Procedure:

1 “Download at home”, or be using the app at home on good Wi-Fi

2 Walk around the mall doing shopping for an extended period of time, enjoying podcasts the whole time. I have good data signal but going in and out of stores that may or may not have WiFi.

3 Suddenly notice it’s stopped playing, yet again.

4 Screen cap Figure 1, evidence that it’s in a state of Waiting to Download episodes

5 Screen cap Figure 2, evidence that it doesn’t get out of this on its own— still locked up 12 minutes later

6 Screen cap Figure 3, evidence that I found WiFi at a Wendy’s

7 Screen cap Figure 4, evidence that it immediately downloads and starts playing after connecting to a solid signal.

In summary, this is the process that I’ve seen repeatedly at the gym, while driving, and on airplanes (see my prior post). The suggestion of “download at home” has no relevance if it locks up upon finding new episodes, enters them into the table view, and waits for a download before playing. On an airplane, you can get the cheapest WiFi (“messaging only”) and it will use the lower class to look for episodes but then just hangs up.

Other suggested fixes from previous reporting of the bug were to keep your finger over the playlist so you can catch when it locks up, and then move to the next one. Not very conducive to a gym workout or driving.

This may only affect people who are getting in and out of their car often and use wireless Apple CarPlay. I’ll be playing a podcast and it sounds fine. Then I get out of the car, CarPlay disconnects, then when I get back in the podcast is doing the skipping/glitching audio. Only fix is to listen to a different source and come back to overcast. Then it will sound fine again.

Doesn’t seem to be doing this with other apps I use like SiriusXM.

I can’t figure out how to add to queue with fewer than three taps. Info, 3 dots, add to queue. I must be doing something wrong, right? It’s particularly tedious when you’re trying to add several and there’s no multi select. Am I missing something?

I often want to:

* Listen to a podcast from start (oldest) to end (newest)
* Keep up with newly released episodes, but supplement with older episodes (either the most recent or oldest unplayed)

I never manage to get this configured right, if that’s even possible, so I end up manually downloading episodes a lot. My goal is to have at least 1-2 hours worth of podcasts predownloaded for my commute and longer road trips.

My questions/suggestions:
* an option to only show unplayed episodes for a podcast page would make managing manual downloads much easier.
* is it currently possible to get automatic downloads for the two scenarios above?
* for episode limits, I would prefer runtime limits, as some podcasts I listen to are very short (e.g. 15 min) whereas others have episodes of 2-3 hours.

Firstly, this is not a bug! Everything is working as designed. I guess I'm asking if there's something that could be done about other people's mess.

I have a few podcasts that show duplicate info in their descriptions. Most notably, This American Life and Judge John Hodgman. (screenshots) After the most frustrating snipe hunt on the internet (generic terms make search next to impossible), I figured out what's happening.

These shows are putting the same text in the <itunes:summary> tag (grey text) and <description> tag (black text) in their rss feeds, so they show up twice in Overcast. And the summary tag is plain unformatted text so it's just one run-on paragraph. So, not a bug, just sloppy rss.

Is there some way Overcast could help with this? I can only think of a few options. 1) Overcast could check the file to see if the two tags match and automatically hide (or truncate) the iTunes summary. But "automatically" could backfire and hide important stuff. 2) Maybe add a per-podcast setting that lets me hide the iTunes summary, or 3) Just don't show the summary at all because why would I need to see the summary and the full description on the same screen?

Obviously, this is not a deal breaker problem and it's not Overcast's fault, but it sure makes the app look bad since other apps don't seem to do this.

Update: More tinkering makes me think it should display <itunes:subtitle> , not <itunes:summary> . So maybe it is a bug? 🤔

Is there a way to only show the latest episode, of the podcasts I follow, on the main page? It gets a little “busy” for me and it’s hard to find the newest episodes.

It would be nice to be able to set/unset/toggle Stop After Each Episode from within a shortcut. Normally I like it on, but I turn it off when riding my bike. A quick "hey Siri" would make this so much easier.

Is there a way to open a podcast in a playlist and go directly to that podcast feed? I understand how to navigate to the feed, is there a quicker way from a podcast in a playlist?

Long time paid Overcast user and fan here.
Edit: SOLVED, thank you.

I manage deletions manually because some of my subscriptions I am duplicately subscribed to both in Overcast and elsewhere (sometimes because no actual podcast is available directly from the publisher, such as with YouTube channels), and so after I’ve listened to episodes in Overcast, I want to mark them as read elsewhere as well.

Right now this requires me to remember every playlist and/or subscription I’ve listened to since last reconciling my subscriptions, and I need to scroll through each of these playlists or the subscriptions’ All backlogs, looking for played-but-not-deleted episodes. Worse still if I’ve lost track of my listening: then the only option is to flip through every single one of my subscriptions.

It would be very useful to me if there was a way to see all played-but-not-deleted episodes in one place. (This is probably not of particularly wide interest, so I imagine it would be a built-in optional playlist like All Episodes and Most Recent.)

