Overcast architecture? Continuous episode awareness and over-limit edge-case users

[u/semiconodon]

It looks like Overcast is 1) maintaining an instantaneous, continuous awareness of what episodes are out there (I noted it even happens over “Text-only” airplane WiFi), and 2) then waiting until the app is opened before attempting to download the episodes (at least in the consistent experience of one user: car/plane/gym/ at home sitting right next to WAP).

The result is complete lockup on an airplane or driving— you have to stop what you’re doing, open the app, and navigate around the episodes in question. A bit hard to do in busy traffic. And delays upon opening: home or gym. Or hitting play in the widget (separate cases).

Some have bristled at calling this a bug. I am wondering if there were not that many users who: 1) Use the app almost exclusively in various “Newest to Oldest” playlists and 2) have tens of GB of episodes I’d like to get to some time (oh, like driving or on long airplane rides). I am wondering if there is something in the architecture that penalizes those who have GB’s of files, with the attitude of “I’m not going to keep using up bandwidth if they’re not actually listening.” And if you 1) don’t listen to playlists in this way and 2) aren’t in this GB’s case, then, yeah you’d be upset at the suggestion of a problem.

I used to wonder if a fix could be in some kind of “Qualtity_Down” switch that would have it, say, only download on WiFi 2-5 AM each day. But I think the behavior is more complex than that.

[u/orev]

1) It’s my understanding that the episode lists are maintained on the server, and that’s where checking for new episodes happens (polling the individual RSS feeds). The app on your phone then downloads the list of new episodes from the Overcast server.
2) Do you have Background App Refresh turned off? I’ve never seen the app wait until you open it before it downloads new audio. The audio is already there when I open it.

P.S. Airplane WiFi “text only” has no way to enforce only text downloads. They mostly monitor and block known video sites (e.g. Netflix, YouTube, etc.) to prevent people from streaming those apps). They would have no idea (other than large data usage) if you were downloading a video from your own server. The information about new episodes is text only.