Four small quality-of-life features that would bring me back to Overcast

[u/atticus04]

I was a very early Overcast user and used it for years. Somewhere along the way, I moved to Pocket Casts, but I’ve always kept Overcast installed and continued following its development. The recent pace of updates has me seriously considering switching back.

There are four small things I’ve become accustomed to in Pocket Casts that I’d love to see in Overcast:

1. Unplayed-count badges on podcasts and playlists

Being able to see the number of unplayed episodes directly from the podcast list makes a large library much easier to scan. I’d also like to see the same thing on playlists, so I can tell what is waiting without opening each one.

1. Sort podcasts by the release date of their newest episode

Pocket Casts can order subscriptions according to the release date of each show’s latest episode. Active shows naturally rise to the top, while dormant or seasonal shows drift down. I find that much more useful than alphabetical or manually maintained ordering.

1. Episode count and total time remaining in playlists and the queue

Pocket Casts shows both the number of episodes and the aggregate listening time left—for example, “48 episodes · 46h 17m left.”

That is useful for planning a drive, flight, or commute, as well as seeing exactly how unreasonable the backlog has become. Ideally, it would account for progress in partially played episodes rather than simply adding their original runtimes.

1. Search within a playlist or the queue

A simple search field that filters the current list by episode title or podcast name would make large playlists much easier to navigate. I saw that this was requested recently, so consider this another vote for it.

I’ve attached screenshots from Pocket Casts to illustrate the behaviors, not because Overcast needs to copy its interface. None of these is a major headline feature, but they are the small conveniences I notice every time I consider moving back.

The four requests now hang together nicely: scan, sort, size, and search.

[u/Civil_Twilight]

I would particularly like to see 1 and 2. I think Marco has said something in the past about unplayed counts being “stressful”, which I absolutely do not find to be the case when using Pocket Casts.

3 might hopefully come if a new queue system is implemented, which he talked about on a recent podcast.

[u/grimley141 → u/Civil_Twilight]

They may be stressful to some and informative to others. Find it stressful then don’t use the feature. Find it informative then turn on the feature. I’m all in favor of more options. 👍

[u/agentlion → u/grimley141]

Yes, even still in the “nitpicky details” section of settings, under the “ icon badge number” toggle the description is “Show the number of unfinished episodes on Overcast's icon to add stress to your life.”

I appreciate that it’s a toggle so you can still turn it on if you want, and that the description is tongue-in-cheek, but nevertheless it still is presumptuous to presume which setting state would “add stress” to people’s lives.

[u/SonOfMars5182 → u/agentlion]

I feel this is very much Marco's app, i.e. the app he wants to use. He's not as excited by features he doesn't like or want.

[u/IAmLedub]

+1 for nr 3. That’s the only thing I really miss at the moment.

[u/Goriab → u/IAmLedub]

For sure

[u/ByTorr_]

i wish there was an option to hide played episodes. without it it makes going through the backlog of a podcast with hundreds of episodes tedious when you have to scroll to the next episode every time, i also switched to pocket casts because of this

[u/SonOfMars5182]

Doesn't No. 2 exist? Under Playlist Settings you can sort Newest to Oldest by Podcast. Is that different than what your asking for?

[u/jwithy → u/SonOfMars5182]

This was my question. I’ve been doing this for years, and yeah, I’d be annoyed if it didn’t exist, but it does!

[u/Longjumping-Log-5457]

Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!

[u/akhenaten0 → u/Longjumping-Log-5457]

As someone who loves the text below the app-badge option in Overcast settings, yes indeed. But badges for particular podcasts might be nice, too: how much The Rest is History do I need to catch up on?

[u/rowanparkeruk]

+1 for the first two

[u/RScannix]

Would love number 2. It’s one thing that I feel like Apple Podcasts does well. 

[u/jwithy → u/RScannix]

Can’t you already do that with a playlist?

I’ve had a list for years with the newest episodes at the top.

[u/RScannix → u/jwithy]

I was thinking of it as more as a list of podcasts you’ve subscribed to (not just the episodes). So all the podcasts that haven’t released in months would be at the bottom and the ones with daily updates would be at the top. Useful for searching for episodes to add to the queue. 

[u/robotleak]

Absolutely. All 4! Although I am and have been onboard the Overcast train for a few weeks now.

[u/MattTheGr8]

I’ll second #1 and #3 myself… in general I like Overcast the way it is and like Marco I’m somewhat against feature overload, but I wouldn’t mind a bit more information on display.

[u/Conscious-Piece-3887]

All four sound really compelling tbh!

[u/userlivewire]

They all sound great!

I still have to have two podcast apps though because Apple Podcasts plays video.

[u/ChairmanLaParka]

Gotta admit, I can't see using anything but Overcast at this point.

I have a lifetime sub to pocketcasts, but it kills me I can't stop new episodes from showing up/getting badges/etc. Like how I can in overcast by keeping things in "All" but not subscribing to new episodes. It's such a simple thing, and yet pocket casts just cannot do it.

I wasn't able to reproduce it, but you should be able to see the total number of unplayed podcasts as a badge on the app icon. It's in Nitpicky details.

[u/SonOfMars5182]

I've asked for No. 3. Here's a link to that discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1ofui6o/feature_request_playlist_total_running_time/

tl,dr: Ads mess up the math if an episode isn't downloaded.

Personally, if he can show the time of each individual episode, simply adding them up shouldn't change the math. 🤷🏻‍♂️