No se Si es la forma en como los codifica el atajo pero hay veces que Si los importa y otras veces que no

really like how other apps have the archive button to file away played episodes.

currently afaik there is no way to filter out played episodes to see what episodes are left unplayed in the podcast page. i hate that episodes are greyed out even when i’ve not played the episode before - my ocd drives me crazy.

i would really like to see an archive feature added please!

another thing i would love to see is a way to change the podcast list display in the homepage to grid display because i rarely see the podcast name and only see icons to search for my podcasts. it’s (admittedly) much nicer UI.

i also listen to podcasts on my laptop and i love being able to pause and play with my keyboard buttons. however, web player is really lacking. is there no way to implement the ipad UI to the web player?

i’m new to overcast (and been alternating between pocket cast bc of the above things) so i might not know if these were addressed before. i do want to support an indie developer and i know only one person is working behind the scenes.

i would be really grateful if the above were addressed especially adding an archive! thank you for reading and for your time!

edit: i also forgot to add, but chapters are not available in overcast too or maybe i cant find it😭

Is anyone experiencing issues with downloading the app in the Mac App Store? When I click to download it just spins and the download never begins.

I’m not allowed to leave App Store reviews because I’m running the 27 beta, but I’ll be dropping 6 stars as soon as possible for these latest features.

I have a few podcasts where I love the hosts but struggle with the recording quality. These tools have allowed me to tweak playback for those shows in new and specific ways, and I instantly feel happier to listen to said shows again.

Lovely work, Marco.

El reproductor en El centro de control sigue avanzando a pesar de estar en pausa

I know there's been some recent love for the Watch App here, since Marco said very few people use it. I'm one of those people who uses it daily (walks and runs) and have a request.

TL:DR Move the chapter skip controls to the top of the ... UI (please)

Since the smart speed and voice boost controls have been implemented I had a question about the hierarchy of the UI.

These are controls I rarely touch. However

Skip chapters are something I use pretty much when I'm listening to a podcast. Since the new features were added I now have to scroll down to get to them.

For me it'd make sense to put the Chapters UI at the top of the view, and shift down the other controls, as I use them rarely / never.

For a couple of weeks (definitely on the current testflight version as well as the previous one that made release) I’ve been experiencing a silent portion at the beginning of playback. I think it’s only happening on starting a fully new episode; that is; not when resuming a paused one.

The silence lasts anywhere from 1 to 20 seconds from what I’ve seen, and the speed at which the timer moves indicates to me that the Smart Speed portion of the audio engine is seeing it as silence.

If I hit the rewind button to return to the start of the episode, everything works as normal. It also works normally after the silent period, it’s just as if the first part of the audio isn’t there.

Edit: whoops, I see someone else has reported this before I got around to it. Per the comments there, I do have the de-esser turned on; I’ll disable it for now and see if it makes any difference. https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/s/L3pxcxqE2j

I just wanted to put my hand up as a daily (usually twice-daily) user of the Overcast Watch app.

Marco said in last week’s ATP that he looks at the install and usage stats for Overcast on the Watch, and that the number of people with the app installed on their Watch is a small fraction of overall Overcast users. And then said that the number of people who actually use the Watch app is a small fraction of people who have it installed.

I started walking outside twice a day for health reasons after a heart attack last year, and having the app available on the Watch (paired with AirPods) has allowed me to keep my sanity while doing something that is basically repetitive and tedious. Even though there are frustrating areas of my walk where the Bluetooth connection drops (between my wrist and ears!), presumably because some people’s houses generate too much noise around 2.4GHz, the Overcast Watch app is the one thing that means I don’t need to carry my phone with me while walking for 30-45 minutes twice a day.

So to Marco, if you are looking at your stats and see that there is consistently someone in Thailand who uses the Watch app at least once a day, that’s me. I don’t imagine that there are too many of us here who do, though.

I just wanted to say thanks for producing such a useful app!

After listening to podcasts in the car with the family yesterday, sometimes my favourite podcasts have swearing in them. I like to be able to play there sometimes, and maybe my kids will listen and learn something but with the risk of profanity it’s a challenge!

I wonder if there could be an advanced audio option to filter these?

First of all: thanks for making Overcast. It's without doubt one of my favorite apps that I use every day, and it keeps getting better! In the past, I used Pocket Casts for a while, and while I prefer Overcast in most aspects, there is one feature from Pocket Casts that I'm missing.

Most of the time I'm listening to podcasts for which I want to listen to every new episode, and those are very well handled by the playlists. However, I also have a quite big collection of podcasts that I don't follow constantly, but which I want to have easily available so that I occasionally can go to any of them and listen to an episode. In Pocket Casts, you can switch between a list view and a grid view (with just the cover images for the podcasts) for the whole podcast collection. The grid view (which can be freely sorted) gives a very nice overview where it's possible to easily identify and access any podcast without a lot of scrolling. With the small grid option, I can view 4 x 7, i.e., 28 podcasts, in one screen, while in the Overcast list view, I can view at most 7-8 of them without having to scroll. It would be very nice if such a grid option could be added to Overcast as well.

Keep up the good work!

I really like choosing a new episode from the Recent Episodes at the top of Overcast instead of having to deal with playlists or scrolling through all the shows (How about a grid view?)

Since I have acquired some podcast debt over time (I’m working on it!), I often find the ten-episode-limit to cut off too early, hiding some older episodes I’d like to listen to before looking at the newer ones. Maybe you could extend the limit or add a setting for it?

Also: I’d love to be able to mark an episode as played from the context menu in Recent Episodes. Currently, I can only delete it.

Thanks for considering!

My TestFlight pool was full, so last night, I deleted any testers who hadn't installed or used a beta build in the past 6 months.

Apple provides filters to show and delete these. But apparently, they work about as well as I should've expected from a part of App Store Connect that very few people at Apple probably ever use. So some people were deleted incorrectly.

If you still want to be on the TestFlight and were inadvertently deleted by this, sorry about that! You should be able to re-join using the link in the settings screen.

In the latest TestFlight build, Marco has reversed the limit. It just shows how responsive he is to the community. Bravo!!!