Developer Marco Arment launched the popular podcasting app Overcast a decade ago. Now, he has rebuilt and redesigned the app for the current era. While most the changes aren’t going to be visible, one main difference is that you can no longer stream podcast episodes. Instead, you have to rely on downloads.
Arment justifies this move by saying that dynamic ad insertion used by major podcasts breaks streaming playback. Plus, with today’s network speeds, downloading episodes before playing is a more reliable method for podcast consumption.
Besides this change, Arment spent almost 18 months rebuilding the app with modern frameworks and programming languages.
The core of the app remains the same, with functions like smart speed for silence skipping and voice boost. But there are some missing features at launch, such as Siri Shortcuts support, storage management, and OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) support for exporting and importing podcast subscriptions — those are coming soon.
“Most of Overcast’s code was ten years old, which made it cumbersome or impossible to easily move with the times, adopt new iOS functionality, or add new features, especially as one person,” he said in an in-app writeup.
“For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for its second decade.”
Arment’s note said that the app is faster and has easily reachable controls for large phones. Other features include an undo button if you accidentally jumped to a different part of the podcast and setting playlist priorities.
He also said that he is working on making options for downloading and deleting episodes smarter. Plus, he is working on updating the Apple Watch app.
Overcast is available as a free download in the App Store with an optional premium subscription to unlock more features and hide ads.
