Name: Overcast
Rating: 4.70531 (36812 reviews)

User Reviews for Overcast

4.71 out of 5

36.8K Ratings

1 year ago, 101Hundred

Many good features

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.

3 days ago, 8 bit snow

Update!

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).

7 months ago, SputNik2424

Fantastic. No regrets!

I made the switch to Overcast over a year ago after Apple overhauled their native Podcasts app in a way that I absolutely hated. I have never looked back. Overcast is superior in every regard. There are generous global settings you can fine tune, and you can alter any individual podcasts/series to differ from your global defaults. There are numerous ways to sort both shows and episodes. You can pin favorite shows to the top of the main list for quick access. A simple but clear little blue dot lets you know if a show has new/unplayed content. You don’t have to use playlists to listen to consecutive series episodes (either from oldest-to-newest or newest-to-oldest), but if you like making playlists Overcast has got you covered. There’s a basic main queue available as well as the ability to make endless custom playlists. You can also mark specific episodes with a star and then view all starred together in a single list. I use the star to keep track of episodes that are particularly hilarious, moving, shocking, and/or shareworthy. The bottom line from a prolific listener who consumes 3-10 hours of spoken audio daily: I’ve been using Overcast for well over a year now and couldn’t be happier with the experience. If you’re on the fence just stop the nonsense and get down from there before you fall and break something. There’s a better way to podcast, and this is it.

6 months ago, swendolla

Much better than Apple Podcasts

I used Apple’s podcast app religiously through several updates and switched to Overcast a few years ago. Apple finally got to the point where I could barely find the pods I was subscribed to - due to the entire app being geared around recommendations of what they are promoting. No thanks. I’m sure it’s gotten worse but I haven’t looked back. Overcast is the app you want in order to curate your own selections and design your own playlists by category or whatever you choose. Very customizable and the whole thing is geared around your subscriptions. The app has all the nice features for navigating, organizing playlists, searching, customizing your download preferences, playback speeds, sleep timers. There’s nothing else I would need other than possibly the ability to customize notifications per individual podcast. Took me awhile to finally start using the smart playlists feature but once I did - it was a game changer. Highly recommend setting up playlist categories using multiple smart playlists and combined with your episode retention settings - you no longer have to spend any time setting up a queue again. You can still do it for custom listening sessions or one-offs, but if you have a lot of subs or like to bounce around based on your mood, it’s an excellent feature.

3 years ago, SdKuAb

Nice alternative to Apple’s.

I’ve been well pleased so far. It isn’t always the most intuitive, but I’ve eventually figured out how to achieve most everything I’ve wanted to. The benefits of adding a show via RSS have become immediately clear. Being a subscriber to a show and getting early access episodes and bonus material right in my podcast manager makes it so easy to stay up with all my shows. The clip function has made it so much more effective to get friends interested in shows than years of recommending downloads ever did. The one thing that sticks out at me the most: sometimes I want to keep an episode for a while so I can go back and reference it later, however, although the episodes are marked as “played” the show doesn’t drop down to the “Played Podcasts” section. That doesn’t seem to happen until the episodes are deleted out of the library. This makes it difficult to know when a new episode is available; this show doesn’t release episodes according to a schedule, I have to randomly check to see if there’s anything new in the episode list. It feels nitpicky but it’s important to me. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I listen while I’m working. The less amount of time I have to spend poking around in menus, the better.

4 years ago, Brooke_92

Continuous Play? - UPDATED

EDIT - still couldn’t get Apple Podcast to work so I stuck with this awhile. I found out where continuous play is, and you have to add episodes to allow them to play or something? Still believe the app is not intuitive, and could really benefit from a touch-screen walkthrough when first installed and opened. It’s kind of ridiculous that this doesn’t already exist, given the amount of features this app seems to have. Robust application with some good features, but those features are lost to users without some kind of explainer. Original: I’m playing catch-up on a podcast I just started listening to that has been around for two years, so there is a lot of content to get through. I used to listen to it on Apple Podcasts, but for whatever reason that app has stopped working on my phone, and after looking at reviews for Overwatch I thought I’d give this a try. If Continuous Play exists, it’s not intuitive, nor does the app seem to have a feature where it will automatically pick up where the listener left off in a show. As soon as I downloaded the app I went to Settings and toggled ‘Continuous Play’ on, but it isn’t doing anything. I’ve tried playing the podcast from the episodes pages, creating playlists (the Smart Playlist is a joke), nothing works. The app just stops after it plays whatever episode your selected. Will be troubleshooting the issues with Apple Podcast and deleting this app immediately.

2 years ago, jlcollins310

The Best Podcast Player

Edit: The best just got better. Finally added a playlist for favorited/starred episodes. Adding more personalization choices was a bonus. I have had Overcast for a while and think it is the best podcast player on the market. The options available for creating custom playlists are what puts Overcast at the top of the list. The ability to include or exclude podcasts or just episodes of a podcast and being able to set priority podcasts are great options I didn’t know I needed. I definitely recommend Overcast to friends and family every chance I get. Once in a while I will try other podcasts apps but quickly come right back to Overcast. Other podcast players either don’t have the same features as Overcast or don’t do them as as well. Overcast’s smart speed and speed boost seem to work much better than the same features on other podcast apps. The only complaint I have is the handling of favorited episodes. When you tap the star button on an episode it will mark it but that is it. You still have to search through the entire catalog of a podcast to find that episode. I would like to see a category or playlist that favorited episodes automatically goes to.

6 months ago, Marathon1234

Love it. Happy to pay for subscription.

