# Overcast Podcast App — user reviews > 2,080 indexed App Store user reviews of Overcast Podcast App by Overcast Radio, LLC, rated 4.50/5 from 47,578 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/overcast-podcast-app/id888422857/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/overcast-podcast-app/id888422857.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 38,843 · 4★ 2,994 · 3★ 1,317 · 2★ 1,405 · 1★ 3,019 ## What do users think of Overcast Podcast App? Overall sentiment: neutral **Pros** - 🚀 Excellent audio quality - 🔒 Respects user privacy - 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface - 🚀 Smart Speed feature saves time - 👍 Customizable playback options - 🚀 Seamless cross-device sync **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs - 🔋 High storage usage - 👎 Cluttered and unintuitive UI after recent update - 👎 Removal of useful features like 'play next' - 👎 Streaming no longer supported - 👎 Apple Watch integration issues **Commonly reported bugs** - Inconsistent episode downloads and playback - Syncing issues between iPhone and Apple Watch - Randomly resets playback progress **Most requested features** - Ability to easily mark episodes as played - Improved podcast discovery and recommendation system - More customization options for playlists and episode sorting - Easier access to sleep timer and other frequently used controls ## Newest reviews (12 of 2,080) ### 2/5 — What happened??? *2026-08-23, version 2026.8* This app was the best for years and has been ruined by the latest update. It’s glitchy, it freezes, it won’t scroll easily, and is just overall FRUSTRATING! But what really pisses me ofc is that I just paid for another year before the update and now I’m stuck with this garbage. FIX IT!!! ### 3/5 — An unfortunate update *2026-08-23, version 2026.8* This is simply a buggier app after the redesign. It just feels like everything needed more time to bake. ### 2/5 — Great app, questionable direction *2026-08-22, version 2026.8* It had taken me a while to get to grips with the redesign. I'd finally made my peace with it and created a number of playlists. It was working okay, and then they move the goalposts again with this new hard episode limit... It makes no sense, the previous logic was actually smarter: you decide on the limit for automatic downloads, and if you want to add more, you can. You're in control. With the new logic, whatever you set as the limit is hardcoded, and if you want to download another episode you can't unless you disable the limit entirely, which breaks automatic downloads for that episode unless you fiddle with the (already super fiddly) settings for every individual podcast before and after downloading. Who does this help? Who thought this was a good idea? If there really is a use case, why not make it an optional setting rather than breaking everybody's playlists? ### 3/5 — Good but getting slow and bloated *2026-08-21, version 2026.8* I was very happy with this app for years but after several upgrades it became unbearably slow (second and a half to start scrolling) and the interface lost coherence. With impending price increases, I'm switching back to Apple's app, which is an interface fiasco but it is free and responsive. ### 3/5 — Episodes disappear *2026-08-19, version 2026.8* At times all downloaded content disappears until my watch is reset. The first episode plays and when completed all the other episodes disappear and you are left with nothing playable ### 4/5 — Audio wholesome goodness *2026-08-18, version 2026.8* A very good and nicely crafted podcast app with an excellent range of audio enhancement features (eg smart speed and voice boost). The recent move to strictly enforce episode limits is a step backward - I would prefer a flexible system that retains the x most recent plus any older episodes that I have downloaded. The recent introduction of transcripts is a fantastic addition, continuing a tradition of providing great features as part of the free base version of the app. ### 2/5 — Yamileth *2026-08-18, version 2026.8* None ### 4/5 — Update: Fixes are on the way! New users might want to wait (Last update was brutal) *2026-08-17, version 2026.8* Edit: The dev listened and is currently testing a version that returns to the old episode limit behavior! I’m glad to still be part of this community of users, and happy the majority of negative feedback posted publicly was constructive. I still wish the dev the best as he navigates all of this, and am super grateful he onboarded the responses and pivoted so quickly. I’m not going to fully update this review yet, but I am bumping my star rating and adding this note. ——— I truly wish the best for the dev, but I don’t think recent updates represent his best work. He might not have enough critical voices/testers in his