# Castamatic Podcast Player — user reviews > 70 indexed App Store user reviews of Castamatic Podcast Player by Gunp Media Productions, rated 4.20/5 from 86 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/castamatic-podcast-player/id966632553/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/castamatic-podcast-player/id966632553.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 51 · 4★ 18 · 3★ 5 · 2★ 7 · 1★ 5 ## What do users think of Castamatic Podcast Player? Overall sentiment: mixed **Pros** - ✨ Excellent ALC feature - 🚀 Fast performance - 👍 Clean UI design - 💡 Podcasting 2.0 features - 🌟 Great sound boost - 🌟 Silence trimming - 🌟 Timed skipping - 🌟 Customizable defaults - 🌟 No real ads - 🌟 Value for value concept - 🌟 Good artwork display - 🌟 Polished native components - 🌟 Well-designed interface - 🌟 Smooth playback - 🌟 Good audio quality - 🌟 Apple Watch app support - 🌟 Siri Shortcuts support - 🌟 Value 4 Value feature **Cons** - 🐛 Buggy player - 🐛 Audio drops out - 🐛 UI is terrible - 🐛 Lost place in podcasts - 🐛 Audio doesn't stop with AirPods - 🐛 App gets confused with Bluetooth - 🐛 Stalls on certain podcasts - 🐛 Laggy when opening - 🐛 Crashes and bugs - 🐛 UI freezes - 🐛 Search feature issues - 🐛 Sluggish and unresponsive - 🐛 Freezes on audio output change - 🐛 Sync problems - 🐛 Playback not smooth - 🐛 App freezes constantly - 🐛 Subpar performance - 🐛 No Siri commands - 🐛 Episode list unclear **Commonly reported bugs** - Contact link is dead - No avenue to report bugs - Audio drops out at random times - Once audio drops, episode is done - No combination of button presses will get audio back - Audio doesn't stop when AirPods are removed - Lost place 5-10 times this week - When playing on Bluetooth in the car, turning off the car can cause app to lose place - App starts from the beginning after losing place - App gets confused and loses place - App starts from the beginning - App has started over multiple podcasts at the beginning several times - Playback is not smooth - App freezes every time audio output changes - App freezes when trying to scroll through podcasts - App crashes often - Search feature often fails to work - Error loading podcast - Response could not be decoded - Data couldn't be read - App freezes on loading lists - Audio stalls while rebuffering - Audio gets caught in a loop - App freezes constantly upon loading - Cannot handle 100+ podcasts - All podcasts gone after update - App dies when touching 'Premium Subscription' button - App crashes on Apple Watch when trying to load episodes - Sync problem: playlists and played/unplayed episodes don't sync - Play sequence setting doesn't overrule individual podcast settings **Most requested features** - Add dark mode option - More granularity in playback speed - Instructional videos or blogs - Filter episodes by keywords - Hide podcasts with no new episodes - Playback history - Live show notifications - Add RSS feed support - Easier to view shownotes - Add AirPlay 2 support for Nest Mini - Manually set swipe actions - Badge for downloaded episodes - Display only downloaded episodes - Auto-download on the go setting - Download/stream on Apple Watch - LIT support - End of chapter/episode sleep timer - Time-based limit for News Mode - Sync playlists across devices - 1.75x playback speed option ## Newest reviews (16 of 70) ### 4/5 — Great app *2025-10-07, version 11.0.7* This is a wonderful app. I do have some suggestions for it however the contact link is dead. I would love to message the dev with an enhancement request! Edit: found a few bugs but have no idea where to submit them to the dev. I hope there is an avenue to report these. ### 3/5 — Great ALC, buggy player *2025-10-04* The good: automatic level control. This works great when you have a podcast with multiple people speaking, whose audio levels are all over the place. The bad: Audio drops out at random times in the podcast. It might be 30 minutes in, or it might be two hours in. Once the audio drops out, that particular episode is done. No combination of button presses will get the audio back. ### 4/5 — Nice app but No dark mode *2025-09-24, version 11.0.7* Please add a dark mode option independent of system dark mode ### 4/5 — Overall best app with one flaw *2025-04-13* I love this app. It has all the podcasting 2.0 features and uses native components which looks and feels very polished. There is one downside, when playing on Bluetooth in the car, if you turn off the car while playing a podcast (without pausing it beforehand) there is a chance that the app will get confused and loose your place. Next time the app starts up the podcast starts from the beginning! If this can be fixed the app would be perfect! Update: thank you for for the developer response! Unfortunately I am still having this issue, I had it on my old car stereo system and still have this issue on the new one which is CarPlay enabled. Let me know if there is any way I can send detailed debug data somehow to help track this down. **Developer response:** Hello Andrei. I implemented some fixes that should correct the issue you were experiencing with playing position getting lost. Let me know if you still have the same problem. ### 4/5 — Buggy unfortunately *2025-03-07, version 10.0.4* Many times audio doesn’t stop when I take out my AirPods. Also it