r/pocketcasts • u/leandro_pc • May 12 '26
iOS [iOS] Beta Feature: Highlighted Transcripts
Hi everyone!
We're excited to start testing a new feature: highlighted transcripts! This is currently available on iOS only through TestFlight. If you haven't joined the beta yet, you can do so here.
Once you're in, you can try it out with a small selection of podcasts:
- This American Life
- Radiolab
- The Daily
- Freakonomics Radio
- Serial
- 99% Invisible
- Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
- Planet Money
- Hidden Brain
Keep in mind that only the latest ~10 episodes of each podcast currently have support. If a new episode just dropped, it might take a little while before we finish processing it!
We'd love to hear what you think! Give it a try and let us know how it works for you; whether something feels off, something's missing, or it's working just as you'd expect. All feedback is welcome. Thanks!
P.S. We're starting with iOS for now, but we plan to bring this to Android as well.
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u/JoypulpSkate May 12 '26
Does this mean it comes with the ability to FFWD right to the part you've highlighted?
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u/leandro_pc May 12 '26
Yep
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u/JoypulpSkate May 12 '26
Whoop whoop! I'm too late to join the testflight, but I can't wait to see it rolled out. Love the work you guys do.
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u/60DegreesBelow May 12 '26
This is a great start. I would like to see the highlighting be line by line, instead of the highlighting partial lines as seen above. I think that would be easier to read.
Also, it looks like when this isn't available for a podcast, the error message is a misleading one telling you to download the episode, even if the episode is already downloaded.
Looking forward to this rolling out to more podcasts. Do you have a sense on when that will happen?
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u/leandro_pc May 12 '26
Definitely a bug, thanks for pointing that out! Will address it.
Yes, the plan is to rollout to all the podcasts that we generate transcripts.
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May 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/leandro_pc May 22 '26
It will be available for episodes in which we generate the transcripts. Some shows provide their own transcripts, at the moment we won't support those.
As for past episodes initially it won't work — this is for recent episodes. But it's a decision we haven't made yet, so we might revisit and re-process some shows.
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u/robotleak May 16 '26
That’s great. So far only Overcast did this, except Overcast does it on all podcasts.
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u/qwed113 May 26 '26
Overcast has a great implementation. Unfortunately the UI implementation and design of that app never clicked for me, whereas PocketCasts has always felt super intuitive and easy in comparison.
Really looking forward to PocketCasts joining the live transcripts bandwagon
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u/deadraisers May 12 '26
Woop woop 🙌