A friend recommended Outcast and I switched a couple of months ago. It is so much better than the Apple app. I listen to podcasts for about 90 minutes a day on average. The speed up and optimizing features are great. I have no idea who created Outcast, but I know It takes a lot of work to make a highly functional app with an elegant user interface and keep it updated. Implicit in many of the recent reviews is the belief that it should just be free forever - no cost and no ads. That's delusional. Good user reviews and feelings of accomplishment don't pay the bills. If my clients told me they liked my work but didn't want to pay for it, I'd find other clients. So I'm actually glad there is now an option to subscribe so I can support something I enjoy using. $9.95 for a whole year is very reasonable. That's about what I paid for lunch today. Why? Because there's no such thing as a free lunch. On a related note, the banner ads were a little annoying like all ads, but they're so much less intrusive than many print media sites where the content is constantly playing a game of hide and seek. Bottom line: I'm a fan and please keep up the good work.

6 years ago, YKeeg

So close to perfect!

I love this app. It’s sleek; I appreciate the typeface used on the interface. It looks modern and is a welcome change from the same old font Apple uses for everything. Organization is clean and relatively intuitive once you get used to it. Definitely a WORTHY replacement for the stock Podcasts app, which I used for years before I found this gem. My only problems with Overcast pertain to the Apple Watch app. There seems to be more of a delay when hitting pause or start, and sometimes the pause/start button doesn’t work at all, which is horrible when you need to have a conversation with someone, or you’re at a drive-thru, or when you need the sound to stop immediately for whatever reason. That button needs to work reliably. Second, it would be REALLY COOL if the Digital Crown could be used as a volume control, like in Apple’s “Now Playing” app. It’s really convenient, and would be the next best thing to a reliable pause control. All that said, Overcast is vastly superior to the stock Podcasts app, and can still be controlled from Now Playing, provided the Overcast app is deleted from the Watch. One thing the Overcast Watch app has going for it is it’s MUCH prettier than Now Playing. It can certainly use some improvement, and I’m confident that will happen, because this is a GREAT app!

3 years ago, creative_fartist

One Of A Kind?

This is the first and only podcast app I've seen with compression. At least, that's my interpretation of what "Voice Boost" is doing. My mind is blown by how few entities are even attempting to address this elephant in the room. Some of the best and top podcasters fail to produce listenable audio. It is extremely simple. You need to cut your lows and brick your waveform. To do that right you start with a hot preamp (with low cut enabled) into a limiter or compressor so that you always peak at a consistent level, whether you talk, yell, or whisper into the mic (looking at you, Bobby Lee). If I remember correctly, -0.1 db is the highest you can go without causing it to clip when converting to mp3. That's where you set your overall limiting level when exporting the final master. If you didn't do the first part right, that's how you fix your final product. Just boost your levels into a limiter until the dynamic range is gone, exactly what the audiophiles hate. Ten+ years in, much of the podcast world is still figuring out the basics, but I continue to love you more than a friend. This app, iPhone's built-in dynamic range compression, and the analog compressor on my TV signal chain help keep this relationship strong.

3 years ago, TDisch08

I’ve never looked back

I was very early in getting into podcasts. Actually used Stitcher before iPhone added their default app. Don’t even know how many years I’ve used Overcast now rather than the standard iPhone podcasts app but just about everything is just a little better here. Also, so many little things that don’t exist on the standard iOS app (as far as I know). Won’t list them all here but by far my favorite feature that comes to mind is the customization you can put in for number of old episodes to hold on to from each individual podcast to keep your feed clean and not eat up too much storage on shows you don’t get to as often and probably won’t anyway! Can’t tell you how excited I was when they added offline syncing ability for podcasts to the Apple Watch app so I could listen on runs without my phone. Also, I was so pleasantly surprised to see how quickly they fixed some of the early bugs with this feature that were obnoxious. Keep up the great work Overcast I recommend your product to everyone when it comes up and even tell them how easy it is to transfer over from another app.

6 years ago, djkenickie

Pretty great!

What I love about this app is how customizable and user friendly it is. You can pick different color schemes for the apps, get super particular about what order to display shows and episodes in your feed, create playlists (the main reason I got this app and deleted the regular “Podcasts” Apple app), etc. There are so many options without it becoming overwhelming so kudos to the creators! My one gripe is that I wish the “Add Podcasts” section of the app would be updated more frequently. It seems like the suggested podcasts in the “most recommended” category or “comedy” category, or any of the other categories hardly ever change. It’s always the same list of podcasts with one or two new ones thrown in. This makes it difficult for me to find more podcasts and ultimately spend more time on the app. It would also be great to get suggestions for other podcasts that are similar to what I already listen to (ex: “if you liked x podcast, you might also like y podcast”). This app does not make easy to discover new podcasts/podcasts that are similar to the ones I already enjoy, and that’s the only way in which the Apple “podcasts” app is superior to this one.

3 days ago, Kelly_M_

Baffling

I have been a long time Overcast user - Smart Speed has saved me 1969 hours beyond speed adjustments, for what it’s worth - but this may be the final straw for me. I adjusted to the last major update after several months but I never felt like it got back to being as good as it was before the last major revision. At that point I stopped subscribing, but I kept using it since it was still the best podcast app, even if it was worse than it was before and I had to fundamentally change how I used the app. This update I’m actively looking at new podcast apps. It’s not just little things at this point - my queue doesn’t drop or delete episodes after they’ve finished or when I’ve clicked the checkmark to mark listened, and it looks like the “unplayed” view is just gone - or maybe it’s buried under six levels of menus and I haven’t found it yet, but in any case it’s lost all ability to tell what shows have a new episode. I can’t easily add episodes into my queues or rearrange them, I’m not sure why, and “play next” seems to be totally broken. Previously played episodes get downloaded and played from the start with no explanation. I simply don’t understand how this is any way an improvement for anyone. I hope against hope the clumsy UX changes will be fixed, but things are trending in the wrong direction, so you might just want to look at alternatives.