has lost my place 5-10 times this week and starts from the beginning. (March 7 2025). ### 4/5 — Great app *2025-01-06, version 9.2.16* Super simple to operate and lots of options. Would like to see and option to hide podcast that have no new episodes to keep the list condensed ### 4/5 — Better than most *2025-01-03* Clean UI, quick performance, and podcasting 2.0 things are great. I feel it is missing a few key features, such as a playback history (last played, next up) and live show notifications that would really make this an exceptional product. ### 4/5 — Overall best app with one flaw *2024-09-25* I love this app. It has all the podcasting 2.0 features and uses native components which looks and feels very polished. There is one downside, when playing on Bluetooth in the car, if you turn off the car while playing a podcast (without pausing it beforehand) there is a chance that the app will get confused and loose your place. Next time the app starts up the podcast starts from the beginning! If this can be fixed the app would be perfect! **Developer response:** Hello Andrei. I implemented some fixes that should correct the issue you were experiencing with playing position getting lost. Let me know if you still have the same problem. ### 4/5 — Great! What about RSS? *2024-08-29, version 9.2.6* This is a great app! Well designed, stable car play, and podcasting 2.0 features. However, I can’t seem to find any way to add an RSS feed. ### 4/5 — Best podcasting app - but… *2024-07-28, version 9.2.3* I keep loosing my spot on a podcast. It’s specially annoying while driving. Good luck getting to the point in a 3h podcast where the app lost it. I’m a premium user but switched back to Apple podcast just now. Hope you fix it. ### 4/5 — Almost Awesome Podcast Player *2024-07-27* Amending my earlier review but fully ready to update when fixed: playback is not smooth. Everything else about the app is very nice, and I mostly like how the features are organized. I particularly like how it supports podcasting 2.0 features and hope it’ll support more in addition to having the playback fixed. I usually play podcasts with gap zapper on classic and leveling set to automatic. It’s very possible one of those features is causing the issue. It does everything I’ve needed so far. My one wish at the moment is that it would make the shownotes for an episode easier to view. I have to start playing the episode, which I don’t always want to do. That doesn’t feel clean, but otherwise the UI and functionality is great! **Developer response:** Hello Kozmo24, if you long press an episode in a list, you can then touch the "display shownotes" option in the menu. ### 4/5 — Awesome Podcast Player *2024-07-21* It does everything I’ve needed so far. My one wish at the moment is that it would make the shownotes for an episode easier to view. I have to start playing the episode, which I don’t always want to do. That doesn’t feel clean, but otherwise the UI and functionality is great! **Developer response:** Hello Kozmo24, if you long press an episode in a list, you can then touch the "display shownotes" option in the menu. ### 4/5 — I love it, but… *2024-07-17* I can only say that it is one of the best applications for listening to podcasts, by far. I give it a 99%. That 1% to be perfect that it lacks is because I can only play podcasts on AirPlay compatible devices, therefore to listen to podcasts on my Nest Mini speakers, I have to use Pocket Casts. If this functionality could be added, I would not hesitate at all to subscribe and support the creator. **Developer response:** Hello, thank you for your review. I would love to add support for Nest speakers and all Google Cast devices, but that would mean integrating the GoogleCast SDK. GoogleCastSDK is a closed source library that collects and transmits user data (location, id, activity) to Google. Castamatic is designed and built to respect the privacy of the user, unfortunately there is no way to integrate the GoogleCast SDK without completely compromising this. ### 3/5 — Almost Perfect! *2024-04-18* Loving this app, but had to drop my rating after extensive use. There is no way to quickly select multiple episodes for download, and the swipe ability is too touchy to be reliably used consistently. Wish we could manually set actions for swipe L/R. Also need a badge that shows # of downloaded ep for podcasts - not # not listened avail. Finally, need to be able to display just downloaded episodes (like you can do with show/hide listened). Finally, the app has gotten sluggish and unresponsive since I've added my full list of podcasts I follow. Would love to work with the developers on testing and new features. ### 4/5 — Often stalls on certain podcasts *2024-04-09* I downloaded this after hearing it recommended by Adam Curry of “The No Agenda Show” )”the best podcast in the universe, according to the Mueller report”). I really want to like this app, but it has a serious flaw. It often stalls for no apparent reason. This often happens on “The John Kobylt Show.: I recently started listening to “The Wright Report” but find it stalls so much on this podcast that I may have to use a different app. **Developer response:** In version 9.0.14 I introduced a nasty bug that caused freezes during playback, sorry. That should be fixed in 9.0.15. If you still experience hangs, please send a report from the app's preferences with verbose logging enabled if possible. Thanks. ### 3/5 — Decent but I lose podcast progress a lot *2024-04-01* This app has a generally good UI design and works okay. However far too often it lags like crazy when trying to open it. Additionally, there’s been countless times where the app has crashed or bugged out and the podcast I’m listening to is reset to the beginning. It just happened now when I started playing a show and I lost like an hour and a half of progress. Not great **Developer response:** Hello rwyeoww, the issues you were experiencing should be fixed. Let me know if you still have problems. