year releaseanniversary. Castamatic better now, pocket casts is better but more money. Finally, developer drives a rivian as a social justice statement and forced all of us to pay for his 20,000 USD minor dent repair because of his vanity and pride before “conservatives.” Honestly the state of this app is more embarrassing but also speaks to prematurity and vanity.

1 Billion Times Better than Apple. The native iOS podcast app used to be good. Then Apple decided to make it look and function much more like its music app when they released Apple Music, which is to say they dumped all the good interface choices out the nearest window. The native iOS podcast app is atrocious to use, isn’t responsive, can be very finicky, and just overall hates life, particularly yours. My favorite feature was that it knew that even though I was only 10 minutes or so (how would I know how long, my phone was in my pocket?) into a podcast and happened to drive through a dead zone, I definitely wanted it to mark the entire show as complete and wouldn’t want to resume where I left off when I regained signal. It knew I loved scrolling through hundreds of uploaded podcasts in the finished pile looking for the one I wasn’t done with yet, only to try to find what time stamp I was at when it cut me off. Thanks for nothing, Apple podcasts. And thank you, Overcast, for being a clean, well-designed, completely functional podcast app.

Smart Speed For The Win. There are so many good podcasts out there, and so many podcast apps to download into your smartphone to listen to your favorite ones. All these podcast apps, including Apple “iOS” Podcast have in common features that make them somehow similar to each other. Yet, what makes Overcast stand above the rest, is it has a technology that I haven’t seen in others, and it's called Smart Speed which shortens the silence in thought long podcast, I know all the apps give you a control to speed up your podcast if you are in a car and don’t have enough time, while you don’t want to miss any of the speech, I know this depends on everyone preference and the type of show you listening to. But we all know speeding up your podcast it take from the enjoyment.l, that’s way overcast has the technology that doesn’t trade off the enjoyment yet also save sometime. I recommend it big time. All I wish for is a new feature that allows the podcast rewind a 5 seconds back when ever a notification goes off while you are listening to one.

Frequent Crashes. If this app worked as intended, it would be excellent, however it appears to have some frustrating quirks and stability issues. First and foremost are the crashes. It crashes when you pause about half the time, it crashes when you select a podcast, sometimes it just seems to crash for really no reason at all. On a typical weekday I use this app for about 2-3 hours and will see 1-2 crashes each day. The second issue is that the app will always, always try to play the previous unfinished podcast, even if you have a playlist or have a different cast selected as “play next”. For instance, the last minute of most casts is just an outro, an ad, or credits so I will skip to the next cast. If I allow a cast to play to the very end, Overcast will begin playing the last unfinished minutes of all previous casts even if I have a new cast queued. I’ve used this app for about a year and will say it is better than the native Apple app, but only just barely, owing only to Overcast’s better layout. However its stability issues and infuriating quirks hobble it badly. Update July 2021: Even worse these days! Crashes about every 3-5 minutes. When I relaunch the app, it starts me at the beginning of the podcast, losing my place.

The BEST, especially if you care about sound quality.. I listen to podcasts all the time, so love Overcast because it has great tools for managing playlists, makes finding podcasts easy, and seems to be built around what I actually want to do with a podcast app. The latest release has given me features I didn’t even know I wanted, like the “mark as played” which is great. (-edit: I didn’t realize at first the following was a feature already!-) I love that “mark as played” is a toggle, to easily mark things un-played for when I accidentally fall asleep listening and end up with six podcasts marked played that I have no memory of! As for sound, this is the only podcast player I’ve found that actually sounds good at anything over 1x playback speed, and the smart speed “shortens silence” setting is my favorite tiny detail. This is one of the few apps that I subscribe to, as I want to make sure they’re able to keep revising and making the experience better.

Recent update a major step back. There is one major bug in the recent updates that will likely drive me to using another app. My general usage of the app is to add certain episodes to the queue, and then manually order the queue how I want. This has worked for years. In the new version, I am able to manually change the queue order, but at some point later in the day the queue will reorder itself. It won’t even be strictly in the order specified in settings, like oldest to newest. It will just be… not what I set. In the last week I’ve probably reordered the queue 15-20 times and it just won’t stick for more than a couple hours. Since this is how I listen to my podcasts, the fact that it doesn’t work anymore means I’m going to explore other options. I like the app otherwise. I especially appreciate the granular playback speed options because only moving in .25 increments like Apple Podcasts puts me in the uncanny valley where it no longer sounds like real people. I can’t listen faster than about 1.15 or so. Hopefully there’s another app that can do that. I’ll gladly come back if/when manual queue sorting works properly again. Until then, I’ll be looking for an app that doesn’t frustrate me multiple times a day.

Like the new update. I’m an ATP listener and Marco asked us for our feedback on the update. Being an app developer myself I know how difficult it is to make any UX changes without experiencing some upheaval from existing users. This update may have gone a bit too far as far as pairing feature removal (one tap play, streaming, etc.) with a lot of UI changes that require a learning curve for existing users. I can see why some people are frustrated. I also experienced launch day bugs that were quite frustrating (no autoplay of next podcast despite setting enabled) and the vast majority of those have been resolved. The one outstanding issue I’m having is sometimes the playback controls simply do not work. I don’t know if this is an iOS audio stack bug or something related to Overcast, but I will hit play, the button stays on the play icon (doesn’t switch to pause) and then nothing. I wait and wait and nothing. Hit play a few more times, nothing. Force quit overcast, go back in and hit play and it plays instantly.

Love the app but it keeps constantly crashing and is unusable. I absolutely love the design and aesthetics of this app and the sound quality is also top notch. The Smart Speed and Audio Boost features are also quite nifty features that I’ve come to adore. The Smart Speed has been especially useful for speeding past “dead zones” in the audio where nothing is happening and its saved me lots of time to listen to other podcasts and what’s better, the audio does not get distorted when speeding it up, unlike other podcast apps where the audio gets pitched higher or becomes robotized when ou speed it up. Unfortunately though, as of late, the app constantly crashes whenever I use it, whether it be on my iPad Pro or my iPhone SE. The Overcast symbol can be seen in the background but after 10 or so seconds, it crashes back to the home screen and it does this again and again, ad infinitum. I’ve been installing all of the updates and trying everything, from clearing the cache of the device to uninstalling and reinstalling the app to little avail. When this app works, it’s absolutely amazing. But when it doesn’t then it is unfortunately quite tragic. I hope that Marco can find a way to remedy this so that I can return to my podcasts.

Congrats on 10 Years!. The update rocks! If every developer cared about their product and their customers the way worker does, the world would be such a better place. That’s not hyperbole. 376 hours. That’s how much time SmartSpeed has saved me. Not 2x. Everyone has that. But no one else has tweaked the audio to remove those empty air microseconds in a way that doesn’t sound like a middle schooler playing with AutoTune. SmartSpeed + Voice Boost works so well that now people sound unnatural when you listen on any other player. Marco obsesses over the details so we don’t have to. Layouts are intuitive, controls are where you expect them to be and then get out of the way. My only complain is that Overcast makes you realize how poorly designed nearly everything else is. It spoils you as a tech consumer, and makes you wish there was an Overcast version of everything. I cannot think of another free alternative to the basic app that ships with your hardware that raises the bar like Overcast does.

Love it. Happy to pay for subscription.. A friend recommended Outcast and I switched a couple of months ago. It is so much better than the Apple app. I listen to podcasts for about 90 minutes a day on average. The speed up and optimizing features are great. I have no idea who created Outcast, but I know It takes a lot of work to make a highly functional app with an elegant user interface and keep it updated. Implicit in many of the recent reviews is the belief that it should just be free forever - no cost and no ads. That's delusional. Good user reviews and feelings of accomplishment don't pay the bills. If my clients told me they liked my work but didn't want to pay for it, I'd find other clients. So I'm actually glad there is now an option to subscribe so I can support something I enjoy using. $9.95 for a whole year is very reasonable. That's about what I paid for lunch today. Why? Because there's no such thing as a free lunch. On a related note, the banner ads were a little annoying like all ads, but they're so much less intrusive than many print media sites where the content is constantly playing a game of hide and seek. Bottom line: I'm a fan and please keep up the good work.

Improving!. Longtime user who felt sympathetic to the rewrite but dissatisfied with the shape it shipped in, with bugs, feature cutbacks, and most painfully a simplification to the Now Playing UI that took the charming and convenient horizontal swipe cards away and replaced the info screen access with an out-of-reach button. So happy to see swiping back with an elegant animation, even if it remains less charming, and happy for Marco to have achieved a sustainable path forward. 4 stars because there are still some pretty obvious bugs encountered on a daily basis, like the app showing the pause button instead of the play button when the podcast is already paused. Hoping these are worked out by year end. And this is petty, but the only two apps on my Home Screen that didn’t provide dedicated dark tinted icons to match the new iOS Home Screen option are Callsheet and Overcast… that’s the kind of small thing I’d hope super fan developers would do, because it’s delightful and shows care, and it’s disappointing to see them sticking out.

Volume Issue. This app has excellent features, like Smart Speed, Voice Boost, and Smart Playlists. I generally like it a lot, but there are a couple of issues. The search function is terrible. It returns illogical results, if any. Often, it just freezes. There are no reviews or feedback, and it’s not easy to browse for new shows other than the few they highlight. Unfortunately, I have to go back to the native app for that. I actually don’t pay for premium because the ads are, sadly, the best way to find new podcasts on Overcast. Recently, it’s started messing with the volume whenever I disconnect and later reconnect Bluetooth devices. I always listen at a low setting because iPhone doesn’t actually have a low volume option — it goes straight from medium to silent. When I put the headphones back in, the volume is cranked up high every time. I’ve learned to fix it before hitting play (which has to be done on the lock screen), but that’s annoying. It should just work. This is simple. I contacted the developer and never heard back, so I’m warning potential users before they damage their eardrums.

Removing streaming and breaking a great app experience?. it may be because I have many podcasts, but the new app update is awful at downloading (which it forces you to do before listening!). I primarily listen on my phone, but often go to my iPad every so often to continue listening. This functionality is basically broken… Forcing allllllll the podcasts to download upon before listening may seem like a great idea - but if its not broken, why try and “fix” it and then break it? It was very frustrating trying to get podcasts to download and not able to do so in order to listen. I didn’t want to leave, but to still enjoy listening to podcasts I had to do so…. All settings feel like they are 6 clicks deep and feels like it got inspiration from the settings app on the phone. The old Overcast used to have a swipe based UI which was much better on larger devices. After 10 years this app got a lot of my money - and it really was the best podcast player for a long time. But now that I have looked around at other options, the things that made overcast great (trim silence for example) are elsewhere. I do feel bad leaving, but if you are on the fence about leaving there is green grass elsewhere…

My Favorite App for Podcast. I really enjoy the simplicity of Overcast, and if you’re particular like me you’ll find all sorts of “Nitpicky” functions to fine tune the app to your liking. Visually Overcast is my favorite as well. You can set several different “themes” and it’ll use “black” when you’re iPhone is in Dark Mode which mine always is. It’s just so much better on your eyes at night when trying to relax. Making playlists is a breeze as well. My only gripe is if you have a really old episode in between two newer episodes it’ll skip the older and the play the newest first. That’s sort of odd because they have a button that you can toggle on/off for that very feature. However mine is turned off but it still plays newer episodes first. As far as grievances go that’s pretty tame. The ads are also super discreet and I hardly notice them. Lastly, I haven’t found a podcast that isn’t on Overcast. Their catalog is quite extensive. Well, what are you waiting for? Install it already!

2 column v 3 column. I hate this app now. Everything everyone is writing is true. Three columns is horrible, downloading leaves me in limbo, there's no "delete all" and it won't do continuous play. It also is not working on apple car play and just freezes. My queue is unusable. Please rerelease the former version For the app overall, I have been very happy and I like a lot of features such as the repeat the last few seconds feature after pausing 🧡🧡🧡. I humbly(because I can't do this programming) write that your new update leaves a lot to b desired. The three column setup is awful, the middle column is usually blank and the info I want is squished into the two, smaller side columns. Please bring back the previous two column option. My queue is now useless. I play one pod and it stops, then I click on my earphones to play next in queue and nothing happens. It used to play next in queue and it won't. I have to turn on the iPad and manually start the next podcast. The downloads are failing and/or not responding (just circling) constantly despite good wifi. The download queue is full of failed downloads and it won't move on to the recent podcasts. It would be awesome if there was a way to delete all older episodes, whether finished or not, in one click. So far, I can only unsubscribe, then resubscribe. I'm going to try this new update and thank you for this app.