4 years ago, SivartVanHoo

Honestly, reviewing because it said in settings they would never interrupt to ask for a review

This app is the best podcast app I have used. Way better than the stock iOS podcast app and is incredibly thoughtful in its details. When you pause, it skips back a second or two so your brain can pick up where the conversation was when it resumes, and using the skip ahead buttons will adjust to land between words. It will speed up or cut out intros, and while digging through the settings I couldn’t help but notice the option in there that also informed me they wouldn’t ask for a review with a pop-up (like every other app all the time!) so it inspired me to make this review. I also noticed that with a premium subscription you can upload your own files which is perfect for listening to old radio shows I have archived but playback of a 4 hour show is nearly impossible without an app designed to handle long format talk based files, and this is going to be perfect. I didn’t realize it was an option and thought premium just took away ads. That alone isn’t worth paying for to me, but now that I saw this they are going to have a new customer.

2 years ago, K.Jo2055

Finally A Platform That Let’s Me Organize

I’m so glad I found the Overcast podcast platform! I’ve tried a couple others but they never did exactly what I wanted. I listen to different styles of podcasts on different days depending on my mood and attention span. Sometimes I need hype and sometimes I just want easy listening. I can organize my saved list to set up my playlist ahead of time so that my preferred order happens without me having to snatch up the phone and change the podcast in the middle of what I am doing. A couple other perks are the vocal boosts and speed of play options. Only con I am experiencing is no matter what I do, I am not getting new episode notifications consistently. I get sporadic updates for some shows and no notifications for others. I have checked all my notification settings and everything is set like it’s supposed to be. I’m having to bounce over to Apple podcasts and check my recent uploads over there to know what I need to add to my saved list on Overcast. I hope this gets fixed soon! After that snag is fixed, this platform will be perfect!

6 years ago, MeatyUrologist

Frustrating with iOS 11.

I’m on an iPhone 6, using iOS 11.4.1. This app used to be at least a 4 star app, but ever since iOS 11, the app is more frustration than fun. First, an ongoing issue even before iOS 11, is the amount of space it takes up. I’m finding I’m having to delete and re-download the app every month, because I’m finding it taking up nearly ten gigs of space, despite the fact that I have it set to stream podcasts, not download them. There seems to be no intuitive way to get it to stop downloading. Second, now with iOS 11, I’m having to open the app several times to get it to stay open. It’ll usually crash a couple of times first. Third, and the issue that frustrated me enough to write this review and look for a new player: I listen to podcasts for hours at a time at work, using headphones. Sometimes I’ll need to pause an episode to do some work or talk to someone, and I’ll pause it using the button on my headphones. When I press the button again to start it... nothing. I’ll try again a few times, nothing. I’ll have to stop what I’m doing, take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, and restart overcast. Sometimes it’ll open and be frozen for fifteen seconds before it’ll start responding, sometimes it’ll just crash and I have to try again. This happens SO OFTEN that this app has basically become useless to me.

5 years ago, JOEO3

Excellent

After upgrading to a new iPhone and having to deal with iCloud back up issues, I was finally good to go. However, the only app that didn’t seem to work was Overcast. Huge bummer, I thought. I had to run the latest public beta of the current OS (not the upcoming OS) in order to get my iCloud back up to work. I assumed there was a bug between Overcast and this newer beta version of iOS. I sent the developer a quick email letting him know. Within 12 hours, Marco had responded, apologized for the issue, and let me know a fix had been released in that time. Apparently a recent update to his app introduced a nasty little bug. I’m grateful that he was quick to fix it. This shows the level of commitment and detail he has for this app. It’s also why I will continue to be an Overcast user. This is an excellent app and deserves all of the praise it gets. During that time, I tried other podcasting apps, but most were embarrassingly confusing and none seemed to just do what a good podcast player should do well: manage and play podcasts. Overcast is easy to use and understand, and it does its primary job very well!

7 months ago, CDMatthew

OVERCAST is the BEST podcast app!’

I got so frustrated with the Apple podcast app (constant changes that only worsened the user experience, increasingly non-intuitive “features” and controls), that I shopped around and found many positive comments about OVERCAST. Sure enough, OVERCAST has made me a happy listener once again, and I now can’t imagine using a different app for podcasts. My feed of podcasts is ridiculously long; some are regular listens, others I visit occasionally. The OVERCAST app helps me organize my pods and track my usage, has great features that no other app has, and sticks to its winning formula. (When it rolls out a new feature, it’s clearly explained and actually makes for an actual improvement.) You’ll note that there are visual ads at the bottom, which I find unobtrusive, and these occasionally suggest a pod worth checking out. (You can also get rid of of those ads for a very modest fee.) This app was clearly developed by someone who thinks about the user/listener experience, and cares about quality and clarity. Sending kudos to OVERCAST from podcast fan in Boston!

2 weeks ago, Dampfen

Fix queue and download system please

I’ve used this app for years. It’s great in so many ways but there are a couple things, that are just kind of timelessly annoying about it. Firstly: the queue system. If I want to fall asleep to a podcast or two and not burn through a whole feed overnight, there’s no way to do that. Either I set “stop after each episode” and have to repeatedly go find a new episode, or I use the kinda hard-to-use queue system (or I use sleep I guess?) Perhaps make the queue easier to use/accessible on every screen? Either way it’s a very frustrating system. Secondly: what’s with the download system? Why are there like 100 things in the queue all the time? If I’m about to go on a flight with no wifi, why do I have to fight the app to download a single episode so I can have it to listen to on that flight? Making a decision on a per-episode basis about whether to “stream when played” versus downloading is frankly insane. These are not sane defaults. If a download is forced via a swipe on an episode: could that be force downloaded immediately, rather than putting into download queue purgatory?

