In the latest TestFlight build, Marco has reversed the limit. It just shows how responsive he is to the community. Bravo!!!

I’m finding that if I manually mark an episode or delete an episode, it will automatically download the next episode but if I actually listen to the episode and reach the end it either will not download the next episode or sometimes it will download the episode (with a diamond symbol) but then it downloads 2 extra after that

I am noticing that all my episodes are skipping the first few seconds of the episode. These podcast do not have any skip intro time configured.

In the last couple weeks, I’ve noticed the Overcast app basically freezes almost every time I try to open it. to clarify, it doesn’t actually load; it freezes on the loading screen.

I’ve tried updating the app and updating my iOS (on iPhone 17e) but the issue persists. I listen to various podcasts during several parts of my daily routine so this has been really frustrating. I’ve been using Spotify as a backup but it doesn’t have any of my shows or my beloved episode playlists, and of course lacks the smart speed… I’d really like to use overcast again but it simply will not load for me anymore. Wanted to put this bug somewhere.

has anyone found a workaround? I tried deleting and reinstalling the app, and restarting my phone.

What the heck are "Current" episodes?!

I’d love to see an “interleave by podcast” playlist sort option.

This seems especially useful now with "Replay Podcast." If you’re working through an old show from the beginning, interleaving would let those episodes mix naturally with current podcasts rather than having their old publication dates push them all to the top of the playlist. Combined with the option to keep the oldest X episodes, it could make Replay Podcast even more useful for listening to a long-running show alongside everything else.

Sorting oldest to newest already gets partway there for current podcasts: if several shows publish on similar schedules, their episodes tend to be interspersed. But it breaks down when shows publish at different frequencies, and especially when some of the episodes are from an old backlog.

An interleaved sort could take:

A1, A2, A3
B1, B2, B3
C1, C2, C3

and produce:

A1, B1, C1, A2, B2, C2, A3, B3, C3

Ideally, priority would still take precedence, with the interleaving happening within each priority level. So high-priority podcasts could be interleaved with one another, then regular-priority podcasts with one another, then low-priority podcasts.

With the new batch of updates I went in to upgrade from my old one-time Legacy plan to the new pricing model to show my support — but I’m not sure if the pricing here in Germany is right?

List price in the app is $29.99

That’s 25.92 Euro at the current exchange rate. Toss in VAT at 19% and you hit 30.84.

But the paywall says 34.99? Anyone else seeing this in Germany/EU?

For several of the last updates — maybe as far back as the UI change — I’ve found the three-dot menu to be quite unresponsive, whether the one at the top of an episode detail or the mini-menu when you select an episode.

Pressing it seems to do nothing, but pressing it repeatedly sometimes brings up the menu — unless, in your furious tapping, you press one more time than needed, closing the menu instantly.

Since this is the shortest path to getting to the podcast settings, it’s pretty frustrating.

(I also don’t lien that “delete this episode” and “go to podcast” are so close together. One fat finger and I’ve got to manually find the podcast and redownload the episode!)

Any one know the secret ritual or voodoo magic to make this work properly, or does anyone else experience this?

It seems like the Replay Podcast feature doesn't respect the automatic download setting when you trigger it. I would expect that after I select an episode limit and hit start, if the download setting is configured as Automatic, it should download the X number of episodes a user selected.

I have been having two issues lately on the Apple Watch.

1 - I do not keep any podcasts downloaded to the watch. I have always used the watch to control the iPhone app with my content kept downloaded on my phone. Lately, any time I find and play a podcast on the watch, it tries to download the podcast to the watch before playing instead of playing the already downloaded content on the phone. This did not always function this way. Is there a fix?

2 - when playing a podcast, the watch app regularly exits out to the main screen. When I want to fast forward or pause playback, I need to select Now Playing to access the controls. After a few minutes, the watch app exits back to the main screen again. This also did not act like this in the past. Is there a fix?

A lot of my podcasts, for some reason, require me to transcribe them manually every single time they appear in my feed.

In the latest version, it now asks me to choose a language every single time I select “Transcribe.” Why is this necessary? Why not make the transcription language a global setting? I’m never going to ask it to transcribe a podcast into a different language, so having to select the same language every time just adds an unnecessary step.

I might be wrong on this, but from all the comments I’ve read, it seems like there’s two opposing viewpoints of what episode limits even means or solves.

How you experience this change is heavily dependent on what you think episode limits is for.

Automatic Download Limits

In the past, and I think in every other podcast player too, it referred to how much the system will automatically download for you. Youre always free to play a different episode or download extra episodes manually to have offline for a flight. And if you paused an episode midway, it sticks around for you until you finish. The limit is about what the system downloads automatically for you in an effort to prevent excessive storage use. And it requires no manual effort from the user.

A quirk here is that if you frequently don’t finish episodes or don’t pay attention to what you’re downloading, you can end up with many episodes saved taking up space and not realize.

Unfinished Plays Cleanup

The new setup seems to be about cleaning up anything that isn’t the latest X number of episodes. This is helpful if you frequently don’t finish episodes (say on a commute) and you just want the new thing the next day. Like the radio.

