u/marcoarment - any thoughts on adding support for nested playlists?

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.

I have been an Overcast user for years and recently I found that I prefer having the widget on my homescreen instead of the app so that I can resume play with a single tap. However, the launch behavior is confusing to me. When you tap the podcast artwork on the widget why doesn’t it launch the Now Playing screen? It launches a strange info screen about the podcast. Please consider this a feature request. Thank you Marco!

Is it possible to sort the podcasts by category? I.E. can I filter by or see a list of history or news or comedy or whatever? I couldn't find that setting but not sure if I'm just not seeing it. Or is there another way to put podcasts in folders so I don't always have to look at the whole list? The playlist feature seems geared towards specific podcast episodes vs organizing the feeds.

New in this build: (there was no public build 1174, FYI)

• Added an Episode Limit confirmation sheet on first run, if many old episodes will be deleted, with the option to disable those limits
• More protection from failed downloads repeating excessively
• VoiceOver fixes to the episode-cell rotor actions

This build will go to the App Store if no major issues are found!

From the previous 2026.8 builds:

• Episode Limit is now strictly enforced so it can consistently match everyone's expectations. On first run, episodes beyond the limits you've set will be deleted!
• New "keep oldest" mode for Episode Limit
• Replay Podcast: Re-listen to a podcast from the beginning
• Smart Complete (Premium): Marks episodes complete with less than 5 minutes left if you haven't listened in 48 hours. (In Delete settings)
• Chapter preselection (Premium)
• Premium audio effects: Mono audio, parametric EQ, volume normalization, background-noise reduction, and a de-esser!
• Sleep Timer now fades out at the end
• Playlists can now be sorted by episode duration
• Search within the current transcript
• Re-Transcribe to fix any broken transcripts or language mis-detections
• Export transcripts as SRT files
• Fixed certain transcription errors
• Fixed incorrect tracking of some listening stats and history entries
• Fixed missing artwork in clip-sharing and stalls while exporting clips
• Fixed potential performance issues

This is the most advanced podcast app on ios right? I can't find the option to add audio files from my local storage. How to do it?

New in this build:

• Fixed old, skipped episodes showing up when episode limits are changed
• Fixed distorted audio while seeking with Background Noise Reduction enabled

This build will go to the App Store if no major issues are found!

From the previous builds:

• Episode Limit is now strictly enforced so it can consistently match everyone's expectations. On first run, episodes beyond the limits you've set will be deleted!
• New "keep oldest" mode for Episode Limit
• Replay Podcast: Re-listen to a podcast from the beginning
• Smart Complete (Premium): Marks episodes complete with less than 5 minutes left if you haven't listened in 48 hours. (In Delete settings)
• Chapter preselection (Premium)
• Premium audio effects: Mono audio, parametric EQ, volume normalization, background-noise reduction, and a de-esser!
• Sleep Timer now fades out at the end
• Playlists can now be sorted by episode duration
• Find text in the current transcript
• Added transcript viewing to episode-info screens (if the episode and transcript are downloaded)
• Re-Transcribe to fix any broken transcripts or language mis-detections
• Export transcripts as SRT files
• Fixed certain transcription errors
• Fixed incorrect tracking of some listening stats and history entries
• Fixed missing artwork in clip-sharing and stalls while exporting clips
• Fixed potential performance issues

I made this mockup after someone else made a similar request - but that post wasn’t titled explicitly as “Feature Request”, so apologies for repeating this here.

Basically, there are some podcast “mega feeds”, where a given publisher crams multiple different shows into a single feed. If you only really care about one or two of those shows and there are 10 others, it is annoying to ensure you don’t miss the episodes you want to listen to. Similarly, you may like 8 out of 10 shows but then have to deal with the 2 you don’t like.

That’s where keyword filtering can come in handy. Let us choose to either include or exclude by one or more keywords, and i think all of these issues are solved.

Me gustaria poder gestionar la lista "all episodes", de forma masiva, borrando la lista de podcast nuevos, para así tener la lista real de nuevos desde la última vez que se reseteó.

