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Add to SafariWhen comparing Podcasts vs Overcast, the Slant community recommends Overcast for most people. In the question“What are the best podcast apps for iOS?” Overcast is ranked 2nd while Podcasts is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Overcast is:
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.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Comes pre-installed
Pro Sleep timer
Pro Free
Pro Can auto-download new episodes
You can set the app to automatically download new episodes. Additionally, you can set how many episodes should be stored locally.
Pro Saves podcasts to the iTunes directory
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 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 Feed redirection
Sometimes podcasts change their hosts/urls. Overcast will handle and remember this.
Pro Easy playlists
Simple UI for making playlists of podcasts.
Pro Podcast specific settings
Speed, voice boost, smart speed, notifications, download/stream new episodes.
Pro Chapters navigation
Supports several Features for a great #UX to navigate Podcasts Episodes with chapter marks. Even shows a visual timeline for each chapter.
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 OPML import/export support
Pro Twitter integration
Recommendations within the app are surfaced to your followers.
Cons
Con Very slow searching through podcasts catalogs
Con Makes my iPhone hot when using with associated battery drain (iPhone 11 Pro)
Still not fixed in iOS 17. Finally have to give up on this app.
Con Random shutdowns
A few people have issues with the app randomly deciding to shut down or not starting.
Con The ability to discover new or relevant podcasts ("Recommended for you") is practically useless
Similarly, the search feature seems to only look for podcast hosts or podcast names. You can't find all podcasts that has a specific guest.
Con Very barebones webapp
Con Unplayed episodes
Does not have the ability to show unplayed episodes for individual podcasts.
Con Adds a subscription even after listening a single episode
It is not possible to pick a single Podcast Episode to download without having to subscribe to yet another Podcast feed (that shows up in your Subscriptions List).
Con Can't set a subscription to NOT download any episodes
By subscribing to a podcast you have to set it to download at least one (most recent) episode. There is the setting to set the podcast to stream only, but would prefer to set to zero downloads and choose which episodes to download individually.
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 No paged RSS feeds
this Podcatcher does not support reading longer RSS Feeds that are split into several pages (for faster access).