Frustrating with iOS 11.. I’m on an iPhone 6, using iOS 11.4.1. This app used to be at least a 4 star app, but ever since iOS 11, the app is more frustration than fun. First, an ongoing issue even before iOS 11, is the amount of space it takes up. I’m finding I’m having to delete and re-download the app every month, because I’m finding it taking up nearly ten gigs of space, despite the fact that I have it set to stream podcasts, not download them. There seems to be no intuitive way to get it to stop downloading. Second, now with iOS 11, I’m having to open the app several times to get it to stay open. It’ll usually crash a couple of times first. Third, and the issue that frustrated me enough to write this review and look for a new player: I listen to podcasts for hours at a time at work, using headphones. Sometimes I’ll need to pause an episode to do some work or talk to someone, and I’ll pause it using the button on my headphones. When I press the button again to start it... nothing. I’ll try again a few times, nothing. I’ll have to stop what I’m doing, take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, and restart overcast. Sometimes it’ll open and be frozen for fifteen seconds before it’ll start responding, sometimes it’ll just crash and I have to try again. This happens SO OFTEN that this app has basically become useless to me.

Excellent. After upgrading to a new iPhone and having to deal with iCloud back up issues, I was finally good to go. However, the only app that didn’t seem to work was Overcast. Huge bummer, I thought. I had to run the latest public beta of the current OS (not the upcoming OS) in order to get my iCloud back up to work. I assumed there was a bug between Overcast and this newer beta version of iOS. I sent the developer a quick email letting him know. Within 12 hours, Marco had responded, apologized for the issue, and let me know a fix had been released in that time. Apparently a recent update to his app introduced a nasty little bug. I’m grateful that he was quick to fix it. This shows the level of commitment and detail he has for this app. It’s also why I will continue to be an Overcast user. This is an excellent app and deserves all of the praise it gets. During that time, I tried other podcasting apps, but most were embarrassingly confusing and none seemed to just do what a good podcast player should do well: manage and play podcasts. Overcast is easy to use and understand, and it does its primary job very well!

Still the best player, but…. I hope to see some fixes soon for the recent problems. In fact, I hate to see the review score take such a big hit, only because recent updates have caused a lot of issues. —— For this reason, I truly wish more people would use the feedback option to report and describe problems they are experiencing, as opposed to just leaving a One Star review to complain that the app is broken. —— Unfortunately though, the current issues ARE causing the app to malfunction, which is quite frustrating. This is now beyond merely disliking the changes or new features that came with the large app update. I know the creator works solely on his own. I hope he can work quickly and keep his users; maybe he could get some outside help. There is no denying that he’s made a marvelous app. I’ve used this player for years and years and I absolutely love it. It is better than the rest, and by far. There are so many great features; I especially love the ability and ease of creating and organizing multiple playlists. I very much want to stick with the app, but may have to temporarily use another.

One Of A Kind?. This is the first and only podcast app I've seen with compression. At least, that's my interpretation of what "Voice Boost" is doing. My mind is blown by how few entities are even attempting to address this elephant in the room. Some of the best and top podcasters fail to produce listenable audio. It is extremely simple. You need to cut your lows and brick your waveform. To do that right you start with a hot preamp (with low cut enabled) into a limiter or compressor so that you always peak at a consistent level, whether you talk, yell, or whisper into the mic (looking at you, Bobby Lee). If I remember correctly, -0.1 db is the highest you can go without causing it to clip when converting to mp3. That's where you set your overall limiting level when exporting the final master. If you didn't do the first part right, that's how you fix your final product. Just boost your levels into a limiter until the dynamic range is gone, exactly what the audiophiles hate. Ten+ years in, much of the podcast world is still figuring out the basics, but I continue to love you more than a friend. This app, iPhone's built-in dynamic range compression, and the analog compressor on my TV signal chain help keep this relationship strong.

Supports Priorities. I gave up on the iOS podcast ecosystem 5+ years ago; at that time I tried 10+ different podcasts apps and none of them had very good support for creating different categories and having podcasts from one category play before podcasts from a different one. I am pleased to report that the situation is greatly improved! This app, Overcast, lets me create one playlist for current events, my favorite shows, and other podcasts that I want to prioritize. Then I have separate playlists for categories such as tech, exmormon, and gaming. Within each playlist I can mark a show as “high priority” or “low priority” in order to have that shows episodes sorted to the top or bottom of that particular list. I can even have one podcast included in multiple playlists. This very nearly reaches feature parity with the Android-only “Podcast Addict” app. That app would let me assign a priority level to each show (a number from 1-100), then automatically play the highest priority episode from the highest priority show. By creating separate playlists Overcast very nearly lets me do the same thing. The main difference with Overcast is that I have to manually switch between playlists, whereas with Podcast Addict whenever a new episode from a higher priority podcast was released, it would automatically play that episode next.

New Update is a Major Regression. Appreciate the effort and the love that Dev puts into this. However the recent re-wrote is a huge regression. This used to be a 5-star app (does what I need, simply, cleanly, and just as expected) however after recent changes it’s barely functional as a daily podcast player. I used to wake up to all of my daily news podcasts downloaded and ready to play when I started my commute. Now, the background downloads are completely unreliable. I have to open the app and the Download screen before I shower to get this thing to start pulling down the queued podcasts. Also I used to be able to easily say “Hey, go head and pull this episode down over cellular. I know you’re waiting for WiFi, let’s just do it now.” but I can’t figure out how to do it anymore. But the biggest issue right now is that it plays one podcast at a time. I have a playlist called Queue that I throw things on in an order I want (see other reviews for how ordering constantly changes) and I’ve noticed over the last week that instead of playing the playlist it plays one episode, then stops!!!! WTliteralF!?!?! I came to write this review because I’ve had to start the next episode in this playlist 4 times now!!!

I’ve never looked back. I was very early in getting into podcasts. Actually used Stitcher before iPhone added their default app. Don’t even know how many years I’ve used Overcast now rather than the standard iPhone podcasts app but just about everything is just a little better here. Also, so many little things that don’t exist on the standard iOS app (as far as I know). Won’t list them all here but by far my favorite feature that comes to mind is the customization you can put in for number of old episodes to hold on to from each individual podcast to keep your feed clean and not eat up too much storage on shows you don’t get to as often and probably won’t anyway! Can’t tell you how excited I was when they added offline syncing ability for podcasts to the Apple Watch app so I could listen on runs without my phone. Also, I was so pleasantly surprised to see how quickly they fixed some of the early bugs with this feature that were obnoxious. Keep up the great work Overcast I recommend your product to everyone when it comes up and even tell them how easy it is to transfer over from another app.

Did you know that you can earn 25 USD from our site just by registering? Get $25 for free by joining Payoneer!

I love the Overcast app!. I recommend Overcast for all podcast listeners, from beginner to addicted power-user. The user interface, great playback options and quality design are all fantastic. My very favourite features, as someone who subscribes to 100+ podcasts, are smart speed, vocal boost and the ability to speed up playback to 3x the normal speed. I spent a couple of months training myself to listen and now have my podcasts exclusively set to 3x speed which allows me to take in so much more content. Smart speed and vocal boost means the audio quality remains clear and easy to understand even at that speed. I only wish I could take things up to 4x. Maybe in the next update!

Apple Watch app not working properly. I have used Overcast for several years now, and believe that it’s definitely one the best podcast apps available. The only real issue that I found with the app to date has been the Apple Watch app. This has a tendency to either not download podcasts, or only partially download them. I purchased a new Apple Watch to be able to exercise without the phone. Many times, I have been able to start a podcast; however, it simply stops 10-12 minutes in. This is really the only thing preventing this from getting five stars. I love the way that I am able to organise podcasts, the audio is incredibly clear, and the adjustable speeds for each podcast make this a brilliant app.

Subscription based podcast request. Have used this app for many years and would never use any other! Is it possible to include an option to download podcasts from subscription based services? I’m a subscriber to Mamamia, an Australian based podcast; they currently offer this option on two other podcast platforms, it would be great if it could be offered here also.

10 years and still going strong. I love Overcast! I’ve been a happy user for 10 years. The new redesign has completely fixed the hangs I used to experience when scrolling through my podcast list and resuming playback. My phone is pretty old so I had assumed that was the issue, but Overcast is now buttery smooth and running like a champ again. Thanks for the big update and looking forward to some iterations.

Love it BUT.... Really love this podcast but it’s missing 2 things. It needs the ability to review podcasts like Apple podcasts does so that the recommendations area would be better to find new highly rated podcasts. Also the way to add a podcast to a playlist is so clunky and time consuming. It should be able to be done from the podcast settings section. So when you subscribe to a new podcast we need to be able to put it into a playlist at that point - not having to navigate to the playlist and then edit the playlist, then scroll down to the add podcast section, then have to find the podcast name again - way too many steps.

Harder to manage my queue. Recent versions have definitely gotten faster 👍 But it’s worse for being able to move several episodes up or down my queue. It’s slower to delete a bunch of played episodes from the queue. It’s harder to download the next N episodes in the queue. Because the list of playlists is horizontal, it’s harder to see if there are new episodes in smart playlists. I’d like to move the list of podcasts to another screen and devote the home screen to playlists. There used to be a link to the webpage for the episode?

In a world of podcast apps. This one allows you to organise your podcast episode by the podcast, not en masse in some predetermined order like many others. This is the feature I really wanted. I find the controls easy to interpret and everything is simple. Podcast apps don’t need to be weird or complex if you ask me. Put it on and play the one you want without having to go to multiple pages first, that was my goal and this app meets it best as far as I can see.

Still great but no longer bulletproof. I’ve been using Overcast since it launched 10 years ago, it ignited my love of podcasts in a way that the Apple app never did. The new rewrite has smart changes to the user interface that have a lot of thought put into them, a much-needed design refresh. LOVE the new chapter browser and ‘undo’ for accidental seeks. Yet months after launch it is still so, so buggy. Sync between iPhone and iPad used to be immediate and rock solid; now it’s slow and inconsistent for syncing playback progress and episodes I’ve manually added. The “brief rewind after playback interruption” feature is too aggressive: if you receive a few text messages while listening on AirPods your podcast gets stuck in a loop or even rewinds itself. I have completed podcasts stuck as downloads, according to the storage screen. It’s a thoughtful redesign but it was rushed out the door and still has too many bugs compared with the previous, bulletproof version.

Was great, but a re-write introduced lots of bugs. I chose Overcast over pocketcast and others a few years ago, as it let me exert fine control over the rules of what went into my playlist. I have a playlist for my morning routine, another for long runs, another for home chores, etc. Each is a refined mix of specific podcasts, orders, lead-in/lead-out ads clipped off, and so on. Unfortunately, the rewrite has caused quite a few hiccups. Playlists have gone from a nice wide row that you can hit easily while running or wearing motorbike gloves, to a small button that’s more fiddly, and that scrolls horizontally and not vertically. Podcasts won’t download on-demand on mobile data when tapped any more - it hangs. Playing progress of minutes and sometimes whole podcasts is lost. The Carplay screen lags behind what’s on the phone - sometimes showing a different podcast! Overcast used to be a great app, but it does have a lot of bugs to fix. Hopefully they’ll get resolved soon.

Wish I’d Found This Sooner. I found this app because Apple Podcasts became so bad even I couldn’t stand to stay any longer. I wish I’d jumped sooner! This app is so easy, and it just works. I can set up a playlist on the fly. I can trim the beginning and end of my regular podcasts. There’s some trickery that cuts out empty space. This is so good I’ve subscribed to show my appreciation, and kept the ads on because they are helping me find new podcasts to listen to.

Long time Apple podcast listener. Last update in June 2021 finally broke my love of apple podcast. After 17 years Apple broke own app. Battery life was horrible and phone was over heating. Been long time fan of ATP so tried the app from Marco. I love it and will go premium to say thanks for a great app l am in Australia and use podcasts to go to sleep and this apps works great. Also use when at gym Why does apples app kill my battery and get super hot. Also the search function works really well on this app. Why can’t Apple offer an easy search Thanks Marco. And my favourite podcasts is ATP.

