I’m currently using Podcast Addict. It’s free and it does an adequate job, but there must be better out there. What do you use and why?
I’ve been liking RSS Radio. Very simple, straightforward to use. The player has all the features you need, like jump 30 seconds forward or back.
I just got into podcasts recently (well, a year ago) and started with podcast addict, now on player FM. Not as much adware, not quite as intuitive. still meets my limited needs.
I currently use Pocket Casts. Seems fine. It does a good job synchronizing between multiple Android devices, which is an important feature for me (I use two phones and two tablets).
Same for me. Super easy to use with plenty of features. And it was nice when I switched phones and it synced up what I still had to listen to.
Pocket Casts is what I use, and it’s great, but for one or two little bugs that they can’t seem to shake.
I usually do my listening in my car, while my phone is connected by Bluetooth to the stereo. Pocket Casts very rarely starts playing on its own, and when it does, it doesn’t happen very quickly. But the bug that really annoys me is, after I manually start it playing, it almost always pauses after about 20 seconds, and I have to manually restart it. That usually means “after I’ve started driving”, which isn’t the best time to be looking at your phone. So, that bugs me.
I used to use Podcast Addict and even got the paid version. But recently, I’ve just been using the podcast functionality of Google Play Music in an effort to limit redundancy in my concurrently running apps.
I use Pocket Casts, which mostly works okay. I do have one big gripe though: when you subscribe to a new podcast it considers the historic episodes as “played”, with no way to distinguish them from episodes I have actually played. This is incredibly irritating when I intend to listen to older (or all) episodes, which is basically all the time.
I’m not sure if there is a player that doesn’t do that.
Those 2 bugs definitely eliminate Pocket Casts. My beef with Podcast Addict is 2-fold:
- the same thing Max Torque mentioned on startup (but doesn’t seem to freeze once it starts) and;
- when I subscribe to a podcast the episodes are listed in descending date of posting order (newest first). The player’s “play next automatically” feature also works from top to bottom. That means that to listen in date order I have to start at the bottom and manually queue up the next podcast, or listen in reverse order.
there must be a way to reverse the order, but I can’t find it. Ugh!
Sorry, also should have added that I use an Android device.
I’m very new to podcasts. In fact, I don’t really listen to podcasts but I’ve started my own podcast at the beginning of the month. Once you have one of these apps where do you get your podcasts from?
I know that iTunes and google play have built in media players but if you’re using one of these others how do you get the actual episodes?
I use Podcast Republic. It can do everything I want, and I like the interface. I don’t think it’s particularly awesome in any way, but it just works.
With RSS Radio you use the app to search for the podcast, then select which episodes you want to download. If you subscribe, the app searches for new episodes several times a day and automatically downloads when you have WiFi (this is how I have things set-up in settings). I also have mine set to delete episodes 24 hours after I’ve listened.
I had been using Podcast Republic until fairly recently, and mostly liking it, but I found that there were certain podcasts for which it would just not retrieve new episodes, even when I knew for a fact that they had been published. Sometimes they would appear days later, sometimes they would simply never show up at all. Just on one or two titles, but enough to be irritating.
Since then I have tried both Podcast Addict and Podbean, which both work well enough, but so far I haven’t figured out all the functionality of them. In particular, I can’t get playlists to work on either one, so when one podcast ends I have to start the next one manually, rather than having it just start automatically. Since I, too, listen to most of my podcasts while driving, this is not an optimal situation.
On the main Podcasts screen, tap the 3 vertical dots in the top right corner and select Display Settings. Scroll to custom sorting and check it. This will allow you to define sorts on the podcast level rather than globally.
Now, select the podcast you want and on the screen listing all the episodes, tap the 3 vertical dots again and select Sort. Choose Publication Date (Old-New) and now the episodes should be listed with the oldest on top and the play automatically should work correctly.
I use Google music for the majority of my podcasts as well. It does a great job of syncing across my phone, tablet and computer if I’m signed in. For anything that’s not available on Google Music, I use Podcast Addict.
I prefer to just download the MP3s and put them on my MP3 Player but I am finding some don’t let you do that anymore without signing up to the hosting service.
For Podcast Addict, go 3 dots>App Settings>Playlist and check Continuous Playback. That should make it so when you select a podcast, it makes a temporary queue of all the episodes it has for that podcast and just works its way down the list.
Thanks. I’ll give it a try.
I use Overcast, mainly for the Smart Speed function that intelligently shortens silences. According to the app, Smart Speed has saved me 212 hours over the course of ~5 years of podcast listening.
Not sure how I missed that, but I did! I would rather be able to set the sort preference globally, but this will do for now. Still looking at other apps.
You really like it, huh? It’s an option I’ve never tried. Doesn’t it mess with the normal cadence of speech? How does it sound different?