Overcast 4+

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.

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.