Podcast Player App - Castbox 12+

Enjoy the app a lot. Looks great, has a good overview of podcasts and the search and recommendations appear to produce useful suggestions.

I can't find a way to mark all podcasts as played which is a bit annoying. When one is finished it will go to the next "unplayed" pod which I've already heard on another app. Possible I've missed the function.

I'm also not interested in logging into the app so the reminders are annoying.

Hello,
Could you please kindly update your Castbox to the newest version - v4.24.1? We have made great improvements in this version. You can tap the button at the top right corner after opening a podcast and select "Mark All as Played" or "Mark All as Unplayed" now. Please go to app "Settings" - "Skip played episodes" and turn it on. In this way, only unplayed episodes will appear in your "Next Up". Please give it a try, and if anything, please feel free to reach us at contact+ios@castbox.fm. As a startup, every review matters very much to us. If you think of any way we can improve, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Hopefully our continued improvement will earn your 5th star! Thanks for your kind support! :-) - Teresa

Update: I downloaded this on the strength of the positive reviews. But after persevering for months, I finally ditched it and moved to Stitcher. And what do you know, every thing works! Podcasts actually download. I should have made the move ages ago! Castbox could learn a thing or two about podcast players by looking at Stitcher. Original review: Castbox is a great streaming client, but a lousy podcast player if you’re looking to play downloads. You would think that downloading would be a simple matter, but it almost never manages to download anything (it streams perfectly, so evidently it has no trouble accessing the internet). I can leave it turned on all night, ready to go out running with a full load of podcasts, but in the morning there will be 7 downloads in the cue with nothing actually downloaded. And it has serious issues with location. I can set the location to Japan, but if I happen to be currently in Australia, the ads are for Australia (!). I am happy for Castbox to be supported by advertising, but what is the point of subjecting me to ads from a location different from my location setting!?

Hi, we are very sorry for such inconvenience. We will continue to update our app to make it better and better. You can reach us at contact+ios@castbox.fm with any other feedback. Thank you very much for your kind support! :-) - Lilian

It doesn't work very well if you opt for downloading rather than streaming. Also it is pretty much unusable if you turn off mobile / cellular data altogether. The playlist only sort of works in as much as it seems that it is easily interrupted. The app also has the annoying habit of prompting you to play the last podcast you just completed rather than the next podcast in the playlist. All in all, I think the developers would have done better to get the basics right before trying to add all the pretty things. Unfortunately there seems to be a dearth of good basic podcast players around. Everyone seems to have a different angle to monetise their apps and none of those really seem to serve the need for basic user convenience and offline performance very well.

Hi,
Thank you very much for your feedback! Sorry for such inconvenience. Could you please kindly send contact+ios@castbox.fm a little more detail regarding your issues? 1. How does it not perform well in the offline mode? What it has to do with turning off mobile data? Do you mean the downloads cannot be played and ask for data to stream? 2. If the episode is completed, it will disappear from the next up list. Do you mean the playlist will repeats playing the episode you finished? Would you mind sending us screen recordings regarding the two issues to help us identify them? Looking forward to hearing from you soon. We will try our best to make the app right for you. Thanks again for your kind support! :-) - Teresa