3 years ago, McZune

Best podcast app for podcast fans

Edit: The new update added more support for CarPlay and it’s awesome! Now you can see what chapter you are in as well as all of the other chapters, ‘Star’ and episode, etc, all from CarPlay! This is definitely a six star app! If you listen to a lot of podcasts, you need to try this app!! Even if you are just an occasional podcast listener, you will probably find the smart speed option very helpful. I've been listening off and on to podcasts for a few years, but tended to not listen regularly because of the time it takes to get through the backlog of missed episodes. With smart speed, I've already saved almost 90 minutes in just one podcast after 10 episodes. Thank you to Jason Snell and iMyke of the Upgrade podcast for continually mentioning this app. I use both the smart speed and voice boost to make it easier and faster to listen to podcasts. I haven't tried tweaking any other settings yet and I'm looking forward to see how much time I can save when I start using Overcast to listen to other podcasts.

6 years ago, Mozef Kaddas

Smart Speed For The Win

There are so many good podcasts out there, and so many podcast apps to download into your smartphone to listen to your favorite ones. All these podcast apps, including Apple “iOS” Podcast have in common features that make them somehow similar to each other. Yet, what makes Overcast stand above the rest, is it has a technology that I haven’t seen in others, and it's called Smart Speed which shortens the silence in thought long podcast, I know all the apps give you a control to speed up your podcast if you are in a car and don’t have enough time, while you don’t want to miss any of the speech, I know this depends on everyone preference and the type of show you listening to. But we all know speeding up your podcast it take from the enjoyment.l, that’s way overcast has the technology that doesn’t trade off the enjoyment yet also save sometime. I recommend it big time. All I wish for is a new feature that allows the podcast rewind a 5 seconds back when ever a notification goes off while you are listening to one.

1 week ago, kyleromero98

Bring Streaming Back

Really like the new revamp but am a bit disappointed that streaming isn’t supported any longer. I understand the rationale behind not wanting to support this feature due to complexity/maintainability but, this was a feature that I used quite frequently and it’s a major annoyance. I often use streaming when a new episode of a podcast I listen to has been released, but I haven’t been on wifi since that has happened (i.e. most often with news podcasts). It’s incredibly annoying to hop in my car and hope I can start listening to something but its silent in my car for a good minute or two before something starts playing. Keep in mind that with smart speed and playback multipliers this 2 minutes could actually be worth double that time for listening to podcasts! I know Marco mentioned he had some ideas on how to make the loss of this feature less troublesome for users. If he’s not planning to bring back streaming, let me add to his feature requests the ability to specify on a per-podcast level whether or not to use cellular data.

3 years ago, DylanAilDon

simple and clean

came here after the last iOS update broke apple podcasts, like so many others. overcast is simple and has a nice clean easy to use interface, which is all I want. I love that the sleep timer can be adjusted to whatever time I want. love how easy it is to find and download the podcasts and episodes I want, especially since I’m almost never caught up on podcasts and so usually the most recent episode isn’t relevant to me. my two complaints are: - i wish the sleep timer counted down the minutes the podcast is playing, instead of just the real-time minutes that go by - I wish it was easier to save episodes to come back to, because occasionally there are episodes I want to refer back to for school and such. In apple podcasts there was a “saved episodes” folder, which was handy because it was out of the main feed for that podcast but was easy to find. I’ve tried staring episodes to refer back to on Overcast, but they stay in the main “unplaced” feed for that podcast and are irritating to have to scroll past to get to the actual unplaced episodes.

6 years ago, Vuski2ski

Love the app but it keeps constantly crashing and is unusable

I absolutely love the design and aesthetics of this app and the sound quality is also top notch. The Smart Speed and Audio Boost features are also quite nifty features that I’ve come to adore. The Smart Speed has been especially useful for speeding past “dead zones” in the audio where nothing is happening and its saved me lots of time to listen to other podcasts and what’s better, the audio does not get distorted when speeding it up, unlike other podcast apps where the audio gets pitched higher or becomes robotized when ou speed it up. Unfortunately though, as of late, the app constantly crashes whenever I use it, whether it be on my iPad Pro or my iPhone SE. The Overcast symbol can be seen in the background but after 10 or so seconds, it crashes back to the home screen and it does this again and again, ad infinitum. I’ve been installing all of the updates and trying everything, from clearing the cache of the device to uninstalling and reinstalling the app to little avail. When this app works, it’s absolutely amazing. But when it doesn’t then it is unfortunately quite tragic. I hope that Marco can find a way to remedy this so that I can return to my podcasts.

3 years ago, Mgfcgsgdvfxgcdgxd

Frequent Crashes

If this app worked as intended, it would be excellent, however it appears to have some frustrating quirks and stability issues. First and foremost are the crashes. It crashes when you pause about half the time, it crashes when you select a podcast, sometimes it just seems to crash for really no reason at all. On a typical weekday I use this app for about 2-3 hours and will see 1-2 crashes each day. The second issue is that the app will always, always try to play the previous unfinished podcast, even if you have a playlist or have a different cast selected as “play next”. For instance, the last minute of most casts is just an outro, an ad, or credits so I will skip to the next cast. If I allow a cast to play to the very end, Overcast will begin playing the last unfinished minutes of all previous casts even if I have a new cast queued. I’ve used this app for about a year and will say it is better than the native Apple app, but only just barely, owing only to Overcast’s better layout. However its stability issues and infuriating quirks hobble it badly. Update July 2021: Even worse these days! Crashes about every 3-5 minutes. When I relaunch the app, it starts me at the beginning of the podcast, losing my place.

