Castro Podcast Player 4+

The player for heavy listeners

Bluck Apps

    • 4.6 • 8.8K Ratings
    • Free
    • Offers In-App Purchases

Description

Castro is a beautiful, full-featured podcast player that makes it easy to track and manage lots of podcasts at the same time. Only listen to the episodes you want and easily skip the rest, queue up hours of podcasts at a time and enjoy a seamless listening experience with carplay compatibility, chapter support, trim silence and much, much more!

HOW IT WORKS

1. New episodes land in the NEW tab. Read their descriptions, add episodes you like to your QUEUE, and clear the rest.

2. Press play to listen to episodes from your QUEUE in order. Queued episodes are downloaded automatically.

3. Re-order your QUEUE to plan your next few hours of listening at any time. Browse your LIBRARY to review the back catalogue, quickly access starred shows, and see your listening history.

Subscribing to a podcast is no longer a commitment to listen to every episode. You don’t have to manage a huge list of subscriptions or choose a few shows and miss the rest.


WHY OUR USERS LOVE CASTRO

• Drag and drop podcasts to plan your listening with Castro’s unique queue
• An elegant dark mode and thoughtfully designed sleep timer offer the best in night time podcast listening.
• CarPlay support makes it easy to pick up where you left off while driving.
• Apple Watch app to control playback and select another episode from your queue.
• Episode notifications include a summary of the episode to help you decide if it interests you. Play, queue or clear the episode directly from the notification without opening the app.


CASTRO PLUS

Castro Plus is an optional paid subscription available for $24.99/year (includes a one-week trial). Plus unlocks a range of advanced features:

• Trim Silence — With this option on, the app will analyze audio as it plays to detect silent parts and accelerate those parts. Get through more episodes faster.
• Enhance Voices improves the listening experience for many podcasts and makes it easier to hear in loud environments. Under the hood, Enhance Voices applies a dynamic compressor to increase volume just where it’s needed.
• Sideloading: Import audio files directly, just by dropping them in iCloud Drive
• Mono-Mix — Mixes a stereo podcast to mono, which makes it easier to hear podcasts that pan some guests on left/right channels.
• Chapter Support: Artwork, Skipping & Pre-selection.
• Custom settings per-podcast: Episode Limit, Trim Silence, Enhance Voices, Mono Mix, Skip Intros, Playback Speed.


WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

“Castro 3 is an incredible app.”
— The Sweet Setup

“Castro 3 is everything Castro already was, but better.”
— MacStories

Castro 3 Is a Great Modern Podcast App”
— Beautiful Pixels

“Unlike other podcatchers, Castro's primary virtue is its simplicity and ease of use. The app combines sleek visual design with crystal clear audio.”
— Tom’s Guide


CASTRO PLUS SUBSCRIPTION TERMS

Castro Plus costs $24.99 per year. Prices are in US dollars and may vary in countries other than the US.

Castro Plus is charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. It will renew on the day before the current subscription period ends. You can cancel auto-renewal any time from the Castro settings screen.

You can switch between the two subscription periods after you pick one, but your trial period will end immediately if you do, so it's best to wait till your free week is over before changing.

Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable.

Privacy Policy & Terms of Use: https://castro.fm/privacy-policy

What’s New

Version 2024.9.1

- New explore category page / icons
- Fixes for themes, so parts of the app will no longer be in the wrong dark / light mode
- Fix playing all episodes of a podcast from oldest or newest
- Crash fixes, including an issue on iOS 18 that would crash the show notes page
- Fix various small styling issues:
- Reduce whitespace in show notes
- Fix an issue where message footers in settings could be cut off
- Fix issues with font and background colors in widgets due to accented mode
- Reduce extra padding on episode details page action container when opened from now playing screen
- Make playback speed paywall less confusing

Ratings and Reviews

4.6 out of 5
8.8K Ratings

8.8K Ratings

Editors’ Notes

The only issue we have with podcasts today? Keeping track of all of the good stuff. Castro acts as our podcast personal assistant. Once we’d rifled through the app’s vast (and we mean vast) offering, Castro helped us prioritize and organize what we wanted to hear—and clear our in-tray by deleting them once we’d listened.

ChadAHall ,

I love this app

I love everything about this app. The design—I love how compact the episodes are in the queue. So many other podcast apps are bloated design-wise, where you can only see 3 or so episodes at a time. I hate that. I don’t want to be inundated with info. I just wanna see the titles. I love the drag and drop (in particular the ability to move multiple items at once.) The inbox is brilliant. There some podcasts with multiple formats of which I only like one. This allows me to archive the others without having them dumped in my queue and downloaded. But my hands down favorite features are the archive & history. There are some podcasts that I don’t listen to on a regular basis but like to check in on every so often. This allows me to follow them so that I don’t forget about them but to go find an episode when I want to. And of course history. I’m usually on the go when listening and don’t have time to note episodes I really enjoy. With the history I can do back and see what I heard. Sometimes the impact of an episode doesn’t hit for a week or more. With history I can still go find them. Simple but essential. And the dates they were listened to on is saved as well! —just an impressive level of care. Fingers crossed for smart speed/silence skipping, a speed between 2x & 3x and custom playback settings for individual shows — nobody should listen to Song Exploder at 2x.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the kind words Chad! As you've probably seen by now, we now have silence skipping and per-podcast settings in Castro 3.

All the best,

🐙

mmccroskey ,

Clean, Simple, Fantastic, ONE complaint

I’m a picky guy, and to me this is the perfect podcast player. First of all, the mental model of an inbox is exactly what I was looking for. Simple to understand, and keeps you from being overwhelmed if you follow a lot of podcasts. Also, since you’re less likely to be overwhelmed, you end up following more podcasts, and getting exposed to great content you would not otherwise have listens to. The UI is gorgeous and is perfected down to the last detail. I happily pay The subscription for this app, and you should do the same.

Now, the one complaint. If I am trying to start a series of podcasts before going on a long road trip and I have poor connectivity, the user experience is very confusing. I’ll move a bunch of stuff into the playlist queue, but because the connectivity is poor, many things will start and then stop downloading and I’ll get spammed by a flurry of could not download alerts. This behavior surprises me, because as far as I can tell, my settings are such that these podcasts should already be downloaded. Other than this complaint, the app is great!

Subscriptions

Castro Plus Annual
Castro Plus Annual
Annual access to advanced player features
Free Trial

App Privacy

The developer, Bluck Apps, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • User Content
  • Identifiers
  • Usage Data
  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.

  • Siri

    Get things done within this app using just your voice.

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