I Tested 12 Podcast Apps… Here’s the Best One

There have been huge updates to iPhone podcast apps this year, like Overcast adding transcripts for every show, Apple Podcasts adding HLS video, Spotify and YouTube growing in popularity, and there's lots of apps from individual developers with new ideas for podcast players. So I'm going to go through the 12 best apps for podcasting on iPhone, and not just their phone apps, but which have great Mac apps, do they have apps for Apple Watch, what's behind the paywall, and at the end of this video, I'm going to crown the best podcast app for audio and the best app for video.

These are the 12 apps I'll be reviewing in this video, and you can also jump to an app by using the chapters below. But the first app let's go over is Overcast. Developer Marco Arment has now added transcripts for all shows. We'll get to that transcript and now playing screen in a moment, but it has been a while since I've checked out Overcast as a daily driver, and I really think the design has come a long way. You can actually customize this home page if you go to the settings app and then go down to customize home screen. You can choose to show or hide the playlist at any time, and then whether to show recent episodes or not. So if you just want to show the playlist and not recent episodes, you can do that, or show the episodes and not playlists. You can also customize the overall theme color, whether or not to always use the dark theme mode, or to have it follow your system dark mode setting.

Now if we go to a specific podcast like Primary Technology, that's my tech show. I'll be talking about a few of my shows, but QR code's here to actually follow them in whatever app you would like. Here on the show page, you can follow it, you can pin shows to the top of your list, episodes that you've already already played are grayed out, and you see the custom. here in the list. Really like that. I'll be pointing out which players do that. You can tap the eye icon to see the show notes and even see how many chapters are embedded there. When you tap an episode, you can choose to start playing it. You can tap the three dots and then add it to the up next queue to either play next or play at the bottom of the queue, and you can star an episode. I'll be commenting on the overall design of these different apps. I will say I'm not crazy about this long oval behind these controls. I prefer some of the other controls like in Pocket Casts, but we'll get to that. When you start playing an epic, the mini player down here shows the audio. You can add controls to the mini player in the settings, but when you open the now playing screen, you can quickly see the chapter list by tapping this icon here. You can also get to it just by swiping over. Really love the ability to get to the chapters that quickly, and a nice little animation moving between those panes. You can also go to the next chapter using this skip button here in the play bar. And I really like this option to skip to the next chapter quickly, and even a go back option if you wanted to go back. If you want chapters in your podcast and a nice showing of the chapter artwork, I think Overcast is one of the best for chapter navigation.

Now if you swipe over, you see the chapters. Swipe again, and here you have the transcript. Now transcripts function a little differently in every app, but I will link the episode of Accidental Tech Podcast where Marco describes the incredible system he has of Mac minis transcribing pretty much all the podcasts everywhere. It's an incredible story of how he got this to work, and he's doing it all himself. Now, what's great is you can navigate transcripts. So you can swipe up and down, tap on a place in the transcript, and the playback will jump to that section. You can also tap this icon to jump to the now playing section. I like even if you jump around in the transcript, there's still that option to go back to where you were playing before. And if for some reason a podcast doesn't have a transcript, like my new podcast Top 5 Tech, this is not listened to by enough people just yet. It just came out today. And so if you try to swipe over, you won't see the transcription just yet, but there's actually a little button here you can tap to transcribe it. It's really fast, and in just a few moments, now I have a full transcript of this episode as well. For implementing transcripts as a solo developer with an incredible system of Mac minis in the background doing the job, this implementation for transcripts is incredible.

And two other details about transcripts. Overcast, as far as I can tell, is the only podcast app which will transcribe private feeds. That means if you support a show and you've added the RSS feed via Memberful, Patreon, Overcast will give you a transcription of those shows as well. And it acts just like the other transcriptions. Transcripts where you can tap to navigate. And a second nice little detail, when audio is playing in the background, you'll actually see these little notes in the transcript. So if the show you listen to plays music behind their ads, you can look for those notes, look for the ending point, and then you can skip the ads easily that way. Neither Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or Spotify will provide transcripts for those kinds of member feeds. For instance, I support the Vergecast, I get the ad-free shows here, but there is no transcript available when I'm listening to those. You can see that is actually grayed out. Can't generate it, nothing. And the same is true for Pocket Casts. Here's some of my member feeds for those who support Primary Technology. I can play an episode, but if I try to tap the transcript, it will show you that no transcript is available. And with Spotify, I struggled to even get member feeds into this app. So I don't even know, but I don't think it provides transcripts for those private RSS feeds either. And as someone who supports multiple shows, being able to get that transcript, whether it's a free podcast or I pay for it, is awesome. And I think Overcast is the only app doing it.

Now, a couple more things on the Now Playing screen. You do have some controls down here. Tapping the audio waveform, you can change the playback speed and smart speed and voice boost, which Marco has baked into the app. And I know a lot of people love these features. Personally, I listen to podcasts at one time speed with none of these effects, but I'll point out which apps have these or not, and you can customize them per podcast. Nice little animation there with the glow icon. You can set your sleep timer here, AirPlay, and then tap the three dots, and you can do things like start this episode, go to the podcast, view the transcript, which is nice, and even share a link that is timestamped to this part in the episode.

