Love the newest version
I’ve been a longtime user of Pocket Casts, and the latest version is a huge upgrade. The ability to upload your own files and drop them into the queue is wonderful! I occasionally check out other apps to see if there are any features I’m missing out on, and Pocket Casts always seems better.
There’s still a little bit of wonkiness when manually reorganizing the queue, and I do wish they would bring landscape mode back from a couple versions ago. That said, the quick actions you can take on episodes or entire series, and the ability to easily see the status of each episode (downloaded, in the queue, already listened) are so much better than the other apps I’ve tried.
There’s still a little bit of wonkiness when manually reorganizing the queue, and I do wish they would bring landscape mode back from a couple versions ago. That said, the quick actions you can take on episodes or entire series, and the ability to easily see the status of each episode (downloaded, in the queue, already listened) are so much better than the other apps I’ve tried.
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Bad Update Took Away Favourite Feature!
This app was my favourite cross-platform for the last few years and I rated it highly due to the control and customisation of podcast management. Then they removed my favourite feature: ‘Auto Cleanup’ in the recent v7 update. I travel a lot and can be without internet on planes, underground and in dead spot areas, and the Auto Cleanup settings allowed me to keep only the newest / relevant 1 to 5 episodes of my news, entertainment and information podcasts. Bring back pre-v7 ASAP, totally wrong decision to overhaul it by far for the worse. So I’ve left this app behind, and they even ‘reset’ their ratings, it went from the top rated podcast app to worst with one update to v7, hundreds of 1 star reviews have been removed, don’t waste your money! UPDATE: so now it’s ‘gone free’ to subscription payment mode - the money I did pay for it is now worthless, just like this app. Successfully destroyed the app from version 6 to now. Goodbye!
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Syncing is still really bad if you listen on two devices.
There are many good things about PocketCast (Video Support, Playback Effects, background downloading, notifications, etc.). But there are three things that bother me. 1) If you listen on an iPad and and iPhone regularly your syncing will be messed up all the time. For instance, open iPad app and watch a video show. Then open on your phone later an audio show and stop. Perhaps that evening you open your iPad again to resume the video you were watching that morning. It will sync the iPad back to your iPhone the play position of your audio podcast from that morning, not where you left off on your iPhone later in the day. I’m constantly opening Pocket Casts on my phone to find that my listening position was reverted back 20-30 minutes earlier than I left off. 2) I think the playback screen has an unnecessary bar at the bottom with the tools. Remove that bar and just put the icons for playback effects and others without it. 3) The cover art for the podcast is not centered properly on the iPhone X, XS, and XS Max iPhone. That’s just poor design. Please Russell and Co. fix these problems.
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Vast improvement over apples app.
I was disappointed with apples efforts with podcasting using a watch. The library on my watch did not represent what I’d downloaded to the apps library what so ever, among other problems.
Pocketcasts however, is exactly what I wanted. Simple and tidy layout and does what it says on the tin. I listen to a lot of podcasts while at work, and it is often difficult to get to my phone to change episodes, etc. Also, on top of the decent watch app, the iPhone app is great. There are more practical option for organising than apples stock app, it looks great and it is very user friendly. Thank you for making podcasting easier. 👍
Pocketcasts however, is exactly what I wanted. Simple and tidy layout and does what it says on the tin. I listen to a lot of podcasts while at work, and it is often difficult to get to my phone to change episodes, etc. Also, on top of the decent watch app, the iPhone app is great. There are more practical option for organising than apples stock app, it looks great and it is very user friendly. Thank you for making podcasting easier. 👍
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So many crashes!
I do love this app, the recent redesign is a bit confusing but not a big deal. However the constant background crashes are killing it :(
Switched away because of the redesign
I see I’m in good company in my displeasure with the new design. It’s so frustrating because the old app was my go to for years.
