Thank you @AppleGuy for such detailed thoughts. Like @ChrisEdwards you’ve inspired me to switch. I’ve also imported the OPML and upgraded to the paid Pocketcasts tier.
I’m sad about Castro’s demise, but it is so frustratingly buggy. So far, PocketCasts does seem to replicate the functionality I most valued in Castro.
Castro is so frustrating to me since the only thing I want out of it is multi-device syncing. I want to be able to listen from my phone and then move to my computer. Aside from that missing feature the rest of it functions nearly exactly the way I want a podcast app to function. But alas, it is what it is.
I think my next choice after Castro is Pocket Casts as far as UI/UX goes. It has multi-device syncing, but it’s buggy for me. Often times it won’t sync my play position, or listen state, and I’m having to remember if I had listened to the whole episode or just part of it when moving between devices. Also, the sharing is a bit lack luster. I like to be able to share snippets of podcast episodes that I find worth keeping, but Pocket Casts can’t do that at the moment. Maybe one day.
Then I gravitate toward Overcast. It’s UI/UX is the worst of all, but syncing is rock solid. Marco allows the app to run on the M1, so I can effectively jump between devices that way. It also allows me to export sound bites too, so it ticks that box. It’s just such an ugly and weirdly laid out UX.
All that said, it’d make my day if Marco hired the designers from Castro and merged the two apps. 
OMG thank you for this feedback. I’ve been using Pocket Casts for a couple of years now and I get confused sometimes about what syncs and what doesn’t because it seems to act erratic with regard to playback positions and just keeping Pods in order across platforms. I thought I was just confused or something or missed a setting
According to Andrew Wilkinson (of Tiny), Castro 3 is in the works:
Castro is the best design, in my opinion. The Inbox training system makes a lot of sense. The lack of multiple device sync is a deal breaker, but if they introduced that I might be back from Overcast, which I am currently using. I don’t love the design of Overcast, but the features are really good.
However, if you need YouTube side loading, Castro is the only place to get that, I believe. It’s such a great app. But Overcast has surpassed it in the syncing, Watch, CarPlay, and regular updates departments. Hence my sticking with it.
That is really exciting news from Andrew. Would love for them to release it before iOS 17.
At this point after 11 months of being dark while still charging for a subscription - they’ve lost me. No communication, no updates, and then one day just - “hey, we’re back! Love us”. Not sure I can do that.
also Pocket cast works and sync on my Android phone, I believe overcast is iOS only
Totally fair. Like I said up there, I would probably use the current version of Castro until it broke, so this news is exciting but not needed for me. I also have a favorable subscription renewal time (late October) so I’ll know if they were serious about getting it out by then.
I am a big fan of Castro although I use PC for few years now.
I am on the most recent Castro testflight and although I welcome the slight new design, it does not have sync or iPad app. Presumably coming later…
Castro has always been a great iPhone only app and the most recent beta does not change that…
Interesting to hear about the Castro beta. Is there somewhere we can learn about the features?
Ugh… Thanks for the update, now I don’t have to bother requesting beta access. 
Is there anyway to join the TestFlight if you don’t have Twitter? I can’t contact guy.
@MitchWagner this is all I have:
@slyfox I would suggest you email directly to Castro support. Having said that, I do not believe they aren’t taking any new beta testers just yet.
That is confusing! But thank you nonetheless.
I agree. Basically, each section now has sub categories… so you can setup inbox to only show you tech podcasts or news podcasts because both tech and news is a category…
if you have many episodes in inbox for example, you can click on News and it will only show all podcasts that are of News genre.
I sent them an email a while ago asking if the app is still being supported. No response.
I always keep coming back to Overcast, having tried pretty much everything else. It’s not as visually exciting as some, but it is rock solid, the sync and updating “just works” and it sounds better than any other player (IMHO). I have some high frequency hearing loss and Overcast’s speech boost doesn’t distort anything, but means I can hear what podcasters are saying when I am in the car. I also like that it is private and not driven by advertising or using my data for gain.
I don’t get the dislike of playlists that several have mentioned: I want a list of what will be played and I might want several different lists (with different content or ordering). If you do that by filtering, it’s still a play list, isn’t it?
I wish I had it on my Mac, without the web interface, but that will be solved when I upgrade to Apple Silicon.
Castro is no longer supported. I have not heard back from the support team after several emails.
Has anyone tried Castamatic ?
This is the most recent public word from Castro. Hopefully that means an update this week, but software doesn’t always cooperate, of course.
