New Overcast app

What do you mean by timeline? I’m using VoiceOver (screen reader) to navigate my iPhone. So visualy you have chapters button separated from episode info display?

I used to have it set to streaming, as I have some fifty-ish podcasts in there but no intention to listen to every single episode, so there was no point in downloading everything.

I understand the reasoning behind removing streaming (Marco explained it further on the latest ATP podcast), but it seems he also removed episode download limits. If I allow automatic downloads for all podcasts, when does the app clean them up if they are not listened to? The previous default was to keep 3 episodes. The storage usage screen is also gone (I hope just temporarily).

The release is quite, quite buggy. I’ve seen the ‘info’ button stop working, and I cannot edit any playlists by adding or removing podcasts (it fails to show which podcasts are in a playlist, and if I add a new one to the playlist, it does nothing).

1 Like

Maybe it was rushed to release on the 10th anniversary.

2 Likes

First the positives:

  • it looks modern (at last)
  • I like the “now playing” screen with info and preference sheets
  • it is super fast and slick
  • as promised migration was instant and worked (for me at least)
  • sync works extremely well (for me at least)
    Problems:
  • playlists are shown with horizontal scroll. Vertical as before was much easier
  • I can’t (or haven’t worked out how to) make playlists that include all unplayed episodes of selected podcasts. I think that playlists are basically broken. Whatever I select it shows all unplayed episodes of all followed podcasts, maybe in different orders and the preference keeps returning to “all podcasts” instead of “selected podcasts”.-
  • I’m not sure about the three column display on the iPad: maybe if in future it’s easier to close columns you aren’t using…
    Thoughts
  • I wish Marco would pay someone to write and keep updated a help file. I hate having to figure out things like playlist settings by trial and error and then having to figure it all out again when he arbitrarily changes things and doesn’t explain why or how he did
  • Despite the re-write going on for years it still feels rushed, has bugs, many rough edges and feels more like a beta than a release. Underscore’s reaction (silence) in the “Under the Radar” episode when Marco said he was just going to release it to everyone and find out what the problems were then, spoke volumes
  • Even so, I think the new direction is right and I still think Overcast is the best podcast player (and I’m a ten year user!)
  • Above all, it still champions privacy, resists the takeover by aggressive tracking and advertising and sounds and syncs between devices great: and that is the core function as far as I am concerned.
8 Likes

Yes, the chapters now have a separate screen (I am no developer, but I think this may be called a CardView with a List. If a podcast episode with chapters is playing, there is a dedicated “chapters” button visible that is being located above the playback controls at the left side of the “progress bar” that is showing the playback progress. When this button is being tapped the separate chapters view is “launched”. I have no experience with screenreaders. If this button is not visible to the screenreader, it may be an idea to contact the developer or Allison Sheridan from podfeet.com, if the developer will not react. She is an avid Overcast user and she for sure is somebody who is encouraging developers :wink: through her podcasts to support VoiceOver reliably, which proves to be successful quite often. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Very much this. I asked this in reply to the announcement post on Mastodon as the playlist settings don’t work as I would expect them to. No answer to that request though

1 Like

Anyone else having issues with Podcasts not being able to be added to list. I am unable to add any podcast to my queue or separate lists.

Yes. I can neither add podcasts to the list nor are there checkboxes marked beside podcasts already included in a list, so I don’t know which ones they are. This release is pretty broken.

Agreed. I’m not a fan of the download only, but this is pretty much unusable for me.

What other podcasts apps are people using That have the similar functionality to be able to quickly move all new podcast into a Queue or playlist? Extra points if I can use it on my Apple Watch with AirPods and leave my phone at home too?

Thanks for providing the information on how it works visually. Marco has a great reputation for supporting accessibility, and he also talked about it in a recent episode of ATP. VoiceOver users have already reported on Mastodon about several issues and suggestions on how to solve them. I’m going to report about the chapters to him on Mastodon.

2 Likes

Can we decide exactly how many past episodes we want to keep now (3) or does marco still decide this for us? One of the reasons I dumped it was I wanted to keep three episodes and the choices were like keep 1, 2, 5, 7 episodes or something to that effect.

Playlists seem fixed in the just released version. That was fast. Marco says that a lot of finesse to things like settings will come soon

That option has been removed entirely in this version, along with the ability to stream. So if I enable automatic downloads for 50-ish podcasts, I have no idea how much storage space that’s going to use.

(But he may bring the option back according to this.)

This seems to have been (sort of) fixed in today’s update so playlists can now be edited. I’m saying sort of because a new bug is that if you add a podcast to a playlist, all its episodes are sorted on top regardless of their dates.

Does this new version not start the next podcast in the playlist after the current one finishes? I’ve had at least 2 instances so far where I had to open up the app and manually start the next item when the current podcast was over.

1 Like

Looks like Downcast is still the winner then.

A few people seem to have reported that and it happened to me twice today

And you wont be able to see how much storage you’re using because that option was removed also.

I’m saying sort of because a new bug is that if you add a podcast to a playlist, all its episodes are sorted on top regardless of their dates.

That didn’t happen for me. I have episodes from oldest to newest across all the podcasts in that list, including podcasts I added later . That might be something to do with the (IMHO) very confusing settings around priorities, rankings and groups. I don’t have ANYTHING set with a priority.

I also remember noticing that the new default for sorting episodes in a playlist (in edit playlist or while creating one) is “oldest to newest (or newest to oldest) by podcast”. I had to set it to “oldest to newest” to get my preferred behaviour.

There’s a new patch out for Overcast and the Playlist bug seems to be fixed :grinning:

1 Like