2 years ago, Chuckpebble

My Favorite Podcast Player Just Got Better

I’ve used this update for a few days now. I’m super happy with it. The button-ification of the playlists, even though I only have one at the moment, is a welcome change. The old style made them kind of just blend into the interface. Now it’s got customizable colors and symbols to customize. Will be playing with that. Next down, there is a very welcome horizontal row of recently played episodes. Thing I didn’t know I needed 1 of 2. I’ve used that to continue playing several times already. Below that, is the familiar list of all subscribed podcasts. It used to be subscriptions with unplayed episodes at the top and subscriptions without below. Now, thing I didn’t know I needed 2 of 2, there are 3 buttons that filter the podcasts between those two groups I just mentioned, but also adds a list of inactive podcasts. Now I can easily cull my subscriptions, something I didn’t even consider doing before. Amazing update! Always exciting to get new look.

5 years ago, Skidude64

1 Billion Times Better than Apple

The native iOS podcast app used to be good. Then Apple decided to make it look and function much more like its music app when they released Apple Music, which is to say they dumped all the good interface choices out the nearest window. The native iOS podcast app is atrocious to use, isn’t responsive, can be very finicky, and just overall hates life, particularly yours. My favorite feature was that it knew that even though I was only 10 minutes or so (how would I know how long, my phone was in my pocket?) into a podcast and happened to drive through a dead zone, I definitely wanted it to mark the entire show as complete and wouldn’t want to resume where I left off when I regained signal. It knew I loved scrolling through hundreds of uploaded podcasts in the finished pile looking for the one I wasn’t done with yet, only to try to find what time stamp I was at when it cut me off. Thanks for nothing, Apple podcasts. And thank you, Overcast, for being a clean, well-designed, completely functional podcast app.

6 years ago, nrlacanc

Thank you!

To me listening to podcasts should be quick, easy and done without thought. Overcast is providing just that. You have all the functions you need in the free version and the adds are not intrusive. For me it was well worth the $10/yr to support the future development. Even though I consider myself an early adapter and enjoy changes to improve a product, I basically stopped listening to podcasts after the iOS update which changed the podcast app drastically. It is possible I am more forgiving to bumps in the development process when it is a small company or new product, neither of which describes Apple. With that said overcast does have some limitations that to me do not hinder the daily listening experience. The biggest I have noticed is searching for podcasts I am not always able to find what I’m looking for. An easy solution is to copy the url from Apple podcast app, use that in the search and there is no problem finding it. I also haven’t figured out a way to better organize all of my podcasts.

3 years ago, MaggiesGM

My Favorite App for Podcast

I really enjoy the simplicity of Overcast, and if you’re particular like me you’ll find all sorts of “Nitpicky” functions to fine tune the app to your liking. Visually Overcast is my favorite as well. You can set several different “themes” and it’ll use “black” when you’re iPhone is in Dark Mode which mine always is. It’s just so much better on your eyes at night when trying to relax. Making playlists is a breeze as well. My only gripe is if you have a really old episode in between two newer episodes it’ll skip the older and the play the newest first. That’s sort of odd because they have a button that you can toggle on/off for that very feature. However mine is turned off but it still plays newer episodes first. As far as grievances go that’s pretty tame. The ads are also super discreet and I hardly notice them. Lastly, I haven’t found a podcast that isn’t on Overcast. Their catalog is quite extensive. Well, what are you waiting for? Install it already!

2 years ago, Jill457

Volume Issue

This app has excellent features, like Smart Speed, Voice Boost, and Smart Playlists. I generally like it a lot, but there are a couple of issues. The search function is terrible. It returns illogical results, if any. Often, it just freezes. There are no reviews or feedback, and it’s not easy to browse for new shows other than the few they highlight. Unfortunately, I have to go back to the native app for that. I actually don’t pay for premium because the ads are, sadly, the best way to find new podcasts on Overcast. Recently, it’s started messing with the volume whenever I disconnect and later reconnect Bluetooth devices. I always listen at a low setting because iPhone doesn’t actually have a low volume option — it goes straight from medium to silent. When I put the headphones back in, the volume is cranked up high every time. I’ve learned to fix it before hitting play (which has to be done on the lock screen), but that’s annoying. It should just work. This is simple. I contacted the developer and never heard back, so I’m warning potential users before they damage their eardrums.

1 week ago, MileHighDevs

Congrats on 10 Years!

The update rocks! If every developer cared about their product and their customers the way worker does, the world would be such a better place. That’s not hyperbole. 376 hours. That’s how much time SmartSpeed has saved me. Not 2x. Everyone has that. But no one else has tweaked the audio to remove those empty air microseconds in a way that doesn’t sound like a middle schooler playing with AutoTune. SmartSpeed + Voice Boost works so well that now people sound unnatural when you listen on any other player. Marco obsesses over the details so we don’t have to. Layouts are intuitive, controls are where you expect them to be and then get out of the way. My only complain is that Overcast makes you realize how poorly designed nearly everything else is. It spoils you as a tech consumer, and makes you wish there was an Overcast version of everything. I cannot think of another free alternative to the basic app that ships with your hardware that raises the bar like Overcast does.

6 years ago, egionet

Doesn’t connect to Internet.