Features Are Great, But Won’t Stop Crashing
I got this app because I wanted the automatic downloading and queuing features, and I’ve found those incredibly valuable. I can have my favorite podcasts automatically play next as soon as episodes are available and maintain a queue more easily than I can in the Apple Podcasts app. Also, the more flexible playback rates and Trim Silence features are fantastic.
I would give this app 5 stars if it didn’t randomly crash all the time. It was whenever the most recent significant aesthetic update happened (the old version worked well), but now it will crash while I’m listening to a podcast and have my phone in my pocket or connected to my car. I literally do nothing to provoke it. The interface also freezes sometimes and forces me to quit it and restart, which is frustrating since the mechanics of playing back from an RSS feed don’t seem to be the most complicated part of this app.
I would give this app 5 stars if it didn’t randomly crash all the time. It was whenever the most recent significant aesthetic update happened (the old version worked well), but now it will crash while I’m listening to a podcast and have my phone in my pocket or connected to my car. I literally do nothing to provoke it. The interface also freezes sometimes and forces me to quit it and restart, which is frustrating since the mechanics of playing back from an RSS feed don’t seem to be the most complicated part of this app.
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Differences from 6.x to 7.3
It’s now a better tool for episode cherry-pickers. The ability to sort by Downloaded status brings the 5 you’ve pulled down from a list of 500 to the fore. It’s strange that you cannot now, by default, tell a downloaded episode from an undownloaded one, but there’s a setting to fix that.
I also appreciate the new option to delay the deletion of a completed episode for 24 hours. Combined with a new End Of Episode setting for the sleep timer, this removes the stress of falling asleep to an episode you might run off the end of.
For my uses, the only downside, and a minor one at that, is reduced information density in the episode list. You can’t see as many on a screen anymore, and the new, omnipresent Search field (rarely useful) takes up additional vertical space, making a very small knothole indeed when combined with the miniplayer and bottom toolbar. I’d suggest making Search show only when pulling from the very top of the list, as is a convention in many other apps, or just let me scroll it off the page as the episode list scrolls.
I also appreciate the new option to delay the deletion of a completed episode for 24 hours. Combined with a new End Of Episode setting for the sleep timer, this removes the stress of falling asleep to an episode you might run off the end of.
For my uses, the only downside, and a minor one at that, is reduced information density in the episode list. You can’t see as many on a screen anymore, and the new, omnipresent Search field (rarely useful) takes up additional vertical space, making a very small knothole indeed when combined with the miniplayer and bottom toolbar. I’d suggest making Search show only when pulling from the very top of the list, as is a convention in many other apps, or just let me scroll it off the page as the episode list scrolls.
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Used to be good
I really liked this app, as it did everything i needed for the 10-12 programs I liked. The recent upgrade improved the UI quite a bit. I liked that it automatically downloaded my favorites and put them in the queue. But then it started deleting shows from the queue, so I would expect to hear a show and it would be gone, and I’d have to find it and stick it back in. That was annoying enough but I could deal with it. But the final straw was that it would end a cast about 3 minutes before the cast actually ended, and then I’d have to dig around in the archive (because now the podcast was deleted from my queue and archived) and then stream the last few minutes. After doing this about half a dozen times I decided it was simply too much effort and have found another app. It really was a shame but the problems were too frustrating to deal with.
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Some fixes to the awful Nov 2018 updates but bugs continue
Pocket Casts really messed up a great app with their total revision back in Nov ‘18. Since then it’s become a little easier to group, sort, and (sort of) create playlists. But still a step down from the old version, where those functions were easy and intuitive. Recent update has introduced new bugs. The most irritating of which is the random tendency to clip the last 2-3 minutes of a podcast. At first I thought this was due to editing errors by the podcast producers, but today, after it happened to two casts, I went back and relistened, scrubbing to near the end, and heard the last few minutes that Pocket Cast had dropped. This is a bug in the app. Blah. Fix this, please. Better yet, give users the option of returning to the old pre-Nov 2018 version of the app. You could call it “Back Pocket Casts”.
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