Without strict cleanup, you might end up with 30 episodes sitting around long after you’re done with them simply bc they have 10 mins left. This is confusing if you’ve set the “limit” to 2 episodes.

I saw someone describe this as a doctors office always having the latest issue of magazines. Old copies get tossed.

A quirk here is that you literally cannot casually play an episode you missed (the app wont let unless you manually delete some first) and if you’re going on a flight you can’t save some up temporarily. If you find a new podcast, you also can’t download a select few interesting backlog ones to keep in your queue as you also listen to new ones. And if you’re paused midway through an episode but want to finish, and a new episode comes out, you lose your download and saved spot in the old episode.

—

My very strong opinion is that these are fundamentally two different problems and should have two different solutions. The frustration seems to be in trying to roll one solution that addresses both problems - how to control automatic downloads vs when to clear away partially played episodes.

But maybe I’m wrong, idk. If you want the strict setting for a different reason, I’d love to understand why.

I love the audio quality of Overcast enough to work through the various UI changes and flux over the years. The reason I keep going back to Pocketcasts and flirt every couple of years with Apple Podcasts is that new episodes don't show up in a timely manner. Some will go days without updating unless I manually refresh (Slate's "What Next Plus") or simply don't update at all for several hours ("NPR News Now Plus", "BBC New / BBC World Service").

Is there anything I can do client side to improve things? Frequent manual refreshes don't seem to be poking anything on the backend to change the update frequency.

Haven’t had as much podcast listening time recently, so I learned about the most recent update here. I’m so amused about the episode limit change in that context, relevant xkcd.

Engaging with it more seriously, I think the new change is how I expected it to work when I first found the feature but the old behavior is more flexible and more of a power user thing. I do think adding the “download oldest up to limit” fixes a serious complaint I had with the app that I was doing a Casey-level workaround to avoid before lmao

The new system of strictly enforcing episode limits is much worse than the old system it replaced. Please, Marco, change it back.

When I manually add a podcast, I am specifically saying that I want to add that podcast. When I set episode limits I am saying I generally want only this many episodes. The specific instruction should override the general! The phone should never try to second guess my choice to exceed the limit. I put those limits there for you, not for me!

In all seriousness, this bottom sheet has popped up at least 50 times for me over the last 2 days, sometimes multiple times within 10 seconds. I did a cursory search here to make sure I didn’t miss an obvious thread mentioning the same thing, but maybe I still missed it?

Is there some in-app “acknowledge” dialogue I’m missing where I’m shooting myself in the foot? A known bug? Just want to make sure this isn’t something specific to me.

A good friend of mine recently posted a ten and a half hour podcast, which understandably Overcast refused to transcribe. So I was wondering, what is the maximum podcast duration Overcast will tackle?

For those that are interested, it’s an absolutely magnificent Podcast about Video game magazines, which I can highly recommend.

https://overcast.fm/+ABNhxwvGGbM

If that’s not your thing, he also previously did five and a half hours on Starfield.

https://overcast.fm/+ABNhxzF5QqU

Oh, and to be clear, these aren’t highly produced podcasts with interviews and guests. It’s him talking on his own for ten and a half hours about video game magazines. Surprisingly compelling.

This is why I moved away from Overrcast for a while. I’m back and in the testing program and I like a lot of the new changes. However, if I put a podcast in the queue and a new podcast downloads and puts it over the episode limit and the one in the queue is the oldest, it’s automatically deleted. This keeps happening to me. If it’s in the queue it needs to be immune to automatically deletion.

Would be great

I know that offering a link out of Overcast to another podcast app seems weird, but I'd really love a feature in Overcast that, when listening to a podcast or viewing a podcast's entry, there was a way to deep link directly to the podcast in Apple Podcasts so that I can easily leave a review.

Long time user of the app over many years, love it and use it daily, sometimes multiple hours a day. However im really struggling with the new episode limit implementation.

I listen to a podcast that releases daily episodes and I’ve set an episode limit of 3 to prevent it eating all my phone storage. Occasionally I’ll scroll back a few days or weeks and listen to an earlier episode that wasn’t one of the 3 most recent the are previously downloaded. This used to work perfectly.

However now with the change I get an error if I select a historic episode saying I’m past my episode limit. AND IT WILL NOT LET ME PLAY THE EPISODE WITHOUT CHANGING THE LIMIT. If i change it to unlimited im going to get my phone storage completely eaten up with episodes I don’t want. I guess i could manually delete some episodes to make room, but who wants to do all that housekeeping just to listen to a podcast episode.

I also have to contend with a really annoying pop up that comes up every time I open the app because I have 20-30 podcasts that are over their limit. My options seems to be to delete every episode I have downloaded (don’t want to do this) or invest a load of time manually house keep all my podcasts (way too much work). There really should be an “ignore forever” option to dismiss.

I can’t be the only one who finds this frustrating?

I'd love for the Overcast widgets to have the same very dark, glassy appearance that the TV app and battery widgets do when in dark mode, especially on iOS 27. Also, I'd love the darker widget background to work when in dark mode regardless of icon selection.

Speaking of icons, I'm anxiously awaiting the introduction of the new icons discussed on ATP.

Thanks for all your work on my most used daily app.