This morning I paid for premium subscription. Later the same day when checking for my daily dose of recently downloaded podcasts, there were none?! When checking podcast history or trying to leave feedback within app, I kept getting the message “No Internet Connection - the Internet connection connection appears to be offline.” My phones other apps (social media, safari, mail, etc.) are using WiFi just fine. I checked to make sure both WiFi and cellular data are checked. I cancelled my subscription to see if that was the problem. Doesn’t seem to have made a difference. I turned phone off and then on - that didn’t solve the problem. I hate to have to shop around for a different podcast player. Can anyone help me? UPDATE: Upgraded rating from one star because my podcasts started downloading again! I am happy about that. Thanks fixer! I had preferred this player to others I have tried (I like to create multiple playlists.) and am glad I don’t need to change. However, I am waiting to see if the download issue arises again before re-paying for my cancelled premium subscription.

7 years ago, 'Derm

I finally get it!

I’ve been a podcast junkie for over a decade. Before the iPhone, I would download them on iTunes, burn them on a CD and play them in my car. So the built-in podcast app on iPhone was a revelation. I feel like that all over again with Overcast. First, I was blown away by its ability to speed up pauses to make podcasts play quicker without sounding sped up. I don’t mind a little sped up, so I also liked the wide range of speeds to choose from. The real winner was the smart playlist though. THE SMART PLAYLIST IS AWESOME. I tell it which show I want to hear first, which second, etc., and it automatically keeps the playlist up to date, adding new top-priority shows to the front of the line ahead of older lower-priority shows. (I used to make “up next” playlists each day in the old app. No more!) Finally, just today I discovered custom settings for each show. My news podcasts can rip through at 1.8x speed. My narrative ones I can set for 1.2x speed. The app remembers. I don’t ever have to mess with it again. I LOVE this app!

2 years ago, guycooper

Terrible search, worse navigation

Very disappointed after switching from Apple podcasts and giving this a try for nearly one year. The search simply doesn't work - you'll never find the episode you're looking for. If you are just exploring and type in a name of someone that you know has podcast episodes, they almost never appear unless they are very well known. If you type in an exact or nearly exact match you might get the search result, but when you click on the episode it will direct to the list of all episodes for that podcast rather than the episode you clicked on. Until about two months ago there was a hack where you could then click on "unplayed" and wait a moment and the episode would suddenly appear, but it no longer "works". Worst of all, if you then press the back button to see the original search results, to check another result for example, they're gone! It takes you back to an empty search bar. I can't believe how much time I wasted on this terrible app. I contacted support and also asked the dev via Twitter but received no reply. I'll spend my premium podcast dollars elsewhere.

2 years ago, Yesh Medicinebird

The BEST, especially if you care about sound quality.

I listen to podcasts all the time, so love Overcast because it has great tools for managing playlists, makes finding podcasts easy, and seems to be built around what I actually want to do with a podcast app. The latest release has given me features I didn’t even know I wanted, like the “mark as played” which is great. (-edit: I didn’t realize at first the following was a feature already!-) I love that “mark as played” is a toggle, to easily mark things un-played for when I accidentally fall asleep listening and end up with six podcasts marked played that I have no memory of! As for sound, this is the only podcast player I’ve found that actually sounds good at anything over 1x playback speed, and the smart speed “shortens silence” setting is my favorite tiny detail. This is one of the few apps that I subscribe to, as I want to make sure they’re able to keep revising and making the experience better.

2 years ago, Angry Birdman from Alcatraz

Dump the default and get Overcast!

I have become a HUGE podcast listener. My typical day will have me in the car for 2-5 hours and podcasts have become a staple for me. Like most folks, I used the default player on my Apple devices. What a mistake that is! The default player started forcing other podcasts to download in place of my favorites. I contacted Apple who didn't give two squirts and bounced me around to numerous customer "don't care" departments. At that point I searched for a new player and found Overcast. I have been in love with it since. Great layout and fantastic functionality! Not sure about the people crying about ads ... I haven't gone subscription (yet!) but the ads are the least obtrusive I have seen on any app. I've deleted my fair share of apps for obnoxious advertising; I understand a person wants to make some money off their work and I don't fault anyone for that. The ads on here are minimal and certainly tolerable to help reward the guy for a great product.

7 years ago, B1l1

Nearly everything I wanted and then some

I love this app! It has features I wished were in the built in podcast app like set a custom playback speed for each individual podcast and an actual smart play list that automatically adds my priority podcasts first! So that show that I just have to listen to as soon as it comes out gets placed to the top of the list. One feature, if it’s there I couldn’t find it, I really wanted was a shuffle option so when I add a new podcast and all the past episodes I can just shuffle them in to the playlist. Right now I have to do this manually and who wants to do that? Features that I didn’t even think of, the smart speed. Some podcasters speak really slow with long silences between words and 2xs speed isn’t quite right and anything faster you can’t understand the words. Having the app shorten the silences is GENIUS! The Voice boost has allowed me to turn down the volume! I don’t struggle to hear what some of the soft spoken hosts are saying.

8 months ago, BlondStranger

Once Great, but Desparately Needs Help!

Update: Upon further review, this app will no longer download episodes via wi-fi AT ALL! Set it to wi-fi only, turn off cellular data, and it’s completely useless! So, if you want to use Overcast much, you better have an unlimited data plan. In addition to this, the developer offers ZERO technical support; he even tells you this in the app info like we’re supposed to feel sorry him. Well, I feel sorry for folks stuck with a podcast app that won’t download podcasts! Someone needs to fix this festering pile of poo for me to continue using it. Original Review: I’ve used Overcast for years and absolutely loved it, until recently. This app has a major issue with episodes getting stuck in “waiting to download.” They won’t download until you actually play them, and if you aren’t on wi-fi at that time, tough - just smoke right through your cellular data plan. I’ve tried everything I can imagine to fix it, and nothing works. This issue has been cropping up for YEARS now, and the developer hasn’t addressed it. It’s too bad, because it is a great app, otherwise. But, this is a dealbreaker - especially if you listen to a lot of podcasts, as I do.