corner. It sounds like user experience and trust were deprioritized for moving fast and getting a few bugs squashed that weren’t affecting the majority of us. Meanwhile the quieter folks like myself had their downloads and episode playlists turned upside down due to some very poorly timed, poorly worded and incomplete change alerts and new feature explanations. I would have just used my premium superpower and undone the past 24 hours but the updates broke that feature too. Yes, I did go listen to the last episode of the dev’s podcast that other’s mentioned here. I am probably a bit more AI agnostic than some of the other reviewers. He describes the desire to fix old problems before rolling out new features, and explains that relying on AI to address longstanding sticking points within limited boundaries has been helpful to his workflow. The conversation continues and he later describes some processes involving AI that probably need more careful oversight. I can’t speak to his story, but biases happen all the time: take that STRONG desire to improve, slip in some good AI experiences under limited scope, add in strong personal buy-in on AI to free up your time, and then sprinkle a potential AI sponsorship on top and…errors can thrive. As a sole developer, it’s completely his choice if he wants to move fast and break his own app. It’s our choice as users to find something else. But I hope it doesn’t come to that? In case he reads this: You built something great. I personally recommend your app all the time to folks, and totally understand if you need to raise your very reasonable subscription fee. We trust you with our precious podcasts lists that get us through our days and also try to be open-minded to changes you make. I’m confident your users are fine with small bugs and a few rough edges in your award-winning affordable, privacy-focused app. If you can, put yourself in our shoes: when our podcast queues partially explode with no rollback option while you pat yourself on the back publicly on your own podcast for “mastering AI” and then mention your future AI podcast sponsor (was that a joke?), it really sucks. It’s like you’re prioritizing the process over your own work (the actual app itself and the user base you built). Ironically, I was going to share a clip from a recent pod here about all of this but the Overcast clipping feature is broken and not pulling the right time-stamps. Please, please consider slowing down and/or putting more robust testing in place to account more human and non-human errors alike. If you put out a call for new testers we will volunteer. Functionality shouldn’t break like this. Personally, hands-down you’ve built the most accessible podcast app for me. Please don’t make it impossible to stay. I hope this reads as an honest critique from a user (even if it is too long). The intention is not to be demotivating or mean. Even with whatever these new issues are, I hope it’s clear daily users like me really care about this app and the vision behind it. Previous review: Love the additional speed increments. Gonna stick with the classic miniplayer over the new one because I always miss words and need to go back. So glad it’s still an option! ### 2/5 — Random Glitches *2026-08-17, version 2026.8* Using an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Recently updated and for some reason the app will delete my entire queue, sometimes while I’m listening to the first one on the list. The podcast will just cutout and then my queue of 4-5 podcasts are deleted. I then have to go back to each podcast and download the episodes and make my queue again. Sometimes the app will skip the podcast I’m listening to and skip to the next podcast in my queue. Have almost always really enjoyed using this app but these bugs/glitches that seem to happen with most updates are probably going to make switch to another app for my podcasts. ### 5/5 — Best podcast player out there *2026-08-16, version 2026.8* Smart speed, undo seek, replay podcast, transcripts - all amazing features plus it’s a well designed bloat free app ### 5/5 — Overcast makes podcasts work for me! *2026-08-16, version 2026.8* I had Apple podcasts, because it came with macOS and iOS. I was constantly frustrated by how badly managed my podcasts, and contacting Apple's support several times did not solve the problem. I saw several comments in the Forums saying that people had switched to other podcast apps, often Overcast. I tried several recommended apps, but Overcast was the only one that I could find that carried all the podcasts I was subscribing to on Apple. I really like that Overcast downloads all the episodes, and then you can erase them once you've heard them. That's been handy while I was traveling and didn't have Internet access, because I could listen to the downloaded podcasts. I'm not bothered by the ads, but I am going to switch today to a paid subscription, just to support an excellent company. ### 5/5 — Most used app. *2026-08-16, version 2026.8* While the massive update was a bit rough at first most of the problematic things have been fixed. Smart speed has saved me over 120 days of listening time. