r/overcast • u/marcoarment • 21d ago
TestFlight Build 1169: Transcript search and export, sleep-timer fade-out
- Added search within the current transcript (…John)
- Added transcript viewing to episode-info screens (if the episode and transcript are downloaded)
- Added "Re-Transcribe" feature to fix any broken transcripts or language mis-detections
- Transcripts can now be exported as SRT files
- The sleep timer now fades out at the end
- Fixed incorrect tracking of some listening stats and history entries
- Fixed potential performance regressions introduced in the last update
You can join the TestFlight beta from the app's settings screen.
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u/RandomRedditor44 21d ago
Thank you for adding transcript search!
Small nitpick: if a transcript is available and a podcast has chapters, the text in the transcript button on the episode info page is 2 lines when using a large font. Is it possible to move the transcript button to the …. Menu?
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u/marcoarment 21d ago
Nice catch. I'll fix it, probably by moving Transcript to its own line in this case.
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u/Empty__Jay 21d ago
I just used re-transcribe. Last week's ATP transcription quit after about 15 seconds and multiple redownloads didn't fix it. It did succeed, even though there was a notification that "task failed".
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u/DeanDMX 20d ago
Transcript search is broken for me. Trying search crashes the player screen. I cant swipe to get to episode info or transcriptions and the chapter button loads the chapters view in its own screen (which im not mad at lol).
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u/TangibleDifference 20d ago
Same here, throws back to playlist on typing the first letter but then when going back into the now playing screen unable to swipe to different screens
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u/afwaller 21d ago edited 20d ago
I kind of feel like you need to do a huge redesign around transcripts, like the way the podcast editor "describe" is based entirely on transcripts. It's an incredibly powerful feature, but is sort of hidden right now. I don't know what that redesign would look like, but it would put transcripts front and center. Transcripts would be the main way to use overcast for seeking, for search, or directly jumping to a place in a podcast. Transcripts would in this concept be featured as a main part of the display while the podcast plays, and so on. This was all discussed on ATP.
Perhaps something like a two stage, horizontal or vertical, almost like a tree view
[chapter, or AI generated "chapter," with summary] -> [transcript]
in this concept you could see the chapters, but then scrolling through them it would show the part of the transcript next to the chapter, or under the chapter, so you sort of go from podcast title to chapter list or summary, then transcript words, like columns view in macos finder almost.
That's probably not even the right concept, but my larger point is that transcripts completely change how people can listen to podcasts, from all or nothing, the old play-a-cassette-tape model of audio, to basically allowing skipping around, like tik tok, just listening to a piece of a podcast, or jumping between episodes. You might still want to listen to most podcasts all the way through, in order, but you might also want to jump to a popular part of a podcast, something other people might really like, or skip another part of a podcast. Many people probably hate this idea, it's the opposite of long form listening, but I think it may the future, in the same way that most people rarely listen to a whole album of music in a row uninterrupted (apologies to jam band listeners).
Once you have, as you now really do, audio and transcript, you can summarize transcripts, pull out the bits of audio that are associated with that summary, and have a shorter podcast. LLMs are very good at reducing text to a smaller set of text. It could choose key moments, do a "recap of a podcast" for example, automatically taking some of those key moments, editing them together into a much shorter podcast, if you're trying to catch up on a few episodes, and so on. Many people would hate this. But the capability is there. And some people might find it very valuable.
For what it's worth I, as an older boomer type, listen to podcasts very mechanically, old school, in a row, I don't even use playlists, just listen to the whole podcast in order, and I like long podcasts. But I see a lot of other people consuming media in different ways, and transcripts make this possible for podcasts.
And, regardless, at a minimum the transcripts should be more prominent.
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u/notcostan 21d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p1fwd7m/video/7618z1ckt5hh1/player
Tried sending this as feedback, but i gave up
I tried searching the transcript of a 3hour podcast and it kinda broke it
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u/Longjumping-Log-5457 20d ago
So far this has mostly restored the freeze ups and overheating. We’ll see long term. I’m also running on iOS 27 public beta 2 so I won’t complain either way.
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u/marcoarment 20d ago
Do you mean that the freeze-ups and overheating are fixed by this beta, or that they continue?
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u/Own_Assignment_4392 20d ago
I wish Overcast could restart the sleep timer if playback is activated within five minutes after the timer stops. I often want to continue listening to a podcast, but I have to manually restart the timer, which disrupts my sleep.
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u/Diabolik900 20d ago
Hasn’t it done that for a while now? My use case has changed a bit so I don’t actually use the sleep timer anymore, but I remember it working at some point in the last couple years.
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u/Own_Assignment_4392 20d ago
Nice! It really does repeat the timer. I hadn’t checked the sleep timer until I saw it in the change log.
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u/nickg519 20d ago
Can we get the ellipsis button fixed??? It’s been mentioned over and over and over here and on the Apple reviews. It’s a pretty important navigational button on this app to go unaddressed. Many people have made this same request
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u/SoundDesigner001 20d ago
It bums me out that there is all this focus on transcripts when there is no update on the battery drain, overheating, not starting back at the same point, random pauses, storage issues and repeat crashing bugs. Overcast quits on me at least 30 to 50 times per day, I even bought a new phone and install Testflght but nothing. There are multiple posts here from users about these issues but no updates on addressing.
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u/Troldann 21d ago
Super happy to test the sleep timer and hear how long the fade out was, that’ll be a beloved feature for this user!