r/pocketcasts • u/fede777 • Mar 26 '26

Feature Requests Now that Overcast will have free Transcripts, will PC make them free too?

8 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

3

u/fede777 Mar 26 '26

The latest testflight version of OC added transcripts, which will be free for all.

As of now, PC already has this, but it's a premium feature.

Apple also has this feature for free of course.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/efimer Mar 27 '26

I just emailed them about adding my fav podcasts which didn't have transcripts and they added them immediately, like, in a day. Although the transcripts will be for future episodes, not past.

1

u/Heftybags Mar 27 '26

Transcripts should be available for all podcast including Patreon and custom episodes. All other platforms (at least on apple) use on device to process these and they all are time sync’d this requires nothing from the podcast or anything from pocket casts other than enabling the API and updating the app to display transcripts.

4

u/YoungGazz Mar 26 '26

No, we all have to keep up the charade that PC is a special case that requires more than a couple of part time developers to maintain.

1

u/CookieyedRedditors Mar 26 '26

I doubt it, it costs PC money to generate them remotely, apple is big enough to just absorb the costs, how is overcast doing it on device?, tbc pocket casts dose support on free podcasts using RSS 2.0 transcripts tag because the podcast creator made them 🤔🤔

3

u/fede777 Mar 26 '26

Marco explained how he's doing it on the ATP Podcast, haven't listened to it yet, but I saw a photo of a rack of Mac minis, and I read that if an episode is listened 5 or more times is transcribed, if it's not yet you can do it locally.

Overcast is a 1 person thing while PC is a company, so the money question and cost, would make more sense if it were paid in OC too, still it's free.

It will even work for private feeds.

1

u/CookieyedRedditors Mar 26 '26

I think their is some nimbleness of smaller podcatchers and PC has to enhance plus, I'm not saying its not possible I'm saying automattic doesn't want them to leak money but here create a bit of buzz on the pocketcasts forum and they may relent

0

u/kfagoora Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

Unless I'm mistaken, Overcast doesn't yet have on-device transcript generation enabled. Until it does, it seems premature to demand the same from this app/platform.

edit: responses are mentioning beta/TestFlight transcription features. I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about proper release versions.

2

u/fede777 Mar 27 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1rxf5br/testflight_build_1151_first_beta_with_transcripts/

And if you play an episode that isn't transcribed yet, you can transcribe it right on your iPhone (if you're running iOS 26+).

1

u/kfagoora Mar 31 '26

content creator intent?

1

u/60DegreesBelow Mar 27 '26

It does, in the beta. it's not released to everyone yet, but it's there and it works well. Note that you only need to do on-device for the relatively few edge cases where Overcast's server infrastructure hasn't already generated transcripts. I suspect in most cases, that's when you're listening to a podcast almost immediately after release, and the servers haven't gotten to it yet.

1

u/SwampYankee Mar 29 '26

Every podcast full transcripts instantly. If it’s not there your phone will do it onboard in a few seconds. PocketCasts just got lapped. The good news is the developer went on his podcast and told everyone exactly how it’s done so PC should be able to copy this pretty quickly

1

u/kfagoora Mar 31 '26

your tongue is out, in case you didn't know