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — New design is not user friendly *2026-08-23, version 2026.8* Raising the prices while making the app buggy? Stop trying to stuff new features in just because it’s faster to develop now with AI. Good app but the new UI is confusing and takes a lot more clicks to do the same actions, compared to the old UI ### 1/5 — Locks up on spotty WiFi *2026-08-22, version 2026.8* This release does not fix an ongoing problem where the app locks up and will not continue playing if you are on spotty WiFi. It will look for new episodes, even on a plane with message-only WiFi, but will hang until it (never) finishes d/l-ing. Image proof posted to Reddit and Mastodon ### 1/5 — Downloads Don’t Work *2026-08-21, version 2026.8* There’s so much to love about this app, but ultimately, the downloads don’t work and never have. Every time I’ve gotten a new phone, I’ve had to suffer through the process of redownloading my episodes as they refuse to do so in the background. I have to keep the screen on and stay on the download queue while they take hours to download. Then the final straw this week: one of my podcasts refuses to fetch new episodes. It took a full 20 hours to be recognized in Overcast when it was available everywhere else. I tried some troubleshooting tips, including switching Sync Profiles to see if the episode showed up there (it did not) and now I’m in download hell. The app deleted all my downloads and now absolutely refuses to process the download queue no matter what I do. The only thing that works is tapping each episode individually. That is unacceptable. No amount of fancy features makes up for broken basic functionality. ### 1/5 — New update ruined app :/ *2026-08-20, version 2026.8* I’ve recommended this app to many people before, and always loved it. I’ve even paid the premium subscription before in the past. However the recent updates have been a dealbreaker for me. The episode limits (which used to just be how many NEW episodes it would download) now apply to ALL episodes. This means that it literally won’t let you download more episodes unless you turn off the limits. For podcasts with daily episodes, this is an absolute nightmare. I had a 1-3 episode limit for these, and I could just manually pick the ones I wanted instead of filling up my storage. However that’s not possible now, and even just a few days of this update has added over 1gb to my storage. There have also been some pretty annoying changes with previous updates too. For instance, if a specific episode has custom episode art, the title is pushed over to the right. Titles without custom art are justified all the way to the left. This means you can’t easily scroll a list, because the titles are now essentially in two different columns. I totally get that it’s just one person making this, so I know that can occasionally come with hiccups, but I’m just so confused how decisions are being made for such a popular app. It feels like the developer is just making choices based on HIS own podcasts, not what others use it for. I’m pretty sure something from every new update recently has had to be rolled back or fixed, which doesn’t reflect very well on however decisions are being made. I’ve worked in tech for years, and UX/UI testing is really crucial, even for small teams of developers. There are some pretty avoidable mistakes that keep happening that it seems like would have been caught from user testing. The benefits of using the app now are outweighed by the negative, which is really disappointing. I hope this episode limit change gets rolled back because otherwise I literally won’t have the phone storage to keep listening to podcasts on this app, which feels crazy to me. ### 1/5 — Unstoppable auto-downloads *2026-08-18* As soon as I installed it, it started auto-downloads of all of my podcast library, downloading 60 GBs which went unnoticed because there is no permission dialogue or warning. There is no easily discernible way to stop this behaviour. This should not be a default to begin with. There is no option to clear the download queue at once, and it keeps retrying the failed downloads. Is the user supposed to clear the download queue one-by-one manually? Huge headache! ### 1/5 — Episode Limits totally breaks a one time great *2026-08-17, version 2026.8* I have used overcast for 11 years. However it is now unusable. I set episode limits to make sure my storage isn’t eaten up by automatic downloads, and