Please bring back older (working) feature for Apple Watch podcast playback!. FINAL UPDATE: For Apple Watch I have now switched to Outcast. Designed only for Apple Watch, one click and I can download, from Wifi, directly to my watch, no phone needed. With a progress bar to see it download, and super fast (pickup watch, click download, 1 minute later, out for a run. UPDATE: Tried everything and syncing and downloading to a non cellular Apple Watch simply doesn’t work, or has no indication of it working for me. A great app to be sure, but now one that doesn’t work with (my) Apple Watch. I understand the need to update asn app to make it better for people, however, by removing the main feature I used (syncing a podcast over Bluetooth, with speed settings to the watch) I can no longer use this app as I originally had. Yes, Bluetooth sync was a bit slow and buggy, but it did work, and it worked well. This new system, looses the main thing I like about your app, speed boost, and I can never really tell if a episode has downloaded to my watch (I just see a cloud on it?) Please let users choose to use an older feature Marco, even if you think they shouldn’t! Thanks

I hate this update. I've been using this app for YEARS but I'm about to start looking for an alternative for all the reasons that others have given. In particular, not being able to stream while playing is a killer. To avoid the incredible inconvenience of having to download before playing I've set it to automatic downloads - and as a result am using more storage than all other apps on my iPad - right now it's using 20% of the whole system. That's not sustainable but the days of waiting around for a download are well past. If only I could roll back to the previous version. I'll keep returning for a while to see if there are any improvements but I'm not hopeful. What a shame.

Needs a mark as or mark all as played.. Love the app, this is super nitpiky, but it needs a mark as played or mark all as played buttons. Even in a sub menu. Reason being, OCD more then anything and also to stop old eps of podcasts I’ve started listening to downloading. It’s a minor frustration when starting a new podcast that has 100’s of eps that is not necessarily required listening and I just want them not queuing up.

Best app ever. I already left two ratings when prompted by the app - day one and then again another prompt shortly afterwards. I normally never rate apps but it seemed good so I thought ok. Now that I’ve been using it for a month I feel like yelling from the treetops. This app is clean, reliable, intuitive, well designed, well supported and has all the functionality I need. Lots of other audio apps hang for ages or don’t work at all. Not this one. Fast and reliable every single time. WELL DONE and thank you for making it available. 👍👍👍

Most recent update fixed issues for me. I think it was a couple of rocky days to begin with, but the latest update fixed the main issue for me. Nice to see the developer responding quickly to what is obviously a full rewrite. And the app is way snappier for me! I’d really like to be able to long-press the podcast artwork to view it full screen! Sometimes podcasts put chapter artwork in to show things they’re talking about and not being able to zoom in on it is kind of frustrating.

Bring back offline use for non cellular watches. Another disappointed long time user. Have always used this app that worked fantastically to force download certain podcasts to the Apple Watch to use offline (non cellular watch) when running. The native Apple podcast app only lets you download recent ones or everything. Unfortunately with the latest update and even after deleting the app off phone and watch and reinstalling it no longer works. I send the podcast to the watch and I can find it on the watch as before (the watch icon on the not the phone icon on the watch interface). However as soon as I go for a run and am away from my phone/wifi the podcast stops working. As a previous reviewer stated. Yes the uploading via Bluetooth before was a bit clucky and slow but at least it worked. Please fix this to go back to 5 stars.

A good solid podcast app. I like Overcast, but it appears to have become a bit buggy. I can’t get it to play the next episode in the series reliably (it seems to choose something else based on date rather thanks just play the next episode), and Play Next doesn’t ever work. I also wish I could force it to use mobile data to download - I have a large enough data limit and want to choose if I want to wait for wifi or not. Streaming works ok but I’d like the choice to download for later. Otherwise it’s a far better app than the Apple version, and I’ve yet to find one I like better.

Great App, Could Do with Some changes though. I Love the app, but one of the things I wish would change is the “suggestions for you” section. Most of the suggested podcasts are ones I used to listen to but no longer do, and the suggestions don’t change, I have the same ones in the section that I had over a year ago, I wish they would rotate them and show different ones. Only a small thing to complain about however as the app is great

More functionality than Apple Podcast app. Having used this app for several months after years of using the Apple podcast app, I’m really enjoying the extra functionality - the range of play speeds, the custom settings for each podcast, the ease of use, the ability to create playlists and more. Still a little clunky at times, but way better than apple’s own podcast app. It’s no my go-to podcast app, and I’m looking forward to seeing ongoing improvements.

Great app, but update ruined one obscure feature. Love the app, and all the functions. I love being able to auto skip the ads for the first 15 seconds and last 30 seconds of a podcast. However in the last update I lost one feature that I rely on to sleep. I don’t know how niche this is. I’ve found that listening to old podcasts is a great way to drift off to sleep. I don’t have to worry about missing things, because I’ve heard it before, and it helps me focus instead of my mind whirling on a billion different topics as I am trying to sleep. When one podcast ends, I used to be able to just press play on my headphones to start the next one. Since the last major update, it will not. I now have to get my phone out and manually start the next one. I like listening to lots of shorter podcasts, so I’m doing this every 10 minutes and it just kills it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I used to be able to just start another short podcast without even opening my eyes, but now I need to roll over, look at a screen and start the next one. I can find a setting to automatically play the next one, but then it just plays through the whole playlist without ever stopping. I’ve tried using all sorts of different playlists and options, and I just can’t get it to play the next podcast when I press play on my headphones.

I don’t like the new update. I have been happily using overcast for years but the new update has put in features that make it more difficult to use. I often put on a podcast with the timer feature. This is now buried and I have to click to another screen to get to it. Rather than using the scroll wheel that gave the an exact number of minutes I now can choose from buttons with time. The most annoying is if you was to push the track time forward it is more difficult because the whole track is floating window if you try to drag the track time forward it starts dragging the window down to close it. I then have to wake up properly to do something that I could do while half asleep. Now I am going to have to try other programs which is disappointing since I have all of my previous listen history in Overcast and it was a perfect program until this change.

Very good podcast app, I switched from pocketcasts. Switched from Pocketcasts looking for something that is more privacy conscious. One huge feature missing that is a real step back is no ‘in progress list’. Like many I switch between podcasts and don’t always listen in one go. I’d like to see a list of my in progress episodes as I don’t often finish episodes before switching. (I listen to more light entertainment based creators at the end of the day when I have less energy). Including a in progress list would make this app basically perfect. A starred episode list would also be cool inside the playlist area.

Best Podcast App on the App Store. Free or Paid. Marco has created an absolutely wonderful podcast experience with this app and I am so incredibly grateful for his continued support. Timely updates, a subscription service to podcasts that allows you to manage everything yourself and a wonderful UI that ties it all together. As soon as the ability for yearly subscriptions became available I bought it because this is one of the few apps that I use every day without fail and have never had a bad experience.

The best podcast app. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I really didn’t like when Overcast withdrew support for my older phone/system (I hope it was absolutely necessary, a lot of us don’t have much money…) and had to go on a tour of other podcast apps. Yikes. Fortunately got given sis’s older phone so I could download Overcast again. So flexible and intuitive by comparison, am loving it! Only downside is sometimes I find myself subscribed to things I don’t want, I think ads must be quite easy to subscribe to in the pocket.

Excellent. I bailed out of the Apple podcast app a few years ago when they stuffed it up by ‘improving’ it. I found Overcast - cannot remember how - but after no time, found it to be simple but perfect. It is easy to use, and a recent update actually DID improve it, without dropping any of the attributes that embedded users have become used to. I definitely recommend this app, and thanks to the developers for keeping it simple, but absolutely doing what we want/need it to do.

The rewrite trap. I’ve been an Overcast user from the very beginning, and even after the recent rewrite, it’s still the best podcast player around, mostly because of its solid fundamentals - Smart Speed and Voice Boost are genuinely best-in-class. And while the UI has never been revolutionary, it mostly stayed out of your way and let you get to what’s most important - get the content into your skull, with sublime technical finesse. The recent rewrite, like all rewrites, are disorienting, which makes things worse for no particular reason. It’s the trap that nearly all software eventually falls into: the belief that users care about how things work. What users actually want is for the software to be invisible, and changing a large proportion of the UI and some fundamental aspects of the UX is not how you make software invisible. Regardless, I’ll eventually get used to the New Way of Things, and those things that annoy me now will fade into muscle memory, and I’ll continue using the best podcast player around, in the best the audio can sound (something I’m constantly reminded of whenever I use any other podcast or audiobook apps). I’ve pinged it a star because I’m now conscious of all its worts, but it’ll go back to 5 stars as soon as I forget.

Almost Perfect. This is still the best podcast solution out there. It's simple, fast and reliable. Some of its pioneered features like smart speed have made their way into competing products but I still feel the best quality version is from Overcast. The only thing that bugs me is how recommended/starred podcasts as implemented. There's no way to easily find podcasts you've starred. In the podcast list there's an emoji showing that an episode is starred but if you wanted to just see a list of all episodes you've starred you can't - you have to scroll through the podcast list and find it manually... That's the only thing wrong with this app for me.

As good as it’s gets. This is probably the best podcast app on iOS. The controls are so intuitive and well designed. It’s clear a lot of thought has been put into it. It pretty much blows away the default podcast app (and other podcast app imo). If you listen to a lot of podcast I’d highly recommend you get this instead over the default app. The UI is very well designed and much better than the default. It’ll take a really long time to explain it so I suggest just downloading it and using trying it out, you’ll see what I mean. It’s much more we’ll thought out than even apps like pocketcast imo. The sound engine and AI is so well designed to shorten silences, speed up voices while they’re still understandable, and smart speed adjusting the speed to enable you get through a podcast as quickly as possible. Are all quality of life features that enable you to cover so much more content in the time available. So if you’re a busy individual this podcast app will probably allow you to listen to more podcasts than you otherwise would’ve the time to. And to top it all off the app is free with all the ads out of the way. It’s seriously on of the best implementation of ads I’ve seen in an app. You won’t even notice them. So it’s essentially a free extremely high quality app with a premium experience. You can ofc pay a very small yearly fee if you’re keen on getting rid of the ads and gaining some nice customise features like changing the app icon.

(Still a) Great app!. Update in March 2021: I continue to love this app, appreciate the subtle design and respect for privacy. Original: Love the experience, and am thinking of paying for the premium experience (as I use this SO much). One thing I’d love in a future update: the ability to transfer the downloaded episodes as files to iTunes. I’ve had to backup & restore a phone and then got a new one which meant two lots of multi-gig download sessions which could’ve been avoided.

I like this app but?. I would like to give Overcast five stars except for one reason - the adds. I paid for a premium service and I don’t get any adds when I listen in my iPad, but I when I listen on my phone (which is most of the time) I get all the adds which is very annoying. I know advertising is important, but if I have paid for a premium service, I expect no advertising. I cannot find anyway to contact the developer, so I guess I just gotta put up with the adds. Excellent service otherwise.

Stellar App made with love. This app is made for people who listen to podcasts on the regular. Lots of attention to detail, thoughtful and innovative features, this is app is to podcasts what a well paired wine is for a lovingly prepared dish. Bon Appetit! The rewrite has been a big change, I used to use streaming and I’m sad to see it go but the new update has the same level of care and attention as it has always had. Here’s to the next 10 years of overcast!

Best iOS podcast player on the market!. Loving the new refresh! Overcast is still the best podcast app out there for iOS. I’ve been using it since its early days, and have tried the competition a few times but always ended up coming back to Overcast. I love the refreshed interface, and after a couple of days of use, muscle memory is back. Its features like Voice Boost still means the best voice clarity especially when in loud environments.

Rushed update from an arrogant developer. I Import/Export has been removed and not just buried in the new design. I also assume this is not malicious, but part of the rush job to meet the arbitrary deadline of the 10-year anniversary. Lack of Import/Export is just incredible. A huge design change and a bunch of new bugs and I can’t even switch (temporarily or not) to another player. I wouldn’t have been using Overcast since v1 if it hadn’t had Import/Export. I give a one-star review because the developer has been obnoxiously arrogant about this release. No one else cared about the 10-year anniversary, but the user base has been subject to a massive design and functionality change. The developer doesn’t use unit tests and this release did not get the full TestFlight beta that it desperately needed. Now that negative feedback is coming in, the developer is complaining about being held “hostage” to the users. Just incredible.

Almost Perfect. Overcast is an app that works extremely well and I think that it just edges out Pockcast as a superior product. However, I do think that Pocket Casts does two things better. Firstly, I think that it's management of the queue is better, and secondly I think its layout of the podcast screen is a bit better. Overall though I'd say it's the superior product, specially those who use a Mac like myself and whom desire to listen to podcasts on there. The Overcasst app completely trounces the (from my experience) often buggy web player for Pocket Casts, as well as being free!