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Version 9 is a disaster *2023-11-15* I began using Castamatic shortly before version 9. On the recommendation of a friend I gave it a try. Best features promised were (a) support for chapters within an episode to enable graceful jumping ahead or back, and (b) sourcing a list of podcasts beyond that produced by Apple now tha Apple has begun censoring their list by political correctness. At first Castamatic seemed adequate. But then version 9 arrived. Audio would stop for no reason. The user interface would lock up, ignoring touches/swiping, requiring me to crash and restart the app. No support for commands through Siri. The list of episodes for a podcast have no indication of how to actually start playing that episode; I just tap on the episode row randomly, and sometimes it will start, mostly not. Updates to 9.0.x have arrived, but problems persist. So anyway, I’m deleting the app now, looking for a replacement. **Developer response:** Hello, we are really sorry to hear you are experiencing this bugs. Please check out the latest releases that have some fixes that might correct the behaviors you are experiencing. Also if you contact us directly any info about your crashes would help us pinpoint the issues and resolve it. ### 1/5 — All my podcasts are gone. *2020-09-20, version 7.1.1* After the update, all my podcasts are gone. How to get them back? ### 1/5 — Crashes on iOS 13.1.3, iPhone Xs Max *2019-12-23, version 5.1.5* Touch the “Premium Subscription” button and the app dies (disappears). There is thus no for me way to avoid the annoying ads, or for the software author to receive my money. Double Failure. ### 1/5 — Subpar Podcast App *2015-11-21, version 1.2.4* I subscribe to over 100 podcasts but this app freezes constantly upon loading. It cannot handle it at all. It's a waste of your time and money (certainly was a waste of mine). Use any of the myriad of podcasts app there that are 100 times better than this one. ### 2/5 — Great app, terrible UI *2025-10-01, version 11.0.7* Honestly comes with a stack of excellent features hidden behind the worst UI imaginable, created by someone who clearly hates their users. If you can figure out what all the little icons mean, congratulations. Personally I’ve given up trying to download podcasts on this app. I’m sure the control is …somewhere. ### 2/5 — Great but has a major flaw *2024-09-16* I love this podcast player and don’t want to rate it a two. However, it has started over multiple podcasts at the beginning several times. Very frustrating. This app needs more work put into the player features before it’s worth using. Starting over, audio artifacts, things that aren’t in more mature players like Overcast. **Developer response:** Hello Kozmo24, if you long press an episode in a list, you can then touch the "display shownotes" option in the menu. ### 2/5 — Mixed Message *2024-03-18* Heard about the app, read the No Ads, No Tacking… decided to try the app. First thing you notice is banners. Can be removed…for a subscription. So much for the No Ads, at least I see a banner that can be removed as an ad. Not a terrible subscription at 9.99 a year, but I’m sticking with a cleaner interface app that doesn’t force a subscription to look clean. Worth a try though if you can get past the, well, ads, or perhaps call them reminders your not a subscriber. Just not for me. I appreciate the Dev response here. I suppose it all come down to perception. I see a banner reminding you to subscribe to a product as an ad. The developer does not. I can see the their point of view as well. This app is a fantastic app, that banner just ruins it for me. I believe many will love it though and I wish the developer well. Who knows, one day I may try it out again. **Developer response:** I confirm there are no ads in Castamatic. If the user is not subscribed there is a banner that remembers the user he can subscribe to Castamatic premium to support developement. ### 2/5 — Mixed Message *2024-03-16* Heard about the app, read the No Ads, No Tacking… decided to try the app. First thing you notice is banners. Can be removed…for a subscription. So much for the No Ads, at least I see a banner that can be removed as an ad. Not a terrible subscription at 9.99 a year, but I’m sticking with a cleaner interface app that doesn’t force a subscription to look clean. Worth a try though if you can get past the, well, ads, or perhaps call them reminders your not a subscriber. Just not for me. **Developer response:** I confirm there are no ads in Castamatic. If the user is not subscribed there is a banner that remembers