I’d always have the latest eps available for me. Anything I manually downloaded or partially listened to did not count against this limit. Not any more. Massively disappointed and sadly have to go looking for a different player. ### 1/5 — Episode Limits *2026-08-16, version 2026.8* Been a big fan of this app for years and now every time I open it I get the episode limits popup. Why??? Please make this an opt out feature or not present at all. ### 1/5 — Strict episode limits make this app unusable for anyone who wants to listen to a whole episode *2026-08-16, version 2026.8* Episode limits are so strictly enforced that you can’t even ad-hoc play an episode you missed. If you haven’t finished an episode and a new one comes out, your progress is deleted and the episode removed from the queue. I get it, he’s trying to solve for other issues that allowed manually downloaded episodes and partially played episodes to linger, but this model is so strict as to be destructive. Some people will love it, I guess. Not me. After years of using Overcast exclusively, I’m now on the hunt for a new podcast app. This change made it unusable for so many people. ### 1/5 — Strict Episode Limit & Developer Hubris *2026-08-14, version 2026.8* Marco, if you’re going to lean on Claude to code your app, you have enough time to make thoughtful decisions on feature roll-out. Instead, you released a strict episode limit that breaks longstanding functionality and user behavior. Your rollout was user-hostile and destructive of users’ playlists, podcast settings, and good will. You would have absolutely roasted Tim Cook for a decision like this. I’ve been an Overcast user since launch because I believed it’s best-in-class, but the negligence and hubris of this rollout resonates with the increasing out-of-touch perspective you bring to ATP. ### 1/5 — Ruined *2026-08-14, version 2026.8* What used to be a great app has been junked up with premium upsells and AI features. Let me turn this stuff off. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Best podcast app period *2026-08-23, version 2026.8* I’ve been using this app for many, many years and it’s consistently one of the highest quality, most consistent apps I interact with. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I listen to well over a thousand hours of podcasts every year and I have never had a single complaint about this app. ### 5/5 — Excellent Podcast Control Options *2026-08-23, version 2026.8* I’ve been using Overcast for years. It offers excellent options for customizing podcast playback such as listening speed, custom playlists, voice boost, Apple Watch support. Very reliable and an app I use every day. ### 5/5 — Great Podcast App *2026-08-22, version 2026.8* This app is easy to use, constantly updated and extremely reliable! You won’t be disappointed with the intuitive interface and wonderful set of features! ### 5/5 — Good for podcasts *2026-08-21, version 2026.8* Love it! ### 5/5 — New features are awesome *2026-08-20, version 2026.8* The new episode limit feature to keep the oldest episodes has eliminated an admin task I hadn’t realised was taking so much time. I love it and never would have thought of it myself. Thank you Overcast! ### 5/5 — The best podcast app, hands down *2026-08-18, version 2026.8* Been a user for years, most recent update solidified it. Goated ### 5/5 — New features! *2026-08-18, version 2026.8* The last few years, I’ve gotten annoyed with the slowing development and lack of features. I started looking at other apps, but I pushed it off due to the cost of migrating apps. The latest update has given me faith that we will continue to see useful features. ### 5/5 — Excellent app *2026-08-18, version 2026.8* I've used Overcast from the start. Highly recommended. ### 5/5 — Makes podcasts listenable again *2026-08-17, version 2026.8* In hindsight, I should have switched to Overcast when the reel-to-reel tape appeared. But I did switch a few years ago and I’ve been delighted with Overcast. Works seamlessly with private (paid) feeds, intelligently trims out silences, works great with CarPlay, and has advanced settings that you don’t often find in an iOS app. ### 5/5 — I’ve got a new favorite podcast app! *2026-08-17, version 2026.8* Works just how I think it should work— smart speed trims silences so that you can get through podcasts slightly faster but without making it harder to understand Side note, a few years later still feel the same— a neat new premium feature is an undo button, so if a podcast plays accidentally for a bit you can see you history and rewind back to where you were — few years later, updating my review, if you knew me and had a podcast app I would have already told you to use this one instead --- *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 2026-08-29.*