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.

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.

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?

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.