3 years ago, CreepyBrian

Vastly superior to Apple Podcasts

I switched from the Apple Podcast app after every consecutive update made it worse/less stable. Pods wouldn’t sync between my phone and iPad, frequent crashes, an increasingly unintuitive interface and generally poor performance…I wanted something different. I saw a recommendation on Twitter (from Ringer alum Isaac Lee, who has pretty sterling credentials in the audio medium) and I decided to take the plunge. It’s been everything I was hoping for. Super easy to setup and use, easy to plug in my RSS feeds and generally way less of a hassle than Apple. Very stable. The interface didn’t overwhelm my older devices. I’ve occasionally had hiccups where the audio would pause itself but generally issues have been few and far between. I’m not a tremendous fan of the speed saving function but I do love that I can customize when I use it (I leave it turned on for the boring pods to help power through). But overall, it’s been fantastic.

2 years ago, Gelandres

Excellent simple to use

I love the new interface. Clear, simple and intuitive. And free of any unnecessary stuff. The only issue I have is that when searching and subscribing to new podcasts, it doesn’t let you choose which smart playlist you want the new podcast to be in at the time of subscription. You have to subscribe first, then back out of the search library, go to the playlist you want and then select edit playlist and then find the podcast you recently downloaded from the long list of all podcasts I’ve joined. There should be a feature that lets you choose to send a new podcast directly to an existing or new playlist when you subscribe to it. And in the list of podcasts, each one should also say which playlist it belongs to. There have been times when I checked a podcast to the wrong playlist. Or completely forgotten to check it in a playlist and therefore never listen to it.

2 years ago, FDFD71

Cell Data Usage Notifications Are Poor

We generally like the app, however we are constantly having issues with the following: 1. Pending downloads resetting Consequently our download queue is constantly at 99+ and the app chews through a ton of data. We've had to set it to streaming only multiple times, and also set it to WiFi only, but it appears to keep resetting. As a result we're chewing through more than 10 gigs of data on many months unless we watch it closely. 2. Easy to use a lot of storage space. As your phone fills up with podcasts, it will start warning you that you're almost out of storage space. At this point the app generally crashes. We've had to manually reduce the number of podcasts stored to 2 podcasts on most podcasts and it still hasn't helped much. Recommendation: Better notification and management of data usage by the app, rather than relying on the OS would be helpful.

4 days ago, Joyce8694

UI update

*rating updated post .2 update This was the best podcast app around with intuitive UI. The new update felt like a step backwards. 1. Playlist now stacked at the now and scroll horizontally. This is not friendly to user who have multiple custom playlists. Or at least we should be allowed to edit out auto generated playlists that we don’t want. 2. Playlist used to change to gray when all podcast in said playlist had been listened to and deleted. This function no longer exists and I have to click in one by one to check if there’re new pods. 3. Swiping between pod info/pod playback control/pod detailed settings(sleep/speed etc) is now changed to dedicated icon button. Although it does not require extra movement for the user, it requires the user to pay attention to pinpoint their movement. Overall I think the new design would work just fine for occasional podcast listeners. But for intensive listeners it’s just not as friendly as the previous version.

1 year ago, Zwerlie

Simply the best

This is the best podcast player out there. It syncs between devices, has speed controls, sounds great when sped up, has smart speed (which automatically removes pauses), seek back and forward 15 or 30 seconds (whatever you set the time to). I love the control. Are there problems, yes. Lack of search is frustrating when looking for a downloaded episode with a particular guest. Also, when in the podcast store you can search by podcast title but not by person's name. So if you would like to search for a guest and see all the different podcasts they have been interviewed on, you cannot. (To do this I go to Apple's app and search then come back to Overcast. What a pain.) Another thing that is annoying - when I searching for podcasts to subscribe to, once you hit "subscribe," it kicks you out of your search, and you have to repeat the same search if you want to add more than one podcast.

4 years ago, Korbeing

The intelligent speed boost alone makes it the best.

There are no perfect podcast apps yet, but for years no one has copies overcasts gap skip and pitch safe speed boost. It is done so well i dont notice, and even at 1.1 or 1.2 you save a lot of time and get to listen to more. All the important things are here - playlists and smart sorting, adjustable skip and back time, a simple useable interface. Big thank you to a thoughtful overcast team, and thank you for getting this review without interrupting and asking for it. This is is 6 Star app, but i am satisfied with five because there is room to grow - notably there needs to be a place to see all your star favorites. The only other app that has something on this is apple podcast because it looks nicer and their new deep content search engine is the best podcast discovery method since word of mouth. But how many new podcasts can you handle? So discover them however and manage your daily subscriptions and library in overcast.

2 years ago, Evanking527

Better than Apple Podcast app

I listen to Spanish learning podcasts as well as technology and health podcasts. I tried to get a whole separate podcast app specifically for learning Spanish so that I could keep all of my learning life separate from the completely different genres that I usually listen to, but then realized I could easily make different playlists in Overcast and switch back and forth whenever I wanted. It is VERY difficult to try to live this life in the Apple Podcast app. If I wanted to switch to Spanish podcasts, trying to get back to technology podcasts risked messing up my whole queue in the Apple Podcasts app, not to mention the Podcasts app daily forgetting where I was in my podcast and having to restart from the beginning. For my specific purposes, Overcast is awesome for me, and the kinds of things I can do and learn is literally not possible in the Apple Podcast app. Thanks Marco.

2 years ago, Qball_42

Good app but there are some problems.

