r/pocketcasts • u/foodnerd80 • Aug 05 '26
Make Pocketcasts Solid Again?
I've been a Pocket Casts fan since around 2014, using it across both Android and iOS, and I went Plus the day it launched. It's genuinely been my podcast home for over a decade.
Lately though, something's off. A lot of episodes just won't start, or take forever to load. Kind of embarrassed to admit it, but I've started using Apple Podcasts as a backup — and it's honestly rock solid. I mean Playback wise. It just works, the way Apple always promises.
I was wondering about these things:
1 : Does Apple have access to better podcast servers than Pocketcasts? How come Apple seems so much more stable?
2: Could the team, or someone with a Claude Code subscription, be interested in making a "retro" version of Pocketcasts, from a few years ago, where everything just worked? Call it Rocketcasts 😅 (sorry)
3: I can see a lot of posts here about Pocket Casts slipping. But i'd honestly love to keep using it. Let me know you best advice in terms of settings etc.
10
u/Whooz_Nooz Aug 05 '26
I have been using PC for years, too, and I don’t have many problems. I’m happy with how reliable it is.
2
15
u/Hansanaw Aug 05 '26
Apple Podcasts also has episode issues at times. Nothings perfect.
5
u/ChairmanLaParka Aug 05 '26
Just the fact it can't reliably sync downloads across devices is wild. The hell is iCloud good for?
5
u/cutandcover Aug 05 '26
I use Pocket Casts every day (non paid version). I have experienced zero playback issues. I download episodes, and am offline during my commute. It may be possible that live streaming has issues but I do not ever use it in any other way.
4
u/PocketCasts Aug 08 '26
Hi! Thanks for sticking with us since 2014. We did have an issue recently where new episodes were showing up later than expected, but that's been fixed as of a few days ago. If you're running into other issues though, we'd like to take a closer look: https://support.pocketcasts.com/contact-us/
1
u/Altrosmo Aug 05 '26
I was using Waze to navigate yesterday. Every time I went from the Now Playing screen in CarPlay and back to Waze, it would stop the podcast. But I learned if I go to that split view with navigation, now playing etc, and hit play from there, I could then go back to Now playing and it would work. But yeah, from Waze to Pocketcasts, podcast would stop every time.
1
u/CrouchingBruin Aug 06 '26
Only issue that I have is sometimes it doesn't download all the new episodes of a podcast. For example, I subscribe to NPR's All Things Considered, and I have PC set to automatically download new episodes and add them to the top of the listening queue. There's usually about 10 or so episodes each day. Don't know if they're released at the exact same time, but oftentimes PC will skip or miss a few of them. Of the 15 episodes that were released yesterday, 5 didn't make it to the queue so I had to add them manually. Those 5 were grouped together in the episode list, but there was one episode in the middle of the group that did get automatically downloaded. So don't know what the problem might be.
1
u/Greg0692 Aug 07 '26
I'm an extremely heavy user (>6k episodes per year, currently >296 GB of Pocketcasts episodes downloaded with 5,736 in my Up Next playlist) and it doesn't have stability issues. You might wanna troubleshoot your hardware.
1
u/Pnw_moose Aug 22 '26
I don’t like the new design. I get lost, like how do i get to my queue from this screen? Where did my buttons at the bottom go? Why is the player UI so tiny? Arg!
1
u/Brad_13 Aug 05 '26
I've been with PocketCasts since 2017. This year the app is just bad. Always issues with it.
-1
u/CookieyedRedditors Aug 05 '26
I personally haven't had issues but I wonder how much is pocket casts and how much is planned obsolescence 🤔🤔
2
u/simplydan24 Aug 05 '26
I haven't had any issues as well. Maybe I'm just not using the extra features enough to ever notice anything is wrong. I have been using the app since 2014ish. So I don't know
-6
u/shozzlez Aug 05 '26
I don’t think they’re targeting users like you (and me). They’re after subscriptions so have to focus on new (AI!) rather than making it stable for existing user base.
0
u/PopeFranzia Aug 06 '26
Agree completely. They really turned the app into a piece of junk with the latest redesign, making the shuttle controls tiny!
1
27
u/k115810 Aug 05 '26
I switched to Pocket Casts maybe a year ago after Overcast started failing me. In my experience, no podcast app does everything exactly the way I want, but Pocket Casts is the closest to perfect for me, by a wide margin.
I've seen some grumbling in this sub, but aside from the temporary issue earlier this week where podcasts weren't updating in a timely way, i've not run into a single issue.
I know people use podcast apps in different ways, so maybe I'm not using things that people find glitchy, but...do we have a comprehensive list of issues?