Lysten: Podcast Player
Easy to use, Privacy focused
Free · In-App Purchases
Start listening in seconds. Follow any show, then keep your library and progress in sync across iPhone, iPad, and CarPlay with a simple email sign-in.
Start listening in seconds — search for any show, follow it, and get a clean list of episodes ready to play.
Share episodes and shows with anyone, whether or not they have the app. iPhone and iPad users get an App Clip that drops them straight into playback. Tap the share button to invite your friends and loved ones.
Lysten is a lightweight podcast player. Sign in with your email to keep your followed shows, episodes, and listening progress in sync across all your devices — iPhone, iPad, and CarPlay.
Features:
- Sync your library and listening progress across devices with a simple email sign-in
- Interactive widgets showing your feed and unfinished episodes — catch up where you left off with a tap
- Sidebar on iPad with cover art and grouped sections
- CarPlay support, including a Continue Listening carousel
- Download episodes to listen offline — long press an episode and select Download
- Sleep timer, set, enjoy & sleep
- Adjustable playback speed
- Podcasts and episodes indexed in Spotlight
- SharePlay support — listen to episodes with friends and family
- Extremely lightweight
If you run into any trouble or have any questions, please reach out:
- E-mail: support@ambi.se
- X (Twitter): @ambiApps
- Mastodon: @ambiApps@mastodon.social
Privacy policy: https://ambi.se/privacy
Terms of use: https://ambi.se/terms
more - You stay signed in when you open Lysten without a connection. Your library is there offline, and syncs as soon as you're back online.
- Playback picks up again after Siri interrupts it, instead of leaving you paused.
- Episodes now show "Downloading" while a download is running, so you can't start the same one twice — which could crash the app.
2.2.2 31 Jul
- Sign in with your email — we've moved off CloudKit, so an account is now required to sync your library across devices.
- Redesigned welcome and sign-in screens with new artwork and a fresh neon look.
- New sidebar on iPad, with cover art and grouped sections.
- CarPlay: a "Continue listening" carousel and nicer placeholders when artwork hasn't loaded yet.
- Faster, more reliable artwork loading throughout the app.
- Episodes without a subtitle now fall back to the description, so cards never look empty.
- Smarter sync that only uploads what actually changed, plus better handling of follows, unfollows, and progress across devices.
- Mark as finished now sticks the way you'd expect.
- Fixes a bug where average duration could show 0 right after following a podcast.
- Lots of stability fixes, including CarPlay and sign-in crashes.
2.2.1 12 May
- Sign in with your email — we've moved off CloudKit, so an account is now required to sync your library across devices.
- Redesigned welcome and sign-in screens with new artwork and a fresh neon look.
- New sidebar on iPad, with cover art and grouped sections.
- CarPlay: a "Continue listening" carousel and nicer placeholders when artwork hasn't loaded yet.
- Faster, more reliable artwork loading throughout the app.
- Episodes without a subtitle now fall back to the description, so cards never look empty.
- Smarter sync that only uploads what actually changed, plus better handling of follows, unfollows, and progress across devices.
- Mark as finished now sticks the way you'd expect.
- Fixes a bug where average duration could show 0 right after following a podcast.
- Lots of stability fixes, including CarPlay and sign-in crashes.
2.2.0 3 May
- Episodes in Feed are now more colorful
- Uses native Liquid Glass search bar (OS26)
- Simplified action menus
- Episodes in Podcast detail view now show episode specific cover art if available
- Minor bug fixes
2.1.1 14 Jan
- Adds Liquid Glass to mini player for iOS 26
- Minor fixes
2.1.0 18/10/2025
The biggest change for this update is Search:
- A big, always visible, search bar has replaced the earlier tab bar.
- The Search Bar now lets you find episodes, the shows you follow, and discover new ones. All in one place.
Increased availability:
- Lowered deployment target, making Lysten available for more users.
- CarPlay support added, making your favorite podcasts now easily accessible in your car.
Other changes:
- Adds tracking of number of played episodes.
- Minor fixes.
2.0.1 01/08/2025
The biggest change for this update is Search:
- A big, always visible, search bar has replaced the earlier tab bar.
- The Search Bar now lets you find episodes, the shows you follow, and discover new ones. All in one place.
Increased availability:
- Lowered deployment target, making Lysten available for more users.
- CarPlay support added, making your favorite podcasts now easily accessible in your car.
Other changes:
- Adds tracking of number of played episodes.
- Minor fixes.
