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Comment by chadlavi | Hacker News Reader

One of the best? It's the only good one.

AntennaPod (for Android) is also fine. I briefly switched to android, and the lack of a working podcast app for iOS was one of the main things that delayed my switch back.

(I am happily using overcast now, but am bummed that I can’t browse my podcasts via my car’s bluetooth, like I could with android.)

+1 for AntennaPod. FOSS and no ads

It's what I use as well. It's fine, I use it because it has no ads but it doesn't always behave as expected. One example... When you're in a podcast and you swipe back, it closes down the app instead of going to the main screen where you have all your subscribed pods.

Yeah. That’s my main complaint with AntennaPod too. You have to tap the hamburger menu on the top left, when swipe back obviously makes more sense.

Back button and swipe behavior is configurable in Settings.

Pocket Casts is not only good, it's better

PocketCasts is pretty great, although I was grandfathered into my "pay-once" plan.

Same. I tried Overcast and liked much about it. I still like PocketCasts better though probably mostly because it’s familiar. If I wasn’t on the lifetime plan, I’d go with Overcast but for me I’m sticking with PocketCasts.

I paid for pocket casts a while back too when it was a one time payment. You are grandfathered in? What benefits did you grandfathered into? I don’t see any acknowledgment of my legacy status.

I should check this myself. I think I was also grandfathered into the pay once plan.

I've been using Podcast Addict for years and I love it. It was missing one thing that I wanted (sorting podcasts by fewest unlistened-to episodes), so I put in a feature request and it got added after a few weeks!

Same here. I wanted to filter a feed to only get the episodes longer than XX minutes and the developer told me on Twitter that the feature was added pretty recently. That's also the only app I'm a paid subscriber just to support its development.

Castro is more useful once you subscribe to enough feeds, and also looks and feels nice, but it costs twice as much per year.

+1 for Castro. I can't believe more podcast apps haven't caught on to how handy the email-like metaphor is for managing episodes.

I want to listen to some, but not all episodes that come in via my various feeds, so having an "inbox" of sorts from which I can either download or discard shows seems like the only reasonable way to handle things IMHO. I don't understand apps that just download everything or, like Overcast, mess around with playlists.

I agree, although a lot of listeners do listen to every episode of every show they subscribe to. It's just a personal choice.

I still use Overcast, though, but mimic the Castro behavior to a certain extent by having a "Latest" playlist and a "Starred" playlist. I look at "Latest" every day, star the ones I want to listen to, then eventually play from Starred.

This works fine for me, but probably skews the shows' stats a bit since I download many more episodes than I ever listen to.

Castro is also sluggish and crashes constantly, at least once your queue of unplayed episodes grows very long.

I believe you. Small queue/big inbox is a good experience for me and that's how I recommend people use it.

The new 2023 release squashed a number of bugs but had some performance regressions as well; they're in the midst of successive patches right now.

I forget why I didn't stick with Overcast (something I found weird about how it handles of downloads maybe?) but I've been thrilled with RSS Radio.

It's the only player I've tried that still gives the level of control that the early smartphone apps (~2010) did.

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