When comparing Signal vs Pocket Casts, the Slant community recommends Signal for most people. In the question“What are the best Android apps?” Signal is ranked 3rd while Pocket Casts is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Signal is:
Signal uses an advanced end to end encryption protocol that provides privacy for every message every time.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Provides security and privacy
Signal uses an advanced end to end encryption protocol that provides privacy for every message every time.
Pro Free and open source
Signal is free and open source software, enabling anyone to verify its security by auditing the code. It's the only private messenger that uses open source, peer-reviewed cryptographic protocols to keep your messages safe.
Pro SMS/MMS support
Signal can be your default SMS/MMS text messenger. Encryption is not possible when sending SMS to your contacts, however.
Pro Supports encrypted group chats
Pro Supports sharing of various different media types
Signal supports: emoji, pictures, videos, audio, contacts, any location and GIF.
Pro Recommended by Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden uses this messenger and recommends it to everyone who is concerned about his privacy.
Pro Message mirroring on Signal Desktop
Signal Desktop is a Chrome extension that allows you to mirror messages from your phone, including replying.
Pro You can easily view all media exchanged
You can easily view all media shared in the chat without scrolling back to when it was shared.
Pro Note to Self feature
Allows you to "send: messages to yourself and sync to desktop so you can use Signal as a kind of encrypted Pushbullet alternative
Pro Works everywhere in every country
Unlike most messenger apps, Signal works reliably in all countries by securely circumventing internet censorship.
Pro Annonymous Sender (Encrypted)
The sender credentials can be encrypted with the rest of the message, leaving only the recipient address readable by the Signal server. Even if Signal wanted they couldn't see who is talking with who by this mean.
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 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 Sleep Timer
The most pleasing User Experience (UX) to set a Sleep Timer.
Activating the sleep timer will stop the podcast after a set period of time or at the End of the Episode.
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 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 Global and per-podcast playback settings
Enables you to set a "global" playback speed to use for all podcasts which can be over-ridden by a podcast specific playback speed.
Pro Can set custom skip-forward and back timing
You can set custom "skip forward" and "skip backward" timings for easily skipping past parts of podcasts you don't like.
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 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.
Cons
Con Needs access to your phone number and contacts to work
Con Single device
Signal can only be registered to one mobile device at a time. But you can link Signal to Signal Desktop.
Con Unreliable notifications
Sometimes messages won't be received if the Signal app has been closed for a long time or hasn't been opened after booting the device.
Con Servers hosted in the US
A security risk due to National Security letters, which require giving up data to the US state, and making it illegal to disclose that.
Con If SMS/MMS imported, other apps can't read SMS
For those using Join, Pushbullet, or similar apps to send and receive SMS/MMS from web or desktop, putting your SMS in Signal somehow breaks this functionally. The dev is aware but plans to remedy the situation have not been named a priority.
Con Cannot work w\o Google services
Signal relies on Google services for push notifications so although it is encrypted and open source it needs proprietary component to work. That means you can't use Signal on some custom Android ROM (preferably rooted for full control) without Google apps installed.
Con Uses message mirroring
Con Cannot create custom playlists
You can not add specific podcast episodes to create a custom playlist. While you can set up "filters" to create a playlist, if you're trying to follow a thread of specific podcast episodes, you can't set that up.
Con Skip episode often does not work with CarPlay
The Skip Episode feature, to automatically mark an episode as listened to and finshed, often does not work in CarPlay mode. Instead, you have to push the "skip forward" button a lot. Good luck having a long enough stoplight for that!
Con Does not work with paid podcasts
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