You can configure episode updates and notification settings from here as well. You can set the fast forward and rewind length and lockscreen controls in the playback settings. The settings in the app give you control of almost everything. Other features such as playback speed for downloaded episodes and episode sharing along with current position in episode sharing are available. I often listen to podcasts with a 30 minute timer while reading before falling asleep and am glad that Pocket Casts allows you to set a timer for any amount of time. One thing I have come to expect from podcast apps today is a sleep timer. Tapping it brings up the full player that has other controls like forwarding and rewinding along with scrollable show notes. When you play an episode, there is a mini player at the bottom that lets you play or pause the current podcast. When you start downloading a podcast, there’s a nice animated icon in the status bar indicating the current download in progress. Pocket Casts 4 makes full use of these to give you playback controls for podcasts on the lockscreen and in the notification pull down. I’ve mentioned multiple times how much I love the expandable notifications in Android 4.1 and above. The ability to choose a custom icon for each smart playlist is nice as the playlists are added to the sidebar. You can create playlists based on episodes that match a number of conditions like playing status, type and download status. The new smart playlist feature is pretty amazing. Pocket Casts 4 allows you to setup an account and sync your podcast parsing to Shifty Jelly’s online server so everything is lightning fast. One thing I did notice about Pocket Casts was how fast it was with retrieving information from the server and refreshing podcasts. You can mark an episode as played by tapping and holding until it is highlighted with arrows pointing to the right. Tapping on an episode allows you to stream or download it and has the show notes and other details visible. The entire app looks and feels perfect on an Android device. You can also search for a podcast by tapping the magnifying glass.Įach podcast page has a short description of the podcast along with a list of episodes and episode details below. Some had them listed in cells while others had the same tiled interface seen in the subscribed podcasts page. I was disappointed that each section in discover displayed podcasts differently. You can navigate between them by swiping as is expected in a holo themed app. The discovery section has categories like featured podcasts, popular podcasts, videos, networks and categories. Tapping the plus symbol takes you to the discover page. You can sort podcasts by date added, title and latest episode. The main podcast view features a nice cover art tiled interface and it adds solid colours to podcasts that don’t have cover art. The sidebar allows you to switch between your podcast and the discovery page along with playlist options. The app features the popular sliding pane interface that most modern Android apps use. It has near perfect tablet support and every little pixel in the app has been polished to perfection. Pocket Casts now looks great on my Nexus 7. Pocket Casts 4 for Android not only makes it fit perfectly with Android Jelly Bean but also makes it the best looking podcast app on any platform.Ĭoming from Instacast on iOS, Pocket Casts 4 (henceforth Pocket Casts) let me import the OPML file I exported from Instacast. Shifty Jelly is a team of 3 people and they explained why they went Android first in updating their podcast app. While the app looked relatively better than the other podcast apps on Android, it had no tablet support and felt too ancient compared to the modern operating system Android has become. Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly is available on iOS and Android. It is also the best overall podcast app on iOS. It has push notifications for new episodes, auto downloads and a variety of other power features. I have been using Instacast on iOS since version 2 and love it. While iOS has a native podcast app (albeit a shitty one) it gets the job done for most people. I subscribe to 32 podcasts and try and listen to every episode of each show. A paid podcast app caters to a smaller crowd. There are many free apps on every platform that have basic functionality. In Android Pocket Casts 4 for Android – The Best Looking Podcast App on Any Platform
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