RANKED IN THESE QUESTIONS
PROS
PRO Automated playlist creation
Pocket Casts has a feature called Episode Filter, that allows automatically creating playlists based on setting such as playing states (unplayed, playing, played), status (downloaded, downloading, not downloaded), episode type (audio, video) and of course podcasts themselves.
You can also customize the appearance of the playlist with a color and an icon to help it stand out easier.
PRO Remembers playback speed & starting position
You can set a ‘start from’ position for a podcast to skip a set number of seconds from the beginning of an episode. Great for when you don’t want to listen to an intro you’ve heard a couple of dozen times before.
Additionally, you can also change the playback speed, to slow down fast talkers or speed up slow talkers.
PRO Vibrant aesthetics
Pocket Casts has one of the most colorful, pleasant to use interfaces.
For example, the app takes the most prominent color from the album art and colorizes the rest of the playback interface based on that color. This allows the app to stay vibrant and slightly different for each podcast.
Or the way it displays featured podcasts in a colorful mosaic made from album art, makes the whole experience of using the app pleasant.
PRO Auto download specific podcasts
You can set Pocket Casts to automatically download the latest episode of a podcast, whenever a new episode is released.
PRO Quick access to shownotes
When listening to a podcast you can swipe right to bring up all the show notes with clickable links.
PRO Sleep timer built in
Setting the sleep timer will stop the podcast after a set period of time.
PRO Sync with iPhone, iPad, Android
If you use Pocket Casts on more than one device, you can synchronize settings, playback positions, etc., across all your devices.
PRO Queue up next podcasts
From the playback screen swipe to the right to access your podcast playlist. From there you can easily queue up your next podcast.
PRO Excellent, easy to use discovery system
Clicking the plus button in the top-right corner will bring you to featured podcasts. From there you can access multiple ways of finding new things to listen to such as: top charts (that can be separated in audio and video), search (that allows searching both by name and feed URL), a list of podcast networks and different podcast categories.
They also have a great selection of podcasts to choose from. The team behind Pocket Casts work hard to maintain a reliable and high quality catalog so you can avoid out of date listings, problems with raw feeds, etc.
PRO Sonos integration
It is possible to connect Pocket Casts with Sonos, and play podcasts.
PRO Smart Speed and Voice Boost
For listening to talk shows, Smart Speed allows you to skip silences and pauses. Voice Boost is very helpful when the speakers vary from really quiet to really loud – it balances the whole thing out. And you enable them during playback, so neither will mess up music podcasts.
PRO Feed redirection
Sometimes podcasts change their hosts/urls. Overcast will handle and remember this.
PRO Easy playlists
By far the easiest UI for making playlists of podcasts I’ve seen.
PRO Voice Boost
Boosts and normalizes volume.
PRO Very good audio quality
It has the best sounding audio when sped up. It also has neat features like the “Voice Boost” setting being tuned for being played when the phone is set flat on a table.
PRO Timestamp sharing
Links to episodes can be combined with timestamps for easy sharing (links the timestamp to the web app).
PRO Good catalogue
Pretty much the same as the other options, but nicer categories and list views.
PRO Ability to add podcast from URL
RSS or whatever else will work.
PRO Themes
Light, Dark (dark blue), Black.
PRO Podcast specific settings
Speed, voice boost, smart speed, notifications, download/stream new episodes.
PRO OPML import/export support
PRO Twitter integration
Recommendations within the app are surfaced to your followers.
CONS
CON Does not work with paid podcasts
CON Doesn’t sync with iTunes
CON Unable to sort by playtime
It would be nice to have the ability to sort tracks like podcasts from the shortest to the longest.
CON Very barebones web app
CON Un played episodes
Does not have the ability to show unplayed episodes for individual podcasts.
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