2024 Update is all class. The mid-2024 Update made so many nice little improvements. It really shows a depth of care. Everything is very nicely done. My only complaint is the removal of streaming to start playing a show. I’m guessing I can overcome this 99% by setting my regular podcatss to all download proactively. Internet in other parts of the world (like Australia) isn’t always great, so this effect can be magnified eg waiting tens of seconds if not minutes before something new starts playing. (And phone storage size to download as many podcasts as I would want to pushes you up a storage tier for many). I get the tradeoffs in complexity and especially now there are dynamic length inserte ads (good discussion on ATP about this btw). So still not sure if this is worth addressing on the app side, or just noting and working around on the user side. My favourite “nice touch” feature: if you have a sleep timer on, it expires, then you hit play again from the lock screen, it plays with the sleep timer again rather than infinitely. So it’s less work than unlocking the phone and setting up another timer. Great when you’re half asleep.

I love Overcast!. The native iPhone podcast app has been “updated” (without consultation with users) to the point where it is difficult to use, and unusable while driving. So I thought I’d try Overcast. What a refreshing change! An app that is intuitive to learn, simple to operate, and allows me to enjoy the podcast. To the developers of Overcast, I’d like to say congratulations and well done! To Apple, I just want to say that I have deleted yet another useless Apple app which has been rendered unusable by an “update”.

Superior to Apple. I’d been using the podcast app built in to my phone without ever trying anything else. Then Apple in their wisdom go and do an update and make horrendous changes. I went searching for a new app that day and after reading reviews, decided on Overcast. I’m SO glad I made the switch and discovered all the cool features you could have whilst listening to podcasts every day. From a creature of habit, Overcast has me converted! 😎

Amazing. A fantastic app, especially with the latest update! I was using apple podcasts until recently, and the raw speed of pausing and playing a podcast is leagues ahead of apple podcasts, which often takes seconds to play on my iPhone 12. Also, there are so many little things it does better, like pausing the podcast when Siri gives you directions. The new UI has some work to be done but looks significantly better than the terrible old UI. A significant update!

Just keeps getting worse. I've been using the app since it first came out. It was perfect. A simple podcast player with some nifty tech to make podcast more listenable (Smartspeed and Voice Boost). Even its reliance on a back-end service, which I was dubious about at first, was a benefit since it dramatically sped up the process of checking for new episodes. I bought the original version, and even subscribed for awhile after the licensing model changed. Since then, the creater has done his darndest to ruin the app. Every update, every new feature, every interface change has been for the worst, to the point where the app is almost unusable in it's current state. If it wasn't for smartspeed saving me so much time, I'd ditch it now. But it's a high mental cost for that one benefit.

Incredibly disappointing update. Sad to see a once great ap get updated to be a worse, slower experience. Streaming gone so now clicking a new episode can take minutes to play. It also takes 2 clicks as tap to play is gone. (Added back still slow without streaming) To download the episode ahead of time is now hidden behind 2 menus, no more swipe. Viewing episode information is now hidden in a menu. No swipe to view. Clicking artwork reveals it but not dismisses. Sleep timer hidden behind menu. Then a second menu to select duration. No idea how to get to a shows page from info. Assume the feature is removed. Apple Watch functionality still completely broken and buggy, the one aspect that I’d welcome an update to. Genuinely don’t understand how people are claiming the new update is faster, every function from playing, downloading, sleep timer, reading information is objectively slower. Makes me wonder if there is purchased reviews going up. Just discovered OPML export has been removed making switching to another podcast player harder. Hard to believe that was accidental.

The best just got far better. The most recent update (5.1.2) delivers a feature that I have been hoping would be coming at some point, telling me on the playback screen the name of the connected bluetooth headset (I often listen to podcasts in the middle of the night whilst settling children, and knowing where the audio will pop out is rather important), I know this is a small feature, but it is so needed. New navigation for effects, info and chapters is also a welcome improvement. This on-top of great Apple Watch syncing (that works and I use all the time), smart speed (that has saved me many many hours of time) and a raft of other thoughtful features. Love this app, keep on test driving everything else, and always come back. Thanks Marco, keep up the good work.

Good app bad UI. The app itself works great, smart speed is awesome, haven’t had it crash etc but dear god the UI on this thing is the most unintuitive thing ever. You can tell the app developer is a pretty good engineer but is clearly lacking UI dev experience or design flair for that matter. For instance, oh that podcast looks good I’m not near Wi-Fi but don’t mind using mobile to download it before my flight. *click on podcast* Hmm ok nothing here to set it to download. I can share it (don’t know many people who do that but fair enough). There is a star... no that’s not it. Ahh settings up top might have it. Nope... Oh it might be elsewhere. So top level menu I have a broadcast icon thingy, that might be it. Nope that’s app settings. Not sure why on earth settings would be on top left and how a broadcast tower icon relates to it. Hmm it wouldn’t be the + because that’s add a podcast and I’m not sure why but apparently people make enough playlists that it needs to be a top level menu icon, even though it’s at the top of the main podcast list. Must be the little down arrow, makes sense download. Ok waiting to download... how do I set it to cellular?? Tap Long press Tap tap Swipe righ. Delete ! Please please let swipe left be it.... *please turn off all your electronic devices as we prepare for take off* Arghhh

Like one of my children, only useful. The newest update made me wonder if I’ve ever written a review. In case I haven’t, here it is. I’ve been an overcast user from launch day and I use it more that any other app, maybe more than any other thing in my life, except maybe my bed (maybe). I never want it to do anything more than what it does, until a new feature is released, then I wonder how I ever did without that thing. Anywhere else I’ve tried to listen to a podcast feels like visiting a foreign country where everyone hates me. For the price of subscription (or free, if you must) it’s absurdly great value. If podcasts are your thing, I know of no reason why you wouldn’t try it and can’t imagine you not liking it. 5 million stars

Simply the best, better than all the rest. This is the Swiss Army knife of podcast playback. There are so many superlatives I can pour on it, but I’ll stick with noting 2 things: 1. The app size: hardly anything these days comes so lean, and it’s usually because apps are busy collecting information about the user rather than doing what they’re actually supposed to do. 2. Which brings me to privacy: Overcast respects its users’ privacy throughout, a rare accomplishment these days. In other words, if you’re looking for a podcast player, look no further. This is as good as it gets.

Sadly declined in quality - randomly deleted my entire library. I started using Overcast several years ago and for a long time it was the best app out there. Sadly no longer. It is glitchy and annoying - every time there is an update some new unexpected error occurs. For example - sometimes a podcast mysteriously stops updating, even though new episodes appear on the feed. Or sometimes a podcast stops downloading and restarts… continuously. Why? Who knows. Meanwhile, other apps are out there and are getting better with new features. Out of loyalty I have stuck with Overcast (I don’t really care about new features anyway), but since it decided to DELETE my entire podcast library and refuse to re-download any episodes from my subscribed feeds, I have decided that enough is enough. I literally have an empty app with no downloaded episodes and no ability to download new ones. I’m sure I could fix this by redownloading the app, but why would I do this just to have it happen again. It’s time to move on.

Solid App. I’ve been a user for 5 years. It’s easy to find and add podcasts without much fuss, but if you want to tailor it more (which you will) there are many well considered options that can make your podcast listening very pleasant! For me, I especially like the adjustable sleep timer; how easy it is to set up a playlist with the latest however many number of episodes that fall away so (I can pick and choose); or a playlist to download a whole bunch while you’re offline travelling. An app for all other apps to aspire to.

So much closer to what a podcast app should be. Ah, this is more like it. Love podcasts, have tried so many apps, but by the time you have a gazzillion subscriptions you’re overwhelmed. That’s where Overcast comes in - especially the Smart Podcasts, which I love (I have categories like Comedy, Politics, Sport, so I can immediately see what’s most recent out of not just my favourite podcasts, but particular topics). Add to that the amazing features for controlling playback speed and gaps ... I went premium within the week just to support the developers!

The new update ruined everything!. This was far and away the best podcast app for years. But this latest update ruined so much of it. - if you leave an episode half played for a while, you come back to it and it’s been labeled as played and deleted. Awful. - If you delete an episode you’ve completed, it stays there for hours until it actually disappears. - the new display is terrible. Used to be able skip forward or back 15 secs via the currently playing at the bottom while you scrolled through other episodes and podcasts. Now you have to actually go into your currently playing episode’s own window to fast forward or rewind. - also with the display, it now does this silly thing where it prioritises the episode heading, rather than the play bar. So when you tap on an episode, the play/delete/download etc. function bar opens below the episode but out of sight, so it’s extra scrolling down to utilise those. These sound like small nuisances, but it all adds up when you’re trying to quickly do what you need to while driving or walking etc. There’s now a lot of extra taps and scrolls just get to where you want. Not sure what you were aiming for here guys, but please, go back!

The only podcast app I love. I’ve been using this app since 2014 - first as a teenager, now as an adult. It’s very, very good. Like password managers, I try all the different options every now and then. And like 1Password, I keep landing back on Overcast, because it’s just that good. There’s a few usability nitpicks here and there. The playlist interaction model isn’t very intuitive, and the podcast description is beneath the podcast chapters (to me, chapters would make more sense to have below the image, scrolling to get to them, or maybe expanding something?). The fact that *that’s* the kind of thing that I take issue with says a lot more about the excellent state of the rest of this product. You can tell how much thought and care went into every corner of it.

Imagine you at your best. All the time. Picture yourself at your sharpest and most productive. Your most alert and focused. Your most lucid, creative and confident. At work. At play. In every area of your life. Add Mind Lab Pro® v4.0 to your daily routine and uncap your true potential. Buy Now!

Disappointing. New update has downgrade the app functionality significantly. Very disappointing.

Totally broken. App is stuck on syncing page for me after latest update. Totally unusable. I’m on WiFi, at home, extremely annoying.

Broken app. The recent update destroyed the app. Podcasts are no longer deleted automatically (as per my settings) after listening, downloads constantly fail, managing storage is impossible, and accessing show notes is only done through a button the size of a grain of rice. But hey, there’s a ribbon with all the new stuff on it.

New Update messes with downloads. Usually this app is 5 stars but with the new update, I constantly have to keep downloading until it goes through. It takes forever now

New version NOT READY AUG 2024. I used to love Overcast and would tell everyone how much better it was than any other podcast app. It really was! This new update still has some of the better playback features, has eliminated a few minor ones I liked, but overall is suuuuper glitchy, especially the mandatory download function. It barely works reliably, and when it does manage to play a podcast there is no way to delete the downloaded podcast data from the cache. It just piles up and up into infinity. Right now this app is taking up 25gb (and growing) of my phone's memory and there is no way to clear that, unless I delete the whole app. Am I really going to have to suffer through listening to podcasts on Spotify? Please fix this, it's 2024 and my iPhone is not a 1st gen iPod. It doesn't have to be like this!

Overcast or Sonos?. It seems the need to rewrite and destroy one's own product is pervasive these days! this application has become unusable! no streaming, too many taps and swipes to get to the play button and fast-forward/rewind controls I like to choose what I play and support episode by episode. I don't need to download everything in advance just so I can avoid the latency! once I hit play, I have to quickly run to tap on the controls button in order to find the seeking buttons! more money for advertisers and Marco, I guess! anyhow, I'm done unless it gets fixed quick. There are better options like you know, downcast, Spotify, well too many to mention here fix it!

Updates make this app unusable. I’ll preface this by noting that I never leave negative reviews. I’m an avid listener of podcasts and have been using Overcast exclusively for 5+ years. The new updates make the app unnecessarily aggravating to use. I can’t easily tell which episodes I have listened to already. Sorting episodes by new-old/old-new is either not possible or too confusing to be accessible. Right now I’m waiting for an episode to “download” and I can’t tell if that’s happening or not. I’m on Wifi, why can’t I just press play and listen to the episode? Not sure. I’m sad to leave but unfortunately I’m too habitually frustrated to continue with this app.

New design destroyed the best podcast app. Title says it all. Terrible update.

Search function doesn’t work. The search function is a critical feature. Can’t search for specific episodes.

Solid podcast app. Huge podcast listener, overcast is the best podcast app I've used. Simple, clear, intuitive. Totally happy to subscribe and support!

Because Apple's Podcast App Sucks. If you love podcasts, and having them sync seamlessly via your devices, you probably are super annoyed with how poorly Apple's own podcast app works between desktop, phone, etc. Overcast is made for those who want a wonderful experience and not have to mess around getting annoyed at syncing issues. Completely functional with the free version, you decide to pay because you want to support great apps, and considering the low cost, you should definitely do it.

So disappointed!. My favourite app for years. New update very unnecessarily changed everything around for the worse. For the first time in many years I am forced to look for a better option for podcasts.