2.0.0 31/07/2025
- Improves RSS feed refresh functionality
- Fixes a bug where some episodes only appears after restart in feed
- Fixes bug where episodes could appear in two columns on iPhone in portrait mode
- When executing Pull To Refresh, the loading indicator now stays visible until refresh finishes
- Fixes crash occurring when saving creates a deadlock
- Fixes crash that could occur when audio category couldn't be set
1.7.4 20/01/2025
- From now on episodes can only be downloaded from followed podcasts
- Hide / Show finished episodes in the Podcasts tab is now saved accross app restarts
- Player minimizes if you tap podcast name in full screen player
1.7.3 08/12/2024
- Fixes bug where podcasts with incorrect pubdate couldn't be parsed
1.7.2 27/07/2024
- Fixes crash that could occur while playing episodes on a poor connection
- Fixes rare bug where opening a podcast could crash the app
- Fixes bug where downloaded episodes could disappear
1.7.1 05/06/2024
- Adds "Continue" carousel, making it super easy to pick up where you left off.
- Episodes tab is now named Feed. Should also fix an issue where episodes didn't always appear.
- Adds crash reporting, this will help us squish the last few bugs.
1.7.0 29/05/2024
- Fixes bug where share button in player created an invalid URL
1.6.1 23/05/2024
- Adds background to scrub popover
- Adds Marquee to player, meaning long titles will nog scroll by smoothly
- Fixes a bug where episode sharing was broken
- Fixes main thread freeze on interactive RSS refresh
- Fixes so player no longer covers tab and nav bar
- Design fixes to small, large and full screen players
1.6.0 28/04/2024
This update a bug that could make the app crash on start.
1.5.2 19/12/2023
Hej,
This update fixes a bug that could make Lysten crash when playing an episode.
1.5.1 22/10/2023
Hej,
This update adds the following:
- Downloads; Long press an episode and select Download
- Adds interactive widgets. There are two types, either it shows your feed or the latest episodes you listened to but didn't finish.
- Adds support to change sort order in Podcast view
- Adds support to only show downloaded episodes
1.5.0 06/10/2023
This update brings both fixes bugs and introduces some new fancy features. Here's what's new:
- Fixes so the player no longer covers tab bar or navigation bar
- Makes sure loading indicator isn't shown while playing episode
- Adds SharePlay support
- Adds SharePlay button to episode detail view
- Adds a link to the show view in the episode detail view
- Fixes bug where the cover art didn't always instantly update when changing episode
- Minor bug fixes
1.4.0 23/05/2023
Fixes a bug where some users were unable to restore purchases
1.3.1 15/03/2023
Hej,
This update has a ton of stuff, you better get comfortable before you try to read these release notes.
Features:
- Player speed can now be adjusted to your preference
- Sleep timer can now be set
- When playing an episode we automatically queue the next 20 episodes too. More is always better, right?
- Episode detail can now be opened directly from the player
- Adds a paywall
Fixes:
- The player could occasionally fade in and out, this should now be fixed
- Fixes a bug where the moving bars in a playing episode could sometimes act weird
- Adds lysten: scheme that opens app, fallback if universal linking fails
- Fixes a bug where the share-button could sometimes bounce around
Thanks for using Lysten!
/ Sofia & César
1.3.0 14/03/2023
This update has a ton of changes, here is the most important details
- An episode detail view has been added. This is where you find show notes.
- Progress sync has been improved. It will now sync faster and consume less space on your iCloud
- Code for refreshing RSS-feeds has been improved, consuming less power and giving a better user experience
- Fixes a bug where episode count sometimes was wrong in podcast detail view
- Fixes one of the crashes that occurred when Lysten was in the background
- You can now stop the player, hold your finger on it and select Stop
Thanks for using Lysten!
/César & Sofia
1.2.0 09/03/2023
Fixes a crash that occurs when the app is in the background
1.1.1 24/02/2023
- Adds AppClip support. You can now share Podcasts & Episodes with other users. If they have an iPhone or iPad Lysten will be installed and the linked content will be shown. Pretty cool!
- Share buttons have been added in context menus, podcast view and in the player
- We removed the fullscreen player, the player is now always "floating" and can be moved around
- Easier to search and find podcasts in the new search view
- You now follow podcasts from the Podcast detail view. We think this makes it much more intuitive.
- You can now import your shows from other Podcast apps. Simply export an XML / OPML file and share it with Lysten.
- Improves performance by downscaling images and caching them locally
- Fixes a weird bug where we only showd 2 episodes in "The Talk Show" by John Gruber. Sorry John. If you happen to read this, ping us on mastodon and we'll get you a beer.
- Makes the podcast name selectable in the large player
Thanks for taking the time to read our release notes! Please consider leaving an App Store review while you're here :)
1.1.0 12/02/2023
- You stay signed in when you open Lysten without a connection. Your library is there offline, and syncs as soon as you're back online.
- Playback picks up again after Siri interrupts it, instead of leaving you paused.
- Episodes now show "Downloading" while a download is running, so you can't start the same one twice — which could crash the app.
more Version 2.2.2 31 Jul
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