Castro User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience61.0% of reviews
Neutral10.8% of reviews
Negative experience28.2% of reviews

~ Based on 602 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is Castro Safe?

Castro: Podcast App & Player appears safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for Castro is 92/100.

This assessment is based on 9,166 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.6/5.

Safety Analysis

90.0% of ratings point to a safe experience
3.3% of ratings suggest some concerns
6.6% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 9,166 App Store ratings for Castro.

Is Castro Legit?

Castro: Podcast App & Player appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Castro is 100/100.

Based on 100 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Peak

I’ve literally never had an issue with this app, and the functionality is so brilliant even without a subscription.

Queue is a game changer

I was a long time Apple Podcast user and am so glad Castro was recommended to me. As someone who rarely gets to all of their podcasts, the way Castro handles queues and downloads is so much better.

I’m a daily user of Castro

I’ve been using Castro for years with only a few minor issues, but recently it’s started draining my battery whenever I use it during my daily run. I’ll start with my phone at 100%, and by the time I’m finished, the battery has dropped dramatically. Today, for example, it went from 100% to 36%, with nothing else running on my phone.

It’s really disappointing because I’ve enjoyed using Castro for years, but if this continues, I simply won’t be able to use it on my longer runs. I’m hoping this is a bug that can be addressed in an update soon.
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Never resumes where I left off

Castro seems to be incapable of resuming my podcasts where I left off. I listen through Car Play and whenever I try and resume a podcast, I’m back 25-30%. Very frustrating.

Avoid like plague

Unbelievably manual podcast queuing. Nobody needs this aarrgh!

Incredible free version

Came from pocketcasts after they started using gen AI chapters. I feel like I wasted two years using it because Castro has been much less buggy for me so far! My only feedback is that the UI feels kind of messy, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Really amazing work, thank you!!

Favorite Podcast Player, Buggy CarPlay Support

It’s still my favorite podcast player, even if I have to regularly quit the app from my phone because the CarPlay app froze or won’t play sound.

Downloading Errors Recently

Made castro my default podcast player a few months back, and, until recently, it worked very well. But downloading errors have become the rule, not the exception of late.
What’s more, when there’s a downloading error, the episode in question still leaves my inbox—as if it had been successfully downloaded, which it hadn’t. This means I have to manually find the show, locate the episode, and hope that it downloads this time.
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Still the best

The "Inbox" metaphor is a great way to triage a lot of podcast subscriptions.

DINK!!!

Does someone on your design team think that the sound of a sharp, ear piercing ‘dink!’ is a pleasant thing to put in your head every time there’s an error? Especially when that error is merely transferring from an area of wifi to 5G or vice versa? Especially since it happens several times a day and every other podcast app doesn’t freak out every time you switch connections?

Why do you willingly inflict pain on your app subscribers? Why does your app feel like you hate us? Stop stabbing me in the ears, please. And tell your app not to break down in tears every time I leave a wifi area.
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Bugs Have Appeared

I have lately noticed that about 1 in 10 of my queued, downloaded programs is immediately and silently skipped. I have also been getting a lot of errors trying to download.

garbage search feature garbage user interface

Somehow it is still the best podcast app.

Yet another rent seeking podcast app

I’d make a crack about podcast apps being super easy to squirt out, but this one wasn’t even written. The developer just bought a free app and started charging for it. Clever.

It’s a breeze

Ordering the queue is a piece of cake. Love your podcasts! Take control.

has become almost completely unusable

Now it’s crashing every time I add a podcast to the queue. Every morning I have about a half a dozen new episodes from three or four different podcasts. Each time I go into a different podcast new episode list it hangs up and I have to exit the app and restart and go back in to add the episode and then go on to the next, where it crashes again. I have to do this three or four times each morning to set up my queue.
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Beautiful app!

This app is gorgeous. Minimalism is refreshing. Doesn’t look and feel like an Android app like most others. Castro is full of customization and podcast features. You can smoothly import all of your Apple podcasts in a couple taps. Love the name too haha. Very cool and clever. The app is free to use but if you love it and want to deep dive into more features, the annual subscription won’t be annoying either. It’s incredibly reasonable unlike most premium subscriptions out there. It’s a win for me!
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lots of bugs

i want this to work for me but it crashes, fails to load or play podcasts, and lags almost every time i use it - probably gonna give it up

UPDATE getting worse! Lately new errors including stuttering playback and randomly going silent. What’s up?

Long-term relationship

Been using Castro from the beginning. It is fast, responsive to my diverse interests and pays for itself in multiples that make it an undeniable choice.

Very Buggy

This app is so buggy. It’s been buggy for years, so it’s not something specific to an update. New podcasts won’t load, you have to force stop the app a ton, you’ll press play and it doesn’t play and the play button disappears. Now I have to deal with the pain of transferring all my podcasts.

No one else is even close

There was a brief dark time when Castro was not being managed, and I tried other podcast apps and none came close to what Castro offers. The queue is exactly how I want to listen to my shows.