Is now absolute junk. Until about three weeks ago, was my only podcast app I used. It was by far the most user-friendly. It is now incredibly un user-friendly. An example. Searching for a podcast I don’t have is impossible. There used to be a page where they would have, a whole bunch of podcasts that you could just browse and one was interesting, you got it. now, that does not exist, and the search function is unusable. I have a podcast called Hitler’s Olympics. It’s a seven part series. I want to download the next episode, but good luck using the search function to find it anywhere. Back to Apple podcast, unfortunately

Have loved Overcast for Ages but super glitchy. The last few weeks, this app just keeps closing whatever episode I am listening to once I am about a minute and a half into the show. It will do this 3-4 times so that I have to continually restart the episode until it finally continues to play. I really hope they work out whatever big is causing this otherwise I’ll have to switch podcast apps.

New design is a bit worse. I liked when you could swipe between the cards, now it’s extra taps to do the same functions. It seems like change for change’s sake, and the old interface was better IMO.

For people who love to listen to and create podcasts. I love to listen to podcasts. They’ve been a mainstay of my listening experience since I first had an iPod. They are interesting, stimulating and fun. So many creators with so much talent. A good podcast player will stay out of the way while enhancing your enjoyment. This podcast player successfully walks this tightrope. Voice Boost ensures the sound levels from different shows are similar in volume levels. Custom playlists let you ensure the playback happens like you want it to: Priority podcasts play first in the order you want (daily news will always play first when it publishes, for example), smart skip lets you select, say, 60 seconds forward and 15 seconds back, chapter support makes it a breeze to jump ahead to a chapter in a show that interests you. The cornerstone feature is Smart Speed. The app will detect silence and intelligently reduces pauses between words, at the end of sentences, at the start and the end of shows. It speeds up (or slows) the speech invisibly to allow you to get through more of the shows you enjoy. I, myself, have saved 1,486 HOURS of listening from this feature apart from just making the shows playback faster. There is a lot of depth to this app to explore to help make your podcast listening experience more suitable to your preferences, so feel free to explore. Keep an eye out for toggles that are ‘custom for this podcast’, to really tune things the way you like. This is all created by ONE person, no marketing department, no team of people behind him, and is the ultimate expression of what one person with a passion can create and put out into the world. It was just relaunched with a complete UI redesign alongside a whole new foundation to boot, which will allow the developer to enhance the app with more modern iOS features without regressions going forward. Free to use as much as you want with no restrictions, just ads for other podcasts. A very reasonable annual subscription for the amount of value this app will bring to you. Well worth checking out.

Another example of redesign ruining a good app. The new redesign is a disaster. Removed the ability to select and delete multiple episodes. Can no longer control sorting. Can't choose to download a playlist to listen offline. Downloads streamed podcasts multiple times wasting bandwidth and causing delays. A bunch of fancy design things with swiping that add no functionality. Was a premium subscriber. Now looking for replacement that works.

Not loving the changed UI. Been a huge fan of this app for years, and a subscriber a couple of times. But I really dislike how many more taps it takes to play and download episodes now. Hoping it gets changed back someday.

Used to be much better. Used to really love this app but a lot of recent changes made the app worse. Specifically, streaming has been removed.

Long time user, leaving. Developer decided to break almost every aspect of the app in an unnecessary massive update recently. Bugs everywhere feels like an Alpha. Looking for another app.

UI overhaul ruined it. I’ve been paying for premium for a long time because it was a great app. But this new redesign has ruined the listening experience, especially the new download episode first mechanism. The episodes no longer play automatically, meaning I have to reach up to my earphones or phone after every episode to hit play.

Update sucks , Slow. Update sucks app data storage suddenly jumped to 60GB maxed out my phone and delete downloads option is gone it seems

New update missing functionality. Was a 5 star app until the new update took away functionality, complicated UI and broke some fundamental things, hopefully it gets fixed so I can revise to 5 star

Recent updates have made this excellent app unusable. I’ve been using this app for 5+ years and thoroughly enjoyed the experience but the recent updates have made it functionally unusable. Episodes constantly fail to download, even when I prompt them manually and then if you try to stream them it will exit the episode upon the first ad break and lose your place. Unless you painstakingly babysit an entire playlists worth of episodes into downloading forget about using this app for a road trip etc. Very frustrated with this turn of events and will have to look into different app options moving forward.

Back to Apple Podcasts. While this mess is being cleaned up, fortunately Apple Podcasts is pretty great again.

Download button. Downloading requires too many clicks. Swiping was superior in my opinion. At least streaming is back.

Poor redesign. I’ve been using overcast for about a decade. The recent redesign is not user friendly. The sleep timer used to be easily accessible; located just below the play/rewind buttons. It’s now tucked away and you have to click multiple times to get to the sleep timer option. To navigate to the sleep timer menu, you have to click on an icon that doesn’t give you any indication what is hidden behind it. It controls multiple functions not just the sleep timer. As someone who frequently uses the sleep timer this is very frustrating and not user friendly.

Disappointed in UI update. Unfortunately after being a paid subscriber to this app for 7 years, I’ve decided to remove it and look for an alternative. The main features I enjoyed about the old UI were the ability to see how much the “smart speed” was shaving off episode time in real time, the ability to search and download individual episodes of podcasts without having to follow the podcast or have to add the individual episode by tapping it to bring up the episode screen instead of just swiping and tapping download, and the ability to have a list of podcasts I’ve listened to without having to follow them all. There’s around 150+ different podcasts that I may listen to over the course of a year, and I don’t want new episodes from all 150+ downloading automatically or even just clogging up my feed showing new episodes. With the original UI it was nice to have a list of ones I had listened to that I could occasionally tap and browse to see if there’s any topics worth downloading the episode for, now I have to maintain a separate list in a note as there seems no way to do that now without following the podcast. Disappointing. What I liked about Overcast was how it presented podcasts differently than the Apple Podcast app. Now it’s moved closer to presenting shows and episodes in the same way. In this case I might as well use the stock app instead of paying for a 3rd party one.

Undo the Update. This update is so bad I assumed Marco sold the app to a Chinese conglomerate or something. Baffling layout where nothing is easy to find. Podcasts either do or don’t download according to their whims. I understand the developer itch to do something new and exciting, but this one is a swing and a miss for me. Now I have to find an alternative after…TEN YEARS??? Sorry Marco.

Eagerly awaiting the revision’s revision. Overcast is still my preferred podcast player, but…. Hiding the sleep function and favouriting star for the sake of how the design looks was a mistake from a usability perspective. Moving show notes from a swipe to under the info button means a simple, common action requires more attention and time. Again, less useable. Apple’s introduction of machine-generated transcripts means there are shows I have reason to consume elsewhere. Push and pull factors working against Overcast at the moment.

Solid (With a big caveat). Probably the best podcast app for iOS at the moment. Simple, nicely designed, stable. Smart Speed is a great added bonus. Edit: App burned through 3.4 GB of data overnight doing absolutely nothing. Welp.

New design is awesome. Loving the redesign. The row of new eps at the top is awesome and and it feels faster and more stable.

Dedicated Sleep Timer button :). The dedicated sleep timer is back. Yeah! I’m happy again. Thank you. (version 2024.8.1).

Very good but.... I wish I could easily see which episodes I’ve already downloaded. It’s not easy to find a needle in a haystack. A smart playlist with downloaded episodes (or even starred episodes) would be amazing. Also the lack of a solid iOS widget is a weakness. I’m moving on after having moved the app for a while, but these shortcomings have been tiring.

Bring back key features. Latest redesign eliminated important features like bulk delete.

I loved this app. It was great, and absolutely a 5-star before. I absolutely understand that you spent the last 18 months overhauling the code - loads of work and it’s just you working on it. But with no streaming, I’m having loads of trouble. One podcast I listen (and relisten) to constantly is taking upwards of half an hour to download, despite my fairly good wifi (second fastest speed my ISP offers). Please bring back streaming, or add a feature to automatically download the next one or two episodes in a playlist - I don’t have the space on my phone to download 600 episodes of the one podcast, plus the others that I listen to on top of that. Also, unless I’ve missed it, the option to rate/review podcasts would be cool.

Simple. The apple podcast app was giving me headaches because it is crowded with features that leave me confused, and I couldn’t get it to work with my apple watch (even after spending an hour with an apple tech expert) . Overcast is allowing me to navigate easily and to get the podcasts I want. I finally found an app that synchronizes seamlessly with my apple watch.

August 2024 Update is Missing Crucial Items. There used to be an easy option to toggle and download an episode and now that’s gone. I’d like to see it come back now that streaming and downloading is back. Features for each podcast: - Episode Sort is the same for both “current” episodes and “all” and I often set these two things differently. I hope this feature comes back. It’s also showing doubles of each episodes for some podcasts.

Such a Shame. This latest update has crippled the app for me. I’m running it on an iPhone 14, so I THINK that should be enough hardware to handle it. Unfortunately, syncing takes forever, stalls and I have to reboot it every time I open the app. Then it just won’t download the latest episode of a podcast. Huge bummer

New Updates are helping!. The new ui is still more difficult to navigate, but the most recent update that brought streaming back was super helpful. Hopeful that this new version will keep improving.

Chapters. Bring back the swipe to see chapters. The button is too small and I have a hard time tapping it while I’m commuting

Bad update. New update is frustrating. Takes much longer for episodes to start playing as everything is now forced to download first. Opening the app also takes longer.

Need streaming back.. I’m not sure I understand why streaming was taken away. There is just a terrible wait between episodes now that the episode has to download. I’ve been a user for a long time, and I really disapprove of losing this feature.

Shortens Silences makes this the best podcast app. Sometimes I have to listen to other people’s podcast apps and it always makes me so sad for them. With Shortens Silences, you don’t need to listen at 1.5 speed.

Used to be great, now it’s annoying. I don’t know what happened. This used to be a great app. Now I can’t get episodes to load, auto play plays the most recent episode instead of the next one in sequence, and other little things I can’t remember at the moment. I like how you can use keywords to search for a specific episode, but when you click that episode it brings you to the podcast page instead of to the episode. So many little things are annoying with this app. I’m going to delete it, sadly. It could be great but attention to detail with the user experience isn’t there.

Great except not compatible with Sonos. I love this app. I just wish it would work seamlessly to connect and play over airplay on iOS with Sonos One.

Space hog. App has fundamental flaw. It never deletes any podcast unless you completely listen to whole thing. Result is that it grows space used until you’re out then you have spend tedious time deleting pod episodes one by one.

The best!. After settling for one reason or another with a few other podcast players over the past couple of listening years including mostly the original Apple player I finally installed overcast. Grateful I did! This is the best player by far that I have tried. Zero weaknesses IMO. Fast intuitive and does everything I want it to do. Awesome job guys and gals. A++

Randomly Erases everything. Used to love this one. I listen to a lot of poscasts, in the past month, this app has erased everything I have subscribed to and downloaded twice. including a paid subscription for multiple shows, and it’s annoying to have to add all those back by rss feed for the 3rd time. Switching apps.

My go-to. I would not describe myself as a heavy podcast listener (I have three or four regulars that I listen to) but Overcast has been my go-to choice for years. The developer is very thoughtful about functionality and design. Love this new version! It is super snappy.

Adsterra is the most preferred ad network for those looking for an alternative to AdSense. Adsterra is the ideal choice for new sites with low daily traffic. In order to advertise on the site in Adsterra, like other ad networks, a certain traffic limit, domain age, etc. is required. There are no strict rules. Sign up!

New version buggy and unresponsive support. I have used Overcast and loved it for many years. I am also an ATP listener and and I run a small startup where we also build an app and I wear many hats including support. Where is the responsiveness to support and feedback since the new version? I maintain a Mastodon account basically for the whole purpose of communicating with the ATP crew and leaving Overcast feedback. I have posted many toots since the release of the new version and none have even gotten a reaction or reply from Marco. One of the things that is so nice about using software from small developers is feeling like they’re paying attention to their users and have a responsiveness that large companies never will. But I really feel that is lacking in this new rollout. I know that Marco is working hard to fix some of the bugs that are being reported and some of the ones I reported have been fixed, but others have not. And those bugs are really weighing down on my experience of using Overcast and making me consider switching to a different podcast player.

Was the best podcast app. And probably will be in the future, but now it’s a disappointment. Reduced my rating from 5 stars to 3 stars and now to 2 stars as major issues remain since a major update in July. The developer decided to upgrade an app lacking features it once had (and I’m not talking about streaming) to meet an artificial deadline of a tenth anniversary of the app. Playlist sorting remains broken a full six weeks after a major upgrade - downloaded episodes just don’t get added in the proper sort order. Features like OPML export and import remain missing. I should also mention that the watch app, while generally pretty good, has some issues of its own. It doesn’t support playing higher priority episodes first for some reason and occasionally gets in a state when it simply doesn’t respond. For me that costs the rating a half star. Here’s hoping that the major issues with the latest update get fixed very, very soon. This reminds me so much of the recent poor upgrade to the Sonos app, all to meet an artificial deadline that just wasn’t necessary, as the old version was running just fine.