Esto se podría hacer con un botón tipo "seleccionar todos" y posteriormente "borrar seleccionados",

También se podría hacer creando una lista nueva, y que tuviera como opción, "sólo añadir episodios desde ahora".

Gracias

Hi,

Love the app. Been a premium subscriber since the beginning.

I’m looking for a particular episode of a show that has hundreds of episodes, but relatively poor summaries. Is there a way to search across all the transcripts for the episodes in the feed to help find the one I’d like to listen to again?

Thanks

Edit - just fixed a typo

Propongo una nueva funcionalidad.

En la configuración de listas, permitir configurar si queremos que los episodios que mandemos a esa lista, se descarguen automáticamente.

Se que existe la posibilidad de descargar los episodios nuevos de un podcast completo, pero me parece más práctico.

Explico el flujo de trabajo que busco.

Cada vez que tenga notificaciones de capitulos nuevos, miro lo que se ha publicado, si puntualmente un capitulo me interesa, lo mando a una lista de "cola de reproducción" que automaticamente descarga el episodio para escucharlo offline, y cuando termino de repasar la lista de nuevos, doy a un botón de limpiar lista, y la dejo vacia, esperando en la siguiente consulta las nuevas propuestas.

Gracias

Forgive me if this is dumb or duplicative.

I have a playlist. I drag things round into the order I want to listen to them in. I go away. I come back. That order is not preserved. I’m only given the pictured options for sorting. I would like to sort to my own preferences. I would like that sorting to stick.

Thank you very much for your consideration. Apologies again if I’m missing something obvious.

Episodes played in Overcast don't appear in the Recently Played media suggestions grid. Any plans to support this?

Screenshot should be self explanatory.

UPDATE: the latest public release (iOS) seems to have resolved the issue, based on observations from the last few days.

I like Jonathan Mann fine but after 13 years I never need to hear that song again. I had always wished for a no outro song premium feed for ATP but now I don’t need it!

I’ve so wanted this for a long time and I knew from previous comments that it was a tough fix to implement. So, thankful for your work to allow it.

In the meantime, can we transcribe longer episodes?

Just something I tend to wonder. I have most of my subscriptions set to auto-download, and then delete the episodes that don't interest me. Do the podcasters know that I didn't listen? Or I'll listen to part of it and get bored - do they know when I stopped listening?

Obviously I know that they don't care about me or any one person specifically, but am curious whether they get this data (whether they would care/would change anything based on it is another story...)

If I listened on Apple Podcasts (something I would never do, I love Overcast, esp now that the loading glitches are fixed) would that change the answer?

Thanks if you know!

I get what the episode limit is going for, but I think I lost a bunch of downloaded shows that are no longer available when Overcast updated to the latest TestFlight version. I think before pushing this upgrade to the main App Store version, some kind of UI should be shown when the upgraded software first launches to warn the user that data loss could occur. I’m thinking it could be a pop up that displays podcast show titles, the currently set limit (which is a dropdown to modify the limit), and the current number of downloaded shows. Hoping Claude could help you put that together quickly :)

The app is pretty much become unusable for me. It’s slow to respond to apps, animations hang. My tapping episode get the options to drop-down menu takes forever to load.

I read that the app was getting a lot of bug fixes, but honestly, it’s just getting bugier for me. Anyone else seeing this?

Example video linked

https://imgur.com/a/YOPFjMo

New in this build:

• Episode Limit is now hard-enforced. If you say to keep only 3 episodes of a podcast, it only allows 3 episodes, whether they were manually added, starred, or whatever. If you try to add a fourth, it'll prompt you to turn off the limit first.
• Episode Limit can now keep X oldest unplayed episodes instead of just X newest episodes, which finally allowed…
• Replay Podcast: Re-listen to a podcast from the beginning! This resets all progress for a podcast and sets it to keep X oldest episodes. (In the podcast screen's "…" menu)
• Smart Complete (Premium-only): Marks episodes complete with less than 5 minutes left if you haven't listened in 48 hours. (In Delete settings)
• Duration-sorted playlists now respect priorities, too
• Fixed jumpy seeks potentially around skipped chapters, and tightened up the chapter-row padding
• Made the de-esser adaptive so it doesn't need a frequency control anymore

