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Overcast lost me after months of waiting for its disastrous redesign to be fixed. Castro is, in my opinion, the best replacement for feature equivalence. Howev

Overcast lost me after months of waiting for its disastrous redesign to be fixed. Castro is, in my opinion, the best replacement for feature equivalence. However, I actually chose standard Apple Podcasts. The transcriptions are a game changer.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zippergz 2y ago
I have zero issues with the design of Overcast. But rebuilding from scratch introduced so many incredibly disruptive bugs many of which are still not fixed even though the developer claims that almost all of the major issues have been addressed. Something seems fundamentally wrong with the syncing or data store. That's what sent me looking for alternatives after many years as a dedicated user.
akudha 2y ago
Currently paying for Overcast, but the recent changes (2-3 months ago?) are just annoying. They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now), OPML export is gone, can't get to a podcast from an episode in a playlist... and so on. All of this was working fine before the update. When something is working well, what is the point in needlessly "improving" it and making it worse? I just don't get it. Gonna switch to Castro, though it costs 2.5 times as Overcast
- jasonpbecker 2y ago
  All of these are fixed in the latest version (possibly just the beta that is about to be released to the store). That includes OPML export (which remained available online but has returned to the app), arranging items (always possible throughout, but there were some new sync bugs that had to be worked out, IIRC), Go To Podcast (click the three buttons, last option in menu) from an episode, etc.
- deergomoo 2y ago
  > They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now) You can drag and drop to change the order. Or are you talking about something else? > OPML export is gone Back as of literally ~30 mins ago
  - akudha 2y ago
    If I drag/drop and change the order, it gets reset if I add another item to the playlist (this was as of yesterday, don't know if they fixed it in today's release) Haven't checked today. Glad they put OPML back Edit: Just checked the ordering, it seems worse now. About 2-3 months ago (forgot when these features were broken), if I added an episode to a playlist, it will add it at the end of the playlist, the episode date didn't matter. Which I what I liked, as I can reorder the playlist however I want. Now I don't even know what order it is adding - it is no longer by date, neither is it at the end of the playlist.
leokennis 2y ago
It’ll depend per person, but I subscribe to around 30 podcasts. For some podcasts (like The NY Times Daily) I’ll skip 29 out of 30 episodes. For a select few I’ll listen to 9 out of 10. For the others, something in between. Apple Podcasts is the absolute worst for this use case. Even if I listen to all released episodes, I’m still lost to where my unplayed episodes are and what my listening queue looks like. Let alone if I want to exclude episodes from said queue.
lucasban 2y ago
Does it transcribe private feeds? I pay for the ad free streams for some of the podcasts I listen to the most, so if those aren’t transcribed then the usefulness diminishes
- thoroughburro 2y ago
  Just checked… looks like it doesn’t.
  - lucasban 2y ago
    Thanks for checking
- dabluck 2y ago
  We are going to add transcriptions soon for podcasts that include it in their feeds. No plans to add autog-enerated transcripts anytime soon, I'd rather show the feed that creators intend listeners to see.
  - lucasban 2y ago
    Thanks, hopefully that gets more common as apps add support.
gr2020 2y ago
Is there any sort of dynamic range compression available with Apple Podcasts? I've looked around, but can't seem to find anything. I find it especially necessary when listening in the car, so I've been using Overcast...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

zippergz 2y ago

I have zero issues with the design of Overcast. But rebuilding from scratch introduced so many incredibly disruptive bugs many of which are still not fixed even though the developer claims that almost all of the major issues have been addressed. Something seems fundamentally wrong with the syncing or data store. That's what sent me looking for alternatives after many years as a dedicated user.

akudha 2y ago

Currently paying for Overcast, but the recent changes (2-3 months ago?) are just annoying. They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now), OPML export is gone, can't get to a podcast from an episode in a playlist... and so on. All of this was working fine before the update. When something is working well, what is the point in needlessly "improving" it and making it worse? I just don't get it. Gonna switch to Castro, though it costs 2.5 times as Overcast

jasonpbecker 2y ago
All of these are fixed in the latest version (possibly just the beta that is about to be released to the store). That includes OPML export (which remained available online but has returned to the app), arranging items (always possible throughout, but there were some new sync bugs that had to be worked out, IIRC), Go To Podcast (click the three buttons, last option in menu) from an episode, etc.
deergomoo 2y ago
> They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now) You can drag and drop to change the order. Or are you talking about something else? > OPML export is gone Back as of literally ~30 mins ago
- akudha 2y ago
  If I drag/drop and change the order, it gets reset if I add another item to the playlist (this was as of yesterday, don't know if they fixed it in today's release) Haven't checked today. Glad they put OPML back Edit: Just checked the ordering, it seems worse now. About 2-3 months ago (forgot when these features were broken), if I added an episode to a playlist, it will add it at the end of the playlist, the episode date didn't matter. Which I what I liked, as I can reorder the playlist however I want. Now I don't even know what order it is adding - it is no longer by date, neither is it at the end of the playlist.

leokennis 2y ago

It’ll depend per person, but I subscribe to around 30 podcasts. For some podcasts (like The NY Times Daily) I’ll skip 29 out of 30 episodes. For a select few I’ll listen to 9 out of 10. For the others, something in between. Apple Podcasts is the absolute worst for this use case. Even if I listen to all released episodes, I’m still lost to where my unplayed episodes are and what my listening queue looks like. Let alone if I want to exclude episodes from said queue.

lucasban 2y ago

Does it transcribe private feeds? I pay for the ad free streams for some of the podcasts I listen to the most, so if those aren’t transcribed then the usefulness diminishes

thoroughburro 2y ago
Just checked… looks like it doesn’t.
- lucasban 2y ago
  Thanks for checking
dabluck 2y ago
We are going to add transcriptions soon for podcasts that include it in their feeds. No plans to add autog-enerated transcripts anytime soon, I'd rather show the feed that creators intend listeners to see.
- lucasban 2y ago
  Thanks, hopefully that gets more common as apps add support.

gr2020 2y ago

Is there any sort of dynamic range compression available with Apple Podcasts? I've looked around, but can't seem to find anything. I find it especially necessary when listening in the car, so I've been using Overcast...