My favorite podcast app but very poor application performance. What is there to be said about overcast that hasn’t already been said? It’s great! There are just two things that weigh down the app. The first is the battery drain of the app. Most of the time it’s great, but sometimes it can take my iphone from full power/just off the charger to empty in ten seconds (i am not joking). Other times the background processes get spun up and it’ll drain 20-40% of your battery in a minute or two. Even when you quit the app the background processes continue to drain. It’s wildly unacceptable. The other issue seems to be with the file cache. While the application and data size is clearly explained in the istorage settings, it seems to be incorrect. For some reason Overcast fills up my Other category of files until my Iphone starts crashing from having too little free space. The only way to fix it is to uninstall the app completely then reinstall. When I do this I can regularly free up 2-3g of additional space over and above what the iphone says overcast is using.

Almost perfect!. I used to use other podcast apps but at my husband’s insistence, gave Overcast a try. It remains my go to app now! I can appreciate that it’s a one-man show and Marco is doing the best he can. ☺️ I don’t mind most of the changes that were made in this latest update, and most of them are improvements or are neutral for my specific usage of the app. The only issue I’m having is with the queue. It used to be so easy to swipe on an episode of any podcast to add it to the queue under Up Next. Now that function is gone, and I have to click the three dot menu on each episode and add it that way. However, I’m finding that if I’m in the middle of listening to one podcast and then add an episode from another podcast to Up Next, it will just keep rolling into the next episode of that first podcast and I end up having to go into my queue and force play it anyway. I can deal with losing the functionality of easy swiping, but what am I missing here? Why won’t it actually play what’s next to my queue?

Thank you! I can EASILY play podcasts again!. Thank you Overcast, you just took my blood pressure down a couple of points. I have watched Apple experiment and destroy whatever attempts they have made to create an easy to use and understand podcast player. If you want gray hair go try and figure out the crap that Apple has produced for a podcast player. Complicated and difficult to use. I had reached a point in trying to find and play podcasts on Apple’s mess that I was about to hurdle my poor iPad out of extreme frustration. The Overcast app was so simple to setup and use. I didn’t even create an Overcast account and I was up and running with ease in no time. Easy to find podcasts and easy to play them. Apple’s use to be this way until I think they got too much money and decided to hire shoemakers to create a player app. Thank you again Overcast! And Apple, I hope you stub your big toe, for shame for creating such junk.

Best Got Better. I’ve been using Overcast for several years, and I’ve been delighted by its features and how well they’re implemented (it was the first to offer smart speed to tighten up podcasters who pause a lot!). I’ve also always liked that it’s true indie, one developer, independent. (And there was some reason I didn’t like how Apple’s own podcast player was behaving with other devices but I can’t even remember why anymore.) When this new version came out I was nervous, because change is scary ;-) but I finally updated and while it looks a little different, a few minutes of patience and looking through it revealed controls for most of the things I wanted to change right away, and overall everything looks more consistent and buttoned down and, dare I say it… slick? It’s an awesome podcast player and I think it just managed to get awesome-er.

Once Great, but Desparately Needs Help!. Update: Upon further review, this app will no longer download episodes via wi-fi AT ALL! Set it to wi-fi only, turn off cellular data, and it’s completely useless! So, if you want to use Overcast much, you better have an unlimited data plan. In addition to this, the developer offers ZERO technical support; he even tells you this in the app info like we’re supposed to feel sorry him. Well, I feel sorry for folks stuck with a podcast app that won’t download podcasts! Someone needs to fix this festering pile of poo for me to continue using it. Original Review: I’ve used Overcast for years and absolutely loved it, until recently. This app has a major issue with episodes getting stuck in “waiting to download.” They won’t download until you actually play them, and if you aren’t on wi-fi at that time, tough - just smoke right through your cellular data plan. I’ve tried everything I can imagine to fix it, and nothing works. This issue has been cropping up for YEARS now, and the developer hasn’t addressed it. It’s too bad, because it is a great app, otherwise. But, this is a dealbreaker - especially if you listen to a lot of podcasts, as I do.

There’s a reason this is an editor’s choice app. I have been using this app for many years now. When podcasts download, they don’t seem to take up quite as much space as with apple’s podcast app. This app has everything I want to listen to. They also present ads for other podcasts that are contextually related to what you are already listening to, and these ads appear at the very bottom of the screen. They don’t get in your way. When searching, the categories are well defined & extremely robust. You can find just about any podcast you would want. And, if you need to clear space on your device; if you delete the app & reinstall it, you can access all your podcasts again without having to restore from a backup. I’ve never had an issue with it loading. It is very consistent. I highly recommend this app.

Previous Loyal Overcast Premium Customer. I’ve tried to live with the redesign update for a month. It sounds like at some point, the timer function won’t be buried in a bunch of taps (previously, was so easy). The one tap to play is back, but makes me wonder how there weren’t metrics on how many people used this (why would I ever want to tap twice when I could tap once to play?). The UI is getting in the way. When a podcast ends in my recents, I used to be able to click my AirPods to start the next podcast. Now, every time, I have to get my iPhone out to start the next podcast. What really gets me is how the developer says on his podcast that he needs to “sacrifice his design” to accommodate users. Almost like Apple arguing you don’t need ports, customers being vocal about their needs, and Apple bringing ports back. I also notice export OPML is missing for me to transfer my podcast subscriptions to another app. The developer also said one star reviews are the only way he’ll make user feedback changes. I was very turned off by his attitude towards his paying customers. Hence, the one star review.

Not optimized for my kind of podcast. I listen to mainly episodic story podcasts that have a chronological order. Stuff like the Magnus Archives and DND pods. However, when you’re done with an episode on this app it will automatically play the latest episode instead of the next chronologically which has caused me to accidentally hear spoilers a few times or just be very confused about an arc I haven’t gotten to yet before I realized it autoplayed the wrong episode. Out of the available podcast apps, this one is probably my favorite but none I have seen have great ui/ux options for enjoying podcasts chronologically and instead constantly assume you always want the latest episode. In my opinion, podcasts should have an option to either sort by the latest, popular, or by chronological order (it’d be best if there was an option to sort by arc/chapter/campaign for certain podcasts like how they sort seasons for tv shows) so that a variety of podcasts can be enjoyed as intended.

Update-Why can’t I see and listen to all new the podcasts?. I’ve used your app for years. This app has been very well recommended for a long time. I just noticed the update this week. I don’t recall noticing an update before. Two issues since the update-I use this app on both my iPhone and my iPad. For some unknown reason my iPhone now downloads the episodes before playing them yet on the iPad they will play streaming as they always have done. I cannot locate any setting or option that could account for this. And as I generally listen on my iPhone when out and about I have to wait for the downloading to take place first. This isn’t convenient. Please tell me how I can restore the streaming setting. The iPad still plays them streaming. I can’t see any difference in their settings. For some bewildering reason episodes that I have not played do not consistently show up in the Unplayed column. I regularly have to go to the All Episodes column to find the most recent one I want to hear. I cannot find another way to reach the developers and the website link merely takes me back to the app. Please fix! Why don’t my podcasts with unplayed (generally new) episodes still show orange dots? So frustrating! I’ve used this app happily for years! I really don’t want to have to switch my streaming app from yours. Please help! Please fix! Thanks…

Used to be great, now a hassle. I held off on complaining about the issues caused by the redesign, expecting them to eventually be patched, but here we are weeks later and the issues have only gotten worse. Playlists frequently reshuffle themselves while you’re listening, placing the current episode at the bottom so playback stops instead of moving to the next podcast. It doesn’t matter how many times you manually move the episode order, as soon as you close the app or put your phone to sleep the order will shuffle again. Sometimes episodes just drop out of playlists entirely, especially if you add them while they’re still downloading. You used to be able to queue up a series of episodes and not have to think about it for the rest of the day, now it’s a just a hassle having to constantly re-order and re-add episodes to the queue. I would have already moved to another app but the redesign also removed the ability to export your podcast subscriptions and I’m not looking forward to manually rebuild all my playlists elsewhere. I’m close, though.

Simply the best. This is the best podcast player out there. It syncs between devices, has speed controls, sounds great when sped up, has smart speed (which automatically removes pauses), seek back and forward 15 or 30 seconds (whatever you set the time to). I love the control. Are there problems, yes. Lack of search is frustrating when looking for a downloaded episode with a particular guest. Also, when in the podcast store you can search by podcast title but not by person's name. So if you would like to search for a guest and see all the different podcasts they have been interviewed on, you cannot. (To do this I go to Apple's app and search then come back to Overcast. What a pain.) Another thing that is annoying - when I searching for podcasts to subscribe to, once you hit "subscribe," it kicks you out of your search, and you have to repeat the same search if you want to add more than one podcast.

Good app but there are some problems.. A couple of months ago, there was a pretty significant change to the layout. I honestly can't remember all of them, but I feel like there were tabs on the bottom of the screen that I now miss. However, the largest problem is that random episodes won't play. I can't determine any consistency to why they won't play, but I've seen it on several different shows now. However, if I go to another podcast player, I can get said episodes to play just fine. My review started negatively, but I should end positively. I'm sharing these concerns, especially the one about broken episodes, because I really like this app. It works very well with the screen-reader built into iOS that I use. Despite some changes that I don't love, it is still my favorite of all pod-catchers that I've tried in terms of layout. This is still the pod-catcher that I recommend to all my friends and family, but I hope the developers clean it up some.

Love the app, hate the update. I’ve been a supporter of Overcast and Marco since this app was first released. I’m a big podcast listener and even though I haven’t always loved every aspect of every update, it has trended towards being a better app. This last update, which has been rewritten from the ground up with Swift UI and supposedly made future updates easier, has been very frustrating for me. The lack of streaming (edit: now added back!), slow and massively queued up downloads, removing or moving functionality that I relied on a lot (max downloads per podcast, quickly navigating to a podcast) has led to this app now filling up my phone to the point where almost half my storage is used by this app (92gb). I have used Overcast for soooo many years. Please fix some of these things so I don’t have to look for alternatives. The developer experience might have improved but the user experience has suffered greatly. This is my first and only app review since I got my first iPhone in 2007. Edit: Streaming was added back in and rating updated

UI update. *rating updated post .2 update This was the best podcast app around with intuitive UI. The new update felt like a step backwards. 1. Playlist now stacked at the now and scroll horizontally. This is not friendly to user who have multiple custom playlists. Or at least we should be allowed to edit out auto generated playlists that we don’t want. 2. Playlist used to change to gray when all podcast in said playlist had been listened to and deleted. This function no longer exists and I have to click in one by one to check if there’re new pods. 3. Swiping between pod info/pod playback control/pod detailed settings(sleep/speed etc) is now changed to dedicated icon button. Although it does not require extra movement for the user, it requires the user to pay attention to pinpoint their movement. Overall I think the new design would work just fine for occasional podcast listeners. But for intensive listeners it’s just not as friendly as the previous version.

Dump the default and get Overcast!. I have become a HUGE podcast listener. My typical day will have me in the car for 2-5 hours and podcasts have become a staple for me. Like most folks, I used the default player on my Apple devices. What a mistake that is! The default player started forcing other podcasts to download in place of my favorites. I contacted Apple who didn't give two squirts and bounced me around to numerous customer "don't care" departments. At that point I searched for a new player and found Overcast. I have been in love with it since. Great layout and fantastic functionality! Not sure about the people crying about ads ... I haven't gone subscription (yet!) but the ads are the least obtrusive I have seen on any app. I've deleted my fair share of apps for obnoxious advertising; I understand a person wants to make some money off their work and I don't fault anyone for that. The ads on here are minimal and certainly tolerable to help reward the guy for a great product.

A Buggy Experience. I like the base app, but when you try to use any of the additional features, they’re completely broken. My podcast list keeps changing the order I set, and the High-Priority Podcasts feature doesn’t work anymore—it used to before the big rewrite. Episodes often stop playing halfway through, or worse, the app plays a totally different episode than what’s displayed. The post-rewrite version feels much buggier and requires way more fiddling than ever before. The UX really needs some serious rethinking. The old version wasn’t perfect, but at least it was usable. Now it feels clunky and hard to navigate, especially if you’re out walking or multitasking. On top of that, support requests go unanswered, and the developer has openly said they don’t prioritize responding to them. If I were just starting out with podcast apps, I wouldn’t pick Overcast knowing what I know now. Since I listen to dozens of hours of podcasts a week, I’d likely begin with another app that offers a smoother and more reliable experience. Honestly, I’m considering switching to another podcast app entirely.