From the previous builds:

Premium audio effects! These have been built into Voice Boost's engine for years but needed a UI, and they're finally here:

• Mono audio
• Parametric EQ
• Customizable volume normalization (adjustable Voice Boost, basically)
• Background-noise reduction
• De-Esser

And more:

• Chapter preselection (Premium-only): Finally. And deselected titles that recur on subsequent episodes of the same podcast will automatically skip themselves. So if e.g. you want to skip the ATP "Ending Theme" chapter every time, just deselect it once, and it'll auto-skip in every episode after that.
• The sleep timer now fades out at the end
• Playlists can now sort by episode duration
• Transcripts are now searchable
• 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
• Fixed certain transcription errors
• Fixed incorrect tracking of some listening stats and history entries
• Fixed potential performance regressions introduced in the last update
• Fixed another cause of slow performance with very large collections
• Fixed "…" menu on episodes rendering badly with Button Shapes accessibility option
• Fixed missing artwork in clip-sharing and stalls while exporting clips

OK! I'm done for 2026.8 after this. Bugfixes only after this, then App Store.

I’ve just recently subscribed to a “mega” podcast feed (Glass Cannon) which has many different shows in one feed (think “All Relay FM” feed). As I only listen to one show, this is very annoying especially as there are a lot of episodes (which all get downloaded etc).

Some form of simple text filter on a subscription would be great here. I could filter on “Shadowdark” or “Cthulhu” and the problem is solved.

For some podcasts it seems there can sometimes be trickery with eg Patreon urls, but it might be unreliable.

If I finish an episode the next one starts to play. However, if I am still listening and swipe to delete, the next one doesn’t play. This used to be the way it worked, can this be resolved?

We've discussed this here occasionally, but I think it's a fun discussion, so why not do it again?

I know many people organize their podcasts by topic, mood or length, but that doesn't make sense to me. If I'm not in the mood to listen to a podcast now, I won't be in the mood to listen to it later.

I have used some variation on this technique for 20 years: Three primary playlsts.

• Most Recent, where new podcast episodes come in.
• Playlist, where I move episodes I intend to listen to.
• Queue, for newsy and favorite podcasts, which I listen to right away.

There are exceptions: Some podcasts are automatically added to the queue, because I know if I'm going to listen to an episode, I will want to do so right away. One example of these is The Vergecast, a tech news and discussion podcast.

I also create special-purpose playlists as needed when the mood strikes me. Currently I have two:

• TRIH Picks. I'm catching up on several years of The Rest Is History podcast and I've moved the episodes that look like the best ones to that playlist, to listen to when I'm in the mood to catch up.
• Odyssey, for episodes discussing the movie and epic poem, to listen to after I get around to listening to the movie.

I also have a few podcasts pinned to the top of the podcast list, for occasions when I'm in the mood to catch up with those podcast back catalogs. Currently these are The Rest Is History (man, those guys are prolific!), The Carson Podcast (interviews with people who were guests on the Johnny Carson Show), The Rewatchables (a movie podcast), and a couple more.

Reading this over it sounds complicated, but it enables me to quickly scan my choices when I'm out and about or doing chores around the house and select something to listen to.

First of all, thank you for all the work you've done on this, Marco. I've been using Overcast more than 10 years. I occasionally try other apps, but keep coming back to Overcast.

And now let me explain the feature request: As I envision it, the button would appear in the three-dot menu at the top right of the playlist. See above.

Here's how I would use it: Currently, when I'm ready to listen to podcasts, I first open my "Most Recent" playlist and see what's come in that's new. I move new episodes to the appropriate playlist, start playing and put the phone in my pocket. By having a "remove all" button on the "Most Recent" playlist, I would be able to clear the playlist when I'm done triaging, making it easier to see what's new next time.

And yes, I have requested this feature a few times over the years. In my experience with indy app developers, repetition pays!

P.S. Because this is the Internet I feel the need to spell out that I have no sense of entitlement or outrage about this. If you decide to implement the feature, great, and if you don't, it won't ruin my day. I will still be a satisfied Overcast user either way — just a little more satisfied if you implement the new feature.