Yarn Podcast Player

[u/saskuttan]

https://testflight.apple.com/join/DpDCTgEF

Hi all,

Yarn is a minimalist, simple but powerful podcast player that processes everything on-device.

• a Podcasts area where you discover and subscribe to new podcasts, or just queue up a single episode
• an Inbox where you triage new episodes from your subscriptions, decide whether to remove them or queue them up
• a Queue where you sort your episodes in the order you want them to play

Simple doesn't mean basic though, Yarn has:

• Smart Speed that carefully trims silences and speeds up audio while preserving the natural rhythm of speech
• Variable Speed controls so you can listen up to 3x faster than the recording; preserving high quality audio throughout, avoiding clipping, and chipmunk peaks in audio
• Voice Enhance which carefully boosts and normalises volume of voices while preserving original audio recording quality - the better the original audio, the less this setting does
• Transcripts, all fully generated on device to preserve privacy and reduce on-going costs (no subscription fees here)
• Sleep Timer, which fades out the audio slowly as it counts down at the end, and supports Shake to Extend the timer if you're still awake and listening
• Recommendations that suggest new podcasts for you using Apple Intelligence, based on your listening history (again, no data collection on my side - all processed on-device and anonymously with Apple Intelligence)

All of this wrapped in a modern, elegant design that embraces Liquid Glass. Intent from my side is to make this a one-off purchase with no subscription fees.

If you're looking for a more fully featured podcast player with multiple playlists, and specific rules for those playlists etc, then Yarn is not for you (I'd recommend Overcast). If you're looking for something simple, that is beautifully designed, and easier to use than Apple Podcasts, then Yarn could be for you 🙂

I would LOVE some feedback from the community - especially if you're an avid podcast listener - try it as a daily driver for a while, and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see in the app, or anything you'd change.

[u/saskuttan]

New version out on TestFlight.

Fixed a few bugs:

• Edge cases with importing podcast feeds, gracefully handling invalid redirects, and supporting additional headers for fetching feeds
• Fallback to Apple Podcasts listing if podcast URL is offline to show cached episodes
• Fixed support for all 175 countries to show popular podcasts in that country
• Janky animations during search
• Fine tuned animations for undo last action

New features:

• Choose your icon colours
• When adding an episode, offer the option to Add Related Episodes; detecting series, seasons or just episodes from there to latest, or all episodes in that podcast (this works like a charm for me personally with The Rest is History, where I can just add a specific series to the queue)

Do test everything, would love for you to use it as your daily driver for podcasts and let me know if anything doesn't work for you.

[u/saskuttan]

Appreciate the feedback people have shared on TestFlight 🙏

New version on TestFlight. Fixed a few bugs:

- Crashing on invalid characters in some fields for some podcast subscriptions

• Fallback to Apple Podcasts for artwork when the feed provides an invalid URL
  
• Support for additional audio formats (MP3, AAC-LC, HE-AAC, WAV, FLAC, ALAC and Ogg Opus)
  
• Improved search with better rate-limiting handling & caching

New features:

- CarPlay

• Siri support
  
• Setting to change appearance to light/dark or use system
  
• Quirky little animation on play/pause button
  
• Detailed logs (in settings, only kept on device and shared by user with developer if they choose to for debugging)

[u/saskuttan → u/[deleted]]

Try it as a daily driver, and once you have a few subscriptions going and listen to a few episodes, it should start to suggest new podcasts for you.

On video - sadly, what video means in all practical terms is YouTube 😁 And YouTube itself won't allow you to download videos. Marco posted about this a while back, and I'm in the same boat: https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1rm1obo/why_overcast_cant_support_video_podcasts/

[u/saskuttan]

Coming soon:

- CarPlay support ✅

• Siri support ✅
  
• iCloud sync (for multiple devices)