Better than Apple Podcast app. I listen to Spanish learning podcasts as well as technology and health podcasts. I tried to get a whole separate podcast app specifically for learning Spanish so that I could keep all of my learning life separate from the completely different genres that I usually listen to, but then realized I could easily make different playlists in Overcast and switch back and forth whenever I wanted. It is VERY difficult to try to live this life in the Apple Podcast app. If I wanted to switch to Spanish podcasts, trying to get back to technology podcasts risked messing up my whole queue in the Apple Podcasts app, not to mention the Podcasts app daily forgetting where I was in my podcast and having to restart from the beginning. For my specific purposes, Overcast is awesome for me, and the kinds of things I can do and learn is literally not possible in the Apple Podcast app. Thanks Marco.

Cell Data Usage Notifications Are Poor. We generally like the app, however we are constantly having issues with the following: 1. Pending downloads resetting Consequently our download queue is constantly at 99+ and the app chews through a ton of data. We've had to set it to streaming only multiple times, and also set it to WiFi only, but it appears to keep resetting. As a result we're chewing through more than 10 gigs of data on many months unless we watch it closely. 2. Easy to use a lot of storage space. As your phone fills up with podcasts, it will start warning you that you're almost out of storage space. At this point the app generally crashes. We've had to manually reduce the number of podcasts stored to 2 podcasts on most podcasts and it still hasn't helped much. Recommendation: Better notification and management of data usage by the app, rather than relying on the OS would be helpful.

Many ways to organize episodes. This is why I use Overcast instead of Apple Podcast: customization. I have my two dozen podcasts grouped into playlists, and within those playlists I can customize the order of playback. For example, when I found Small Town Dicks true crime podcast, I set it to start playback from the first season and come forward to present. I gave it its own playlist, b/c if I’m binging it I don’t want other pods mixed in. But the News pods I ordered for the most recent to show at the top. I have those grouped together in one or two playlists. History daily type pods are together, etc. But I don’t have to open any specific playlist; I can just go to “Episodes” for a look at all episodes with most recent at the top if I want to listen to the opinion by three different podcasters on a recent event. I like customization!

Beautiful, functional!. Update 8/5/24: i’m super bummed. i live 39 min from a small rural town. we live in the sticks. i was relying on being able to fully download episodes before, but with the huge revamp, i can barely use the app, because it doesn’r seem to be actually downloading anything until i try to listen to an ep. before, i downloaded episodes on wifi when i had it, and could play at home no problem. now, regardless of my settings, it tries to download when i press play. idk if i have something set wrong, but i can barely use this at home. really disappointed. Update: 5 stars to 3 stars. Why did I pay $5 for this app and now there are ads?? That is lame. And I still cannot figure out how to get playlists to automatically advance to the next downloaded podcast on the list. ?! Original Review: Love this alternative to the built-in app! I can't figure out how to get playlists to auto-advance, but I am sure there is a setting I am missing or something. Love this app.

Latest upgrade has made app overly complicated. I have been using Overcast for what seems like forever. I have always been a huge fan of this app all due to all the customization in the features, especially being able to edit out the intros and outros which I use for sleeping so the music doesn’t wake me up. Unfortunately the latest upgrade to the app has not been great. I find the UX/UI experience complicated and burdensome. It’s not very intuitive for building playlists, making queues (the app has to be open on my phone for one episode to go to the next) and it’s unclear to me to know when an episode is downloaded. Update. Now the playback is fixed but a new problem as surfaced that’s even worse in which you lose your spot in the episode when you close the app or switch to another one. It will make you start from the beginning which is extremely frustrating. I may have to sadly abandon using this app all together which is sad as I’ve used it for several years with no major bugs.

The intelligent speed boost alone makes it the best.. There are no perfect podcast apps yet, but for years no one has copies overcasts gap skip and pitch safe speed boost. It is done so well i dont notice, and even at 1.1 or 1.2 you save a lot of time and get to listen to more. All the important things are here - playlists and smart sorting, adjustable skip and back time, a simple useable interface. Big thank you to a thoughtful overcast team, and thank you for getting this review without interrupting and asking for it. This is is 6 Star app, but i am satisfied with five because there is room to grow - notably there needs to be a place to see all your star favorites. The only other app that has something on this is apple podcast because it looks nicer and their new deep content search engine is the best podcast discovery method since word of mouth. But how many new podcasts can you handle? So discover them however and manage your daily subscriptions and library in overcast.

Great alternative to Apple Podcasts. I think this is a great alternative to Apple Podcasts because you are able to customize each podcast’s settings to suit your needs. He ability to pin your favorite podcasts to the top is a big winner for me. It can take a minute to scroll through your podcasts or have to search for it every time if you have a large library. Having your favorites pinned is a great feature that is lacking in Apple Podcasts. The only thing I am not liking is for most of the podcasts (at least for me) won’t continue playing into the next episode. It will stop at the end of each episode instead. I’ve checked the settings for the main app and the individual podcasts and have still had no luck fixing the problem. I’ve noticed it’s not all the time and sometime it will continue episodes of podcasts it previously wouldn’t. I still love and recommend this app, great work!

I didn’t know how much I’d value this app. As podcasting grows into a monetized industry that large global players distribute, advertisements have begun to ruin the listener experience. Overcast allows paid subscribers to customize start and cutoff times so you can bypass ads at the beginning and end of the podcast. One of my favorite podcasts routinely runs 3 minutes of ads at the beginning of the podcast, and recently ran 6 minutes of ads before the podcast actually started. Overcast allows me to begin listening at the 3:00 mark of that podcast so I can get right into the programming. While Overcast cannot bypass inline, in program ads, the program does allow you to customize the amount of time dedicated to the back skip and forward skip buttons, wisely defaulting to 15 seconds back and 30 seconds forward. Given that podcasts have become a primary form of entertainment, Overcast provides exceptional value in podcast playback and management. 5 stars earned.

I Love Overcast - You’ll Love it Too.. I only use iOS devices. Initially I suffered through Apple’s Podcast App. It was one frustration after another. Finally deleted it. Then I found and tried several alternatives, including Stitcher. Honestly I’ve been happily using Overcast for so long now I can’t recall the specific reasons I disliked the other Podcast Apps so much. But I definitely recall feeling the same frustration I experienced using Apple’s App. Before trying Overcast I read reviews here and also Web articles comparing, contrasting and ranking Apps. Overcast was highly regarded. I’ve been extremely pleased with Overcast. Today I purchased the premium edition, dirt cheap $9.99/year and the transaction is super simple. I didn’t buy Premium Overcast because the standard edition is in anyway lacking. Rather, it’s the least I can do to express a bit of gratitude for all the enjoyment I’ve had using Overcast everyday. Thank you!

Overcast: A Comprehensive Podcasting Experience. As an avid user of Overcast since version 1, I can confidently assert its superiority as a podcasting application. Utilizing Overcast across my Mac, iPhone, iPad, and web browser when I have to use a Windows PC, I have access to a diverse range of content, including technology, photography, news, history, and more. Notably, I enjoy Overcast with my Apple Watch, enabling me to listen to my preferred music podcast Tiësto while mowing & Riding my Bike. Overcast’s exceptional features have solidified its position as my preferred podcasting application. The Smart Playlist feature, along with its customizable queue options and Smart Speed adjustment saving me 1,114 hours, has significantly enhanced my listening experience. Furthermore, Overcast offers a multitude of other valuable features that will undoubtedly captivate users and make it their go-to podcasting application.

Great podcast with one VERY irritating drawback. Overcast is overall quite nice. Fantastic layout, simple but powerful features, active development. My one big gripe with it (and it is almost a deal-breaker for me) is that an episode has to be downloaded in order to be played, unless you set the app to streaming (in which case it doesn’t download anything unless told to explicitly) in addition to being a nuisance for usability, it renders the discoverability that its directory affords almost non-existent. If I am looking through the catalog and see something I think I might like, I can’t just preview an episode to see if it’s right for me. No, I have to download the episode, wait until it’s done, and then I can play it. There’s a play UI element, but it just hangs. I would love to see this fixed in a later build, because it’s something that pretty much all other podcast apps have solved. If something can be downloaded and the app is set to download it, sure, go for it, but otherwise be ok with streaming it.

It was pretty perfect. 3 months ago the author had to rewrite the app which is mostly positive in terms of appearance but it has created a bunch of bugs that are a headache. If playback is interrupted by another app playing media, my automations will often no longer work to auto play podcasts. When I go into the app to investigate, the app still shows the pause button (as opposed to a play button if it was truly paused) but grayed out. Tapping on it starts the episodes playing again. I’ve also more often run into errors where a podcast fails to download due to “Invalid Audio File”. Manually playing the episode allows it to stream just fine. Probably more a fault of iOS but I find the OS is very willing to forget this app was playing media last and will want to default to playing from my music app instead of paused for more than 30 minutes or so. If they could fix those three issues the app would be back to a 5 star.

The newest updated version is confusing. I used to love overcast and it largely seemed to just work, except if you needed only have access to already downloaded episodes to play when you had no cellular connection. Now with the newest update to the app, it’s unclear to me the difference between all and current. I recently subscribed to a podcast that has a large backlog, I tried adding all the episodes to current, it only added some from the first year of the podcast and from the last few months. If I manually add an episode to current it gets downloaded… and I don’t want to add a ton of audio files to my phone. However, the podcast doesn’t seem to just autoplay episodes from the all section, and it keeps replaying episodes I’ve already listened to. I don’t understand how managing episodes for a podcast has become suddenly a super obtuse task. You also used to be able to see which episode was playing from the page with all the listed episodes of the podcast. That is no longer the case and I don’t understand why that function was removed. It helped me figure out if I was listening to the wrong episode, where it took place among other episodes or issues like if I skipped an episode. Seems weird to not have a standard feature in most audio players. I will keep fiddling with Overcast since I’m a premium member, but for the first time in a decade, I’m considering looking for a new podcast app.

Loved it until the redesign. I've been a paid premium subscriber for years now, and would normally give the app 5 stars. However, the redesign has one MAJOR flaw and a few minor annoyances that I hope get addressed soon -- bringing my score down. The major flaw: If my iPhone switches to a new output device (most commonly when I switch from wireless Carplay to my Airpods) it will just mark my current podcast as "played" and therefore delete it. This particular bug is driving me nuts. The minor annoyances: - There no longer seems to be an option for episodes of the same podcast to group together in a playlist, and my priority podcast ordering no longer seems to be honored. - To get more info for an episode (which I use often to see timecodes to jump ahead) you have to tap a small info button. Prior to the redesign you could just swipe left on the episode card. - I hate the placement of the playlists as small icons in a horizontal line. Prior to the redesign the playlists were large buttons that were laid out vertically. This made tapping into the correct playlist much easier for someone with fat thumbs *raising hand* I wish there was a preferences toggle to choose between the two. All that being said, I can't see myself switching to another podcast app, as I've always been a fan of Marco's work and want to keep supporting him. The app has been great for years, and I imagine (or hope) that he's already working on at least addressing my major bug mentioned above.

Nearly everything I wanted and then some. I love this app! It has features I wished were in the built in podcast app like set a custom playback speed for each individual podcast and an actual smart play list that automatically adds my priority podcasts first! So that show that I just have to listen to as soon as it comes out gets placed to the top of the list. One feature, if it’s there I couldn’t find it, I really wanted was a shuffle option so when I add a new podcast and all the past episodes I can just shuffle them in to the playlist. Right now I have to do this manually and who wants to do that? Features that I didn’t even think of, the smart speed. Some podcasters speak really slow with long silences between words and 2xs speed isn’t quite right and anything faster you can’t understand the words. Having the app shorten the silences is GENIUS! The Voice boost has allowed me to turn down the volume! I don’t struggle to hear what some of the soft spoken hosts are saying.

Will be a great app, once the play/pause bug is fixed. Recently when I pause and then resume, it sometimes goes back in time 10 or 20 minutes. (Not to a chapter, just back to some random time—maybe a sync failure? But it happens even on the same device.) So I can’t keep my place anymore and I waste a ton of time trying to figure out manually where I was. But when that’s fixed this should be a great app again! The new UI is just slightly different, but easier to use in lots of little ways. I didn’t care for the new Home Screen, but a couple taps in Settings made it just like the old one. Don’t overlook all the customization you can do there. A few REALLY welcome new things: - Search results sortable by date - √ checkmark/Done button available in the player itself (tap the art or “…”) - New multi-column iPad/Vision Pro layout - Undo of seeks and chapter changes. Looking forward to whatever may be in the works! Thanks for the best podcast player with the best speed boost!