A couple of months ago, there was a pretty significant change to the layout. I honestly can't remember all of them, but I feel like there were tabs on the bottom of the screen that I now miss. However, the largest problem is that random episodes won't play. I can't determine any consistency to why they won't play, but I've seen it on several different shows now. However, if I go to another podcast player, I can get said episodes to play just fine. My review started negatively, but I should end positively. I'm sharing these concerns, especially the one about broken episodes, because I really like this app. It works very well with the screen-reader built into iOS that I use. Despite some changes that I don't love, it is still my favorite of all pod-catchers that I've tried in terms of layout. This is still the pod-catcher that I recommend to all my friends and family, but I hope the developers clean it up some.

4 years ago, drinkslikepaul

My only gripe...

First off, this is an essential app for me and in my opinion it’s as good as it gets as far as podcast players goes. It will always hold a prominent space on my first home screen page and if I were not such a creature of habit, tied down by muscle memory, it would replace Apple Music in my dock. I almost feel guilty for commenting a suggestion, because it’s so basic that surely it’s a problem that can’t be solved otherwise Marco would have fixed it by now but alas, here goes...The single annoyance I have is with the search. Let’s say I want to hear an older episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with Joey Diaz as a guest. I type Joey Diaz into the search bar and boom 12 results appear. If I click one to add to my queue but want to go back to add another episode, I have to retype my original search query and start over basically. I don’t know how or if this can be remedied but it would make my Overcast experience that much more enjoyable. Again, this is an amazing app, the best of the best, and thank you for all your hard work!

7 years ago, Lopkijuh

Thank you! I can EASILY play podcasts again!

Thank you Overcast, you just took my blood pressure down a couple of points. I have watched Apple experiment and destroy whatever attempts they have made to create an easy to use and understand podcast player. If you want gray hair go try and figure out the crap that Apple has produced for a podcast player. Complicated and difficult to use. I had reached a point in trying to find and play podcasts on Apple’s mess that I was about to hurdle my poor iPad out of extreme frustration. The Overcast app was so simple to setup and use. I didn’t even create an Overcast account and I was up and running with ease in no time. Easy to find podcasts and easy to play them. Apple’s use to be this way until I think they got too much money and decided to hire shoemakers to create a player app. Thank you again Overcast! And Apple, I hope you stub your big toe, for shame for creating such junk.

4 years ago, Ggsghniutgvcs wrt gvvbjj

My favorite podcast app but very poor application performance

What is there to be said about overcast that hasn’t already been said? It’s great! There are just two things that weigh down the app. The first is the battery drain of the app. Most of the time it’s great, but sometimes it can take my iphone from full power/just off the charger to empty in ten seconds (i am not joking). Other times the background processes get spun up and it’ll drain 20-40% of your battery in a minute or two. Even when you quit the app the background processes continue to drain. It’s wildly unacceptable. The other issue seems to be with the file cache. While the application and data size is clearly explained in the istorage settings, it seems to be incorrect. For some reason Overcast fills up my Other category of files until my Iphone starts crashing from having too little free space. The only way to fix it is to uninstall the app completely then reinstall. When I do this I can regularly free up 2-3g of additional space over and above what the iphone says overcast is using.

1 week ago, Kwftx

Glitchy Update

Just downloaded the new update. There are some nice changes, but it is glitchy and still missing some basic features. We’ve lost the ability to swipe right to download. It now takes two steps to download now as opposed to a simple swipe. Please bring this back. Also, the “add to queue” button works but not the “move to queue” button. I would also prefer the option to have my playlists in the vertical arrangement as opposed to the new horizontal one. I liked the fact that in the previous version the playlist icons were greyed out when there were no podcasts in the playlist. I’m hoping this returns as well. I will say CarPlay functionality is better in the new update. But a mark as played icon would be very helpful. I know we have the skip to the next podcast option, but I think it would be better to have it mark the current episode as played when skipping to the next show. Hopefully these get addressed in future updates.

Description

A powerful, simple, award-winning podcast player. Featured by the App Store as Editor's Choice and critically acclaimed by The Verge, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, AppAdvice, and more. No big company or VC funding here — Overcast is the only major podcast app written by a single person. The Verge: “The best podcast app for the iPhone” 9to5Mac: "Overcast is the best podcast app that I’ve ever used” AppAdvice: "Our favorite podcast client" Six Colors: "My podcast player of choice" The Sweet Setup: “Overcast is our favorite” Cult of Mac: “It’s the best podcast app out there” TIME: “Overcast lives up to its lofty claims” iMore: "My personal favorite" TechCrunch: “There is no reason why you should still be using the Podcasts app over Overcast” Overcast is a modern, fully featured audio podcast app with many useful features in a simple, intuitive interface: - Smart Speed saves time without distorting the audio or sounding unnatural. - Voice Boost makes every podcast the same volume with a broadcast-quality remastering engine. - Download podcasts for playing anytime, even offline. - Search and browse for new podcasts, plus get personalized recommendations. - Create custom Playlists with smart filters and per-podcast priorities, and rearrange the list whenever you want. - Receive optional notifications when new episodes arrive. - Subscribe to a podcast, or just add an episode: try new shows without committing. - Sleep timer automatically stops playback after any time interval you set. - Apple Watch app with standalone playback and cellular streaming. - CarPlay support. And Overcast has world-class privacy, with no third-party analytics, ad services, or tracking code. Overcast is funded by ads that promote other podcasts. If you choose to purchase Overcast Premium to hide these ads, payment will be charged to your iTunes account, and your account will be charged for renewal 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. Auto-renewal may be turned off at any time by going to your settings in the iTunes Store after purchase. Privacy policy: https://overcast.fm/privacy Terms of use: https://overcast.fm/terms Proudly made in New York.