Downcast

Without basic, basic functionality of adding episodes manually to a playlist this app is totally worthless.

I’ve had this app forever and I still love it but the one add on Iim STILL waiting for is a way to select and save favorite podcast episodes

I moved to Downcast after many years with Overcast, and I'm quite happy with the change. Downcast has all the features you'd expect--playlists, automatic refreshing, manual playlist sorting, OPML support, Siri commands, and more. It does everything well, and has some neat extras. It's also fully accessible with VoiceOver. One standout feature is the playlist creator. You can make a playlist that includes or excludes any podcast, as expected. But you can go further. You can choose to include or exclude locked episodes, select custom sorting that will always apply, and more. The one missing feature I've found is the ability to manually add episodes to a playlist--you can't go through feeds and build a custom playlist on the fly. Playlists work by feed, not by episode. There are other nice little touches, too. Each episode has the total time and time remaining, as does each playlist. Playlists or feeds with no episodes show after the ones with episodes. VoiceOver's magic tap (two finger double tap) plays, even if you perform it in Downcast when media from another app is playing. There are buttons in the player interface to skip by 15, 30, and 120 seconds. The whole "lock episodes" idea is brilliant, letting you save episodes forever that you'll want to list to again without cluttering up playlists or auto-deleting them when they're played. My only two complaints are the lack of support for building a playlist or queue manually by adding episodes, and the app's badge including locked episodes. These are very minor complaints. Obviously, I'd also like to have Overcast's silence removal feature, but that's not easy to add. Oh, the ability to rewind slightly when resuming playback would be great as well.

Don’t understand playlists… Hoping that ALL UNPLAYED PODCASTS could SEQUENTIALLY BE PLAYED, AUTOMATICALLY! But I don’t see any way of establishing such a playlist, let alone executing that playback…

I’ve even tried, and paid, for Overcast (subscription at $14.99), the much vaunted player of choice for Apple enthusiasts, but honestly, Overcast doesn’t hold a candle to Downcast. I’ve owned Downcast for years, and remember paying $4.99 ONCE, and have enjoyed it ever since.

Just tipped the best pod player. I had to restore my iPhone and all podcasts I had downloaded all came back automatically. Perfect.

A great podcast player. Fwd/Back very responsive even when using HomePods unlike other apps. Absolutely love the ability to customize name for each podcast so they show up how I want and sorted as I expect. No other app I’ve found lets you do this dm simple thing of letting you put your own name on each podcast, with other apps you’re stuck with 20 word dumb pod titles sorted randomly esp,. ones that begin with “The”.

I’m glad to find a podcast app that respects my attention.

My favorite podcast app at the moment. Please add a play next queue feature and this app will be perfect!

I’ve used Downcast for playing podcasts over the last two years; I have nothing but good things to say about the app. Very easy to use for playback and playlist creation. App is completely reliable to get latest podcasts from subscribed podcasts, whether the free feed or membership RSS feed from Patreon.