Great indie podcast app. I’m giving the new Overcast 5 stars not because it’s perfect but because it’s undergoing rapid improvement once more. The recent rewrite has enabled the developer, Marco, to iterate quickly. Paying off technical debt is never easy and it can come at the cost of putting new feature development on hold. This is my most-used app on iPhone and I’m happy with what these changes represent. Overcast is on the move again. It’s also way faster which is nice because I have an older phone. Overcast is the best way I’ve found to listen to podcasts, an activity I spend hours of every day doing. If you’re interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes story of this update, there’s plenty of information available on the developer’s website and podcasts (Accidental Tech Podcast and Under the Radar). Support independent development and give the new version the benefit of the doubt. Time has shown that this developer cares about their customers.

Redesign Made a Worse App. I have loved this app for years but the redesign decreased the user friendliness by a mile. The sleep timer is a pain, I can no longer sort the Current and All lists separately (I had ALL of my podcasts sorted oldest to newest in Current and newest to oldest in All, so this is a huge bummer for me), and altogether everything I would typically do takes two or three times as many button presses as it used to. Aesthetically speaking, the redesign isn’t an improvement for me. I truly hate (really, HATE) that when an episode is open it doesn’t take up the full screen and instead feels like a pop up you’re not supposed to leave open. I can adjust to new and more button presses but this layout I may never get used to. I will stick around as the app is adjusted according to user feedback but I’m keeping my eyes peeled for other apps for now. *My app just updated and it looks like the sleep timer was improved, which is good news, as that is a feature I use literally every day. Happy to see that.

New update disappointing. I’ve waited a while to leave a review so that various bugs can get worked out. But it’s been a month now and, like others here, I’m still affected by the one where downloads either keep cycling over and over again through the progress bar or reach the full circle, and then don’t play, requiring the app to be force quit and relaunched. Also, I used to wake up in the AM and all my episodes would be downloaded. Now, they start downloading when I open the app and about a third of them are affected by the behavior I just described. Additionally, I hate that you have to tap on that tiny button and then a second time in the drop-down menu in order to see other episodes in the same podcast. Much preferred when you could just tap on the podcast title and see them all. I’m still using the app every day and haven’t switched to a competitor, but at a certain point, I probably will if updates don’t fix these bugs.

It’s ok. As an iOS developer myself, I completely understand why Marco felt the need to rewrite the app in a more modern way. As a user, I’m not so sure that all of the UI changes make as much sense. It’s difficult to do a proper review without being able to run the two apps side by side; the new app feels a bit foreign to me, even after using it for a few weeks, but I’m not quite sure why. I can, however, mention one thing that threw me for a loop. In the previous version, when one was viewing all the episodes of a podcast there was a button to download all that were not already downloaded. That button is gone. I accidentally stumbled on a way to download all episodes of all podcasts behind the downloads button on the Home Screen, but that’s not what I want. Some podcasts I want to listen to from the beginning. Others, I want to listen to just from where I came in. The list of episodes to be downloaded is huge, and I would end up wasting a lot of storage space on episodes I would never listen to.

Best Podcast Experience Available. There is no better way to listen to podcasts. The speed adjustment offers much finer control of speed than other apps, and smart speed is a fantastic addition. I turned on voice boost when I first started using the app and I’ve never turned it off. The app works great even when my list of subscriptions becomes especially bloated, which was(/is?) a problem with Apples podcast app. OverCast isn’t great for discovering new podcasts, in my opinion, but Apples podcast app and iTunes are both incredibly broken. I know there are other podcast apps out there, but none of them are competitive in any way. I wish that podcast discovery was better, but outside of that I am incredibly impressed with the quality of this app. I’m especially impressed with the regular improvements, as Overcast seems to have no real competition when it comes to quality.

Excellent simple to use. I love the new interface. Clear, simple and intuitive. And free of any unnecessary stuff. The only issue I have is that when searching and subscribing to new podcasts, it doesn’t let you choose which smart playlist you want the new podcast to be in at the time of subscription. You have to subscribe first, then back out of the search library, go to the playlist you want and then select edit playlist and then find the podcast you recently downloaded from the long list of all podcasts I’ve joined. There should be a feature that lets you choose to send a new podcast directly to an existing or new playlist when you subscribe to it. And in the list of podcasts, each one should also say which playlist it belongs to. There have been times when I checked a podcast to the wrong playlist. Or completely forgotten to check it in a playlist and therefore never listen to it.

Shortcuts are back?? The speed of updates now is amazing!!. My shortcuts for note taking based around the Overcast shortcut that gives you episode info seems to work again! Yay! More broadly, this rewrite is so much faster, it’s crazy! Everything is so snappy! The developer has been doing a killer job providing regular updates since the rewrite launch adding back old features and coming up with new ones. It’s so great to have Overcast feel like one of the most modern apps on my iPhone! The developer still has a knack for features no one else is implementing. The latest update includes a setting to disable using the scrubber in control center or the Lock Screen. Mindblowing! I thought that was something the system handled that you could change and had conceded that I would live a life of accidental scrubbing. It’s the attention to little things like this along with the still insanely great smart speed and voice that keep me an Overcast loyalist.

New Update Chooses Listening order for Me. The update this week brought UI changes, redone systems, and bugs. Marco is working on fixing the bugs and will go away with time. I do not love the UI changes and find it taking longer to do things in the app, but I can adjust. I do not like that playlist will be order by date every time a episode is added. I do not want to always listen to the oldest or newest episode. I can manually order the playlist but if I add an episode my order is over written. This mean my choice is not as important as a sorting feature. I want to listen to new episodes while I catch up on older podcast in the same playlist. Nitpicky details: I have had episodes be removed from a playlist while I am listening to the episode. It is jarring when play ack stops. The collapsed player bar at the bottom of the screen when in the app does not have the forward and back buttons and the play. I can not fast forward easily while in the app. There is no way to know how much memory my downloaded podcast are taking up.

My only gripe.... First off, this is an essential app for me and in my opinion it’s as good as it gets as far as podcast players goes. It will always hold a prominent space on my first home screen page and if I were not such a creature of habit, tied down by muscle memory, it would replace Apple Music in my dock. I almost feel guilty for commenting a suggestion, because it’s so basic that surely it’s a problem that can’t be solved otherwise Marco would have fixed it by now but alas, here goes...The single annoyance I have is with the search. Let’s say I want to hear an older episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with Joey Diaz as a guest. I type Joey Diaz into the search bar and boom 12 results appear. If I click one to add to my queue but want to go back to add another episode, I have to retype my original search query and start over basically. I don’t know how or if this can be remedied but it would make my Overcast experience that much more enjoyable. Again, this is an amazing app, the best of the best, and thank you for all your hard work!

Lack of streaming. Dev redesigned the app and it takes so many unnecessary steps to actually listen to a show. Check list of downloads for new episodes > tap on episode. Episode downloads. Go back to main list > find podcast > tap on podcast > find episode > tap play now listen. Imagine if it was just check list for new episodes > tap episode to play > play. File management has also been made worse. There’s no way to batch delete downloaded episodes. So if you’re like me and listen to shows until the last ad begins, you end up with gigabytes of episodes stored on your phone with :27 seconds left. You have to delete them individually. I get that the developer wrote an app that works best for a workflow where you download a bunch of episodes before you hit the road, but man it’s a return to downloading podcasts on iTunes and downloading to your iPod in 2006. The idea that fast networks make not supporting streaming viable is hilariously out of touch. Sometimes you’re on an overloaded tower and have enough bandwidth to stream a 200meg podcast because it’s 4 hours long, but downloading it means waiting for a long time before you listen. Some podcasts also aren’t on the best and fastest hosts, so downloads are slow regardless of the users connections speed. Some podcasts are self hosted geographically distant, or speeds are throttled to rate limit but enough for real time streaming. I’ve used this app every day since 2015, but it seems like it’s time to move on.

LOVE IT AGAIN (after revision to the redesign). I’m removing my entire recent review because (as usual) Marco has already updated the app to make it the best podcast app available. The quirks caused by the redesign that had been annoying me seem to be gone (i.e., brought back swipe to go to the info/chapter select screen instead of having to hunt-and-peck for an info button, podcast grouping seems to be working again and honors my priority setup). But even better is the newly added feature of being able to turn-off the lock screen scrubber when playing a podcast. I’ve lost track of the number of times I had pulled my phone out of my pocket while listening to a podcast, only to accidentally scrub forward or backward in the podcast with an inadvertent brush of my hand on the screen. This added feature alone made me want to bump my review back up to a full five stars! Thank you, Marco!

Thoughtfully and independently developed podcast app. I’ve been an Overcast user for about 10 years, and it has been my only podcast app in that time. Through the years it has delivered a thoughtful design, lightweight resource footprint, and feature-rich capabilities. The app has been recently revamped, allowing Marco to be more responsive in issuing updates, but also resulting in some divided responses from users. Overall the app still works well for my needs, though understandably others are having challenges. I wanted to support Marco in his continued development of this app. He is in a rare league in developing an app at this scale as a single developer. In an era of increasing corporatization and shameless monetization of mobile app ecosystems, it is amazing to still have a developer like Marco who cares enough to dedicate his time, care, and attention to a true independent effort. For that I’m happy to give five stars.

FIXED! (Previously: Update broke my use case). UPDATE: newest version finally brings back “play next” functionality outside of playlists!!! This app is back to being my sole podcasts app. As far as I’m concerned, all functionality from the old app design has been replaced, and the new app is officially better than the previous version. ——————- Previous review: I don’t do playlists. I don’t play from the queue. My brain just doesn’t work that way. When I play a podcast, I just look through my list of podcasts and drill down to the one I want. In the old version of the app, if I noticed my current podcast was getting close to done, I could go find a new podcast, long press on it, and select “play next,” and it would just play next. The new app doesn’t allow for this. I’ve tried using the queue. I really have! I just don’t understand the workflow though. Am I supposed to open a podcast, find an episode, add it to the queue, leave the podcast, go to the queue, and play from there? How cumbersome! Literally every other podcast app I’ve been auditioning allows for my use case. This is the only app that doesn’t. I’ve reached out to the developer multiple times on his social media of choice (Mastodon) and gotten crickets in response. I’ve tried to be super polite. He’s busy! But this is killing me.

Glitchy Update. Just downloaded the new update. There are some nice changes, but it is glitchy and still missing some basic features. We’ve lost the ability to swipe right to download. It now takes two steps to download now as opposed to a simple swipe. Please bring this back. Also, the “add to queue” button works but not the “move to queue” button. I would also prefer the option to have my playlists in the vertical arrangement as opposed to the new horizontal one. I liked the fact that in the previous version the playlist icons were greyed out when there were no podcasts in the playlist. I’m hoping this returns as well. I will say CarPlay functionality is better in the new update. But a mark as played icon would be very helpful. I know we have the skip to the next podcast option, but I think it would be better to have it mark the current episode as played when skipping to the next show. Hopefully these get addressed in future updates.

I was sure this was THE one. I’ve been seeking an all-encompassing podcast app for a while; one with all of the functionality I need to keep my podcasts organized. I was sure this was it. I downloaded and got to organizing: I made playlists for podcasts that I only listen to select episodes (Armchair Expert, Joe Rogan) and subscribed to ones that needed to be listened to in order i.e. true crime content. I finished my Rogan playlist (after selecting close to 30 episodes) and navigated away to create one for Armchair. When I went back into the Rogan playlist, all but 2 episodes disappeared. I tried again and had the same result. Went into my Armchair playlist and, sure enough, the same thing happened. I tested it out with a couple of new playlists - still the same result. Either I’m not understanding the functionality of Overcast’s regular playlist feature or I’ve fallen upon a massive bug. I reached out to the developer via Twitter - both the Overcast Twitter and his personal - but haven’t heard back. Pretty frustrated that I spent $9.99 on a premium version of this app for a main feature not to work. Will update if I can get some answers.

Why I was using Apple Podcasts?. I’ve been an user of Apple podcasts since several years ago…. Started to have issues when Apple switched to the Podcasts apps, and lately I was having too many problems with the synching between my different devices (iPad, iPhone, iMacs), plus unexpected downloads of old episodes of several podcasts. Last weekend my iPad and iPhone stopped downloading at the same time, while I was on a business trip, impossible to re-sync and/or download podcasts. Then I tried Stitcher, TunesIn and Overcasting and after a couple of days decided to stay with Overcast. Great, simple, trustable and easy to use/setup. After using for several days without any issue, I decided to invest $5 and unlock the additional features. So far, a very satisfied customer, happy with the app, no intentions to return to Apple podcasts or other podcasts apps.