the user he can subscribe to Castamatic premium to support developement. ### 2/5 — Not bad but feels like beta software *2024-03-14* I installed this to check out some podcast 2.0 features. I do like some of the features but I find myself going back to other podcast apps. There are just lots of glitches with this one that I don't have in others. For example, if I'm listening to a podcast as I pull into the parking garage at work, the podcast immediately stops and I have to wait until I leave the garage then force quit the app in order to get it to reconnect. Other podcast apps don't even stop streaming in the garage let alone need to be force quit and reopened. It randomly stops play ng at other times too and I have to force quit to get it working. Maybe it works better if you download instead of stream but for how I use a podcast app, this just doesn't work as a main podcast app but I think I'll keep it installed and see how it develops. ### 2/5 — Very nice, but has problems. *2022-09-27, version 8.5.9* First, the positive. This is one of the nicest looking of all podcast players. Love the way it finds and displayed podcast artwork. Really well done. Very complete feature set too. The way the ads are displayed is sane and well done. Now the problems. It froze up constantly. Often crashed too. It would freeze up when I tried to scroll thru the podcasts. It froze a lot. Hopefully new updates will fix this. The creator has a potentially great app. But at least on my iPhone SE running iOS 16, it doesn’t work well enough yet to use. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Hidden treasure of podcast apps *2025-09-24* I’ve been hunting for the “perfect” podcast app and, imho, this comes the closest of anything on the market. It has pretty much everything you’d want in terms of sound boost, silence trimming, timed skipping of intros/outros, customizable global defaults w/the ability to save custom settings for each show, and no real ads – just a minimally invasive banner in the episode list promoting the premium version. The only (minor) quibble that I have is that the playback speed setting changes in 0.25x increments; a bit more granularity would be appreciated. Yes, you can subscribe for ten bucks a year to support the dev, but all the above features are available for free. Give it a shot, it’s an excellent app. ### 5/5 — The Final Boss! 🏆 *2025-08-20, version 11.0.5* I have been listening to, and creating, podcasts since BEFORE they were called “podcasts” 😉 - I have used or tried nearly EVERY podcasting app made for Apple devices…. And since the advent of “podcasting 2.0” I have been looking for a great app that can both handle the classic podcasting listener needs - but still has some of the amazing 2.0 features. Most new podcasting 2.0 apps are so “foreign” or “bizarre” in design and user interface that I find them unusable. Finally CASTAMATIC arrives with beautiful classic user interface stylings and new exciting 2.0 features!! Amazing!!! Thank you. My only suggestion is please have someone create some instructional videos or screenshot blogs on how to use some of the tricky new features. I’m a dummy and would love some basic walk throughs! ### 5/5 — My new favorite podcast app *2025-07-06* This is my new podcast app of choice. But I would love to be able to filter out entire episodes by keywords or phrases such as ,"BONUS" or "You may also like:", in order to block promoted episodes from other podcasts. ### 5/5 — My new favorite podcast app *2025-06-23* This is my podcast app of choice. But I would love to be able to filter out entire episodes by keywords or phrases such as ,"BONUS" or "You may also like:", in order to block promoted episodes from other podcasts. ### 5/5 — Future of podcasting *2024-04-21, version 9.0.15* If you’re on iOS and want to see what podcasting 2.0 is all about Castamatic is worth checking out. ### 5/5 — Almost perfect *2024-01-23* Great app and I have no regrets about using this over other podcast apps, especially those with no podcast 2 support (ahem, Apple). What would make this perfect? LIT support. It’s the one thing that seems to be missing. Would really like to be able to hear the live feeds when they go live. ### 5/5 — Awesome *2023-11-23, version 9.0.6* Best alternate podcast app out there. I absolutely love it. I also like the fact that it’s based on the value for value concept. I found out about this app from the “No Agenda” podcast. Shout out to Adam and John. It’s great!!! 👍 ### 5/5 — He fixed the search issue! Wonderful! *2023-06-26, version 8.7.3* The search box doesn’t give the distracting error message anymore. And it works much better! Thanks! ### 5/5 — Excellent Podcast app *2022-12-30, version 8.5.16* Supports a lot of the new podcasting 2.0 features to interact with and support podcasts. You should give this a try! ### 5/5 — Best Apple-esque Podcast app design *2022-12-15* Of all the modern apps that respect the Podcast Standards this one takes the cake in terms of design. Fountain has its own community that really drives it, but when you want an app that is built simply to enjoy your list of favorite shows with no distractions this is the one. I’ll continue to recommend Castamatic to anyone looking for a new podcast app on iOS. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-06.*