Overcast 4+

Really like this app. First off, all podcasts sound good, really good, thank you. I appreciate the custom timer feature - not just set amounts to choose from. The tiny app size is nice, even though phone storage is getting huge. The view that shows which specific section (chapter) of the podcast is playing is really neat. Speed and voice control are good. Mark as played is helpful. Dark mode is nice, and is even a choice for the app icon (with a subscription). The privacy page for each show is nice (seems like some shows still need to make one). If possible, would like volume control on the lock screen (without having to use the control center). A "Pause all downloads" button or the like would be nice. It'd be more convenient for the Unplayed, and All pages of a podcast to stay pinned at the top of the podcast list when scrolling down, so that it'd be easier to get to the unplayed section, and then maybe even get back to the same scroll position on one of those pages after switching to the other. Would like to be able to use the widget to navigate to an episode's chapter, and adjust the sleep timer. Would like to have a convenient way to re-arrange playlists. The unplayed, active, and archive pages are good but, it's be nice to have a page that essentially makes a 'pinned' list combining all selected podcasts whether they're 'active' or not. Interested to see what improvements will be made. The app is worth the subscription.

Update: Overcast just went back up to 5 stars with latest patch update. Clearly Marco has been working hard to fix issues and restore some functionality quickly.

Previous Review: The new update looks good. But... it's really quite the downgrade for those that don't download all their podcasts. Removing the swipe right to download is a huge loss. I don't mind that streaming is gone if it had a quick way to download the podcasts like before. But now things are further buried in menus and take more taps to get to. It's very Apple like, and not in the good ways. It's less efficient where the swiping over was so much better to change playback speed quick when you are doing chores. It's an odd choice for someone that seemed to be in tune with making things quick. The good news is that I have faith in Marco. I imagine some of these pain points will be noisy enough that he'll find a way to mitigate them. And change is always difficult, so some friction might be temporary. It's still a great app and does most of the things it did before. And his blog update already acknowledges that changes are coming and former functionality will be restored. So I'm optimistic, but. I really wish I had waited to update it. I hate that you can't go back to a previous version, but that's an Apple issue. Until we get it back to useful, I'll be using an old iPhone that runs iOS 16 to use overcast more often than not (iOS 17 is required for latest version).