Now, one thing I wish was easier to get to from this Now Playing screen was your Up Next queue. One of my common practices is seeing what episode is about to play next, and maybe I want to change that. In order to get to your queue, you do have to go back to your homepage, and you need the playlist visible in order for this to be pretty seamless. But now I can go to my queue. I can see what's coming up next. If I want to reorder them, you can just tap and hold and drag them around, which is nice, or you can tap the three dots, edit them, and actually remove some. from the list, or there's lots of swipe actions as well to like mark as played, delete it, or even star an episode. It's a nitpicky thing, but my up next cue is how I really navigate playing podcasts. And so I just wish there was a little quicker way to get to that cue from this now playing screen, maybe as one of the panes that you could swipe through.

Now, if you're on the free version of Overcast, many of these features, including transcripts, are available, but Overcast Premium is $30 a year, which will remove some of those ads and a couple other nitpicky features. Seek forward by, I wish there was a longer than 90 seconds option. here. I do listen to some shows where the ad breaks are multiple minutes, like three to four minutes long, and there is one podcast app that gives more options than that. But one setting that I'm glad has been added since the last time I really took a look at Overcast was the skip intro and outro. So if you know the podcast you listen to has like a minute-long intro, maybe it's ads, maybe it's just a boilerplate intro, you can choose to skip those per show here in Overcast.

You can also download Overcast through the App Store on your Mac. It's basically a Catalyst version of the iOS app here here on the Mac, but it still works really well. to the chapters. You still get that skip forward with the go back buttons here. I'm not running the test light version here on my Mac, but I believe the transcripts would be here as well. Overcast also has one of the best Apple Watch apps for syncing episodes. Not only can you see what's playing on your phone and control that, but you can also have those episodes downloaded, and it's clear what episodes are physically on the watch. So if you're going to go for a walk and you're going to leave your phone behind, you can see what episodes are playable right here. You also have access to the different playlists that you've set up, and you can even scroll down and if you want to download an episode right from the watch app, you can do that. Even saying yes, download right now, keep the screen on so it fully downloads. Really robust controls for the Apple Watch. I had no idea there was a built-in Pong game. Whoa, okay, bonus points for that. The download is going to be slow, but at least you can do it here on your watch and enjoy the Pong while it does it.

But one feature I wish was added to the per show settings was whether or not to add new episodes to the top or bottom of the queue. When you're looking at a specific episode like this and you want to add it. you can do the play next or play last. I just wish this setting was actually in the show settings so I could say new episodes go to the top of my queue or the bottom. So that's Overcast. An incredible new update with the transcripts for all podcasts, and we'll be coming back to that in a minute. A reminder, Overcast Premium is $30 a year. There's no monthly option, and it mainly hides the banner ads. There's also an unlock everything, but most of the features like transcripts, those are coming for everybody. Playlist, up next queue, all those features are in the free version. Also a great widget here on the iPhone.

Next up, let's talk about Apple Podcasts. This has been my default podcast app for the last several years. I still really love the design. Apple Podcasts does allow creators to actually upload certain artwork. It is a process and not something that you can do from your host. You basically have to contact Apple directly. So it's a bit of a laborious process, but then you can have a really nice looking show art. Also, I really love in this up next cue on the home tab, where when you have a podcast that actually has custom episode artwork, that artwork has shown nice and big right. here when that new episode drops. I also like the library view and how I navigate Apple Podcasts because the up next queue is not great. We'll get to that in a second. I just go to my latest episodes and treat this as my queue. These are any episodes that I've not listened to yet, and I'll just go to this pane and press play.

But where the podcast design really shines is in the now playing screen and also the new video feature. So when you're looking at a specific episode, show notes are still not formatted as nicely as third-party apps like Overcast and Pocket Casts. But if you go custom episode artwork, even for bonus episodes and subscriber-only episodes are shown nicely here in this list. And of course, you can support podcasts directly in Apple Podcasts for things like bonus content. That whole process is a bit convoluted and laborious. I've talked about it on Primary Tech, I'll find an episode and link it over here. But people who want to be able to support and get ad-free versions just with their Apple account and not have to pay through Memberful or another service. It's a nice feature.

Now when you're playing an episode here in Apple Podcasts. I still think they're now is one of the best looking. Now, it'd be nice if there were more swipe controls. When you're looking at this episode listing, you can choose to remove the download or mark it as unplayed or add it to the queue, but no options to like star or bookmark three episodes in those swipe actions. You can tap the three dots and you can save it, which is like bookmarking or starring this episode. And you do have the play next, mark is unplayed, and also viewing the transcript. But we'll get to that transcript again in a moment.

If you're playing a podcast that does not offer video directly in Apple Podcasts, you get one of the best experiences for chapter. chapters and chapter artwork. You can actually see the timeline segmented, and there's even haptic feedback if you're going to be scrubbing across this timeline and going to another chapter. You can also tap this icon here and see the full chapter list along with your up next cue. Audio-only shows that have chapters and chapter artwork. I think this looks great. That color actually changes to match whatever is in the chapter artwork, which is really cool. And if the show doesn't have video, it is one of the most beautiful transcript experiences. Not only is Apple transcribing shows on their end, it follows along nicely here, you can search the transcript, and you can also share a link to this timestamp in an episode by tapping on the transcript, holding, and then you can share from, and you'll get a link just to share from that timestamp. You can also tap here and just choose to share the episode from the start. You can also tap and hold, and you can do the select text if you want to copy and paste some of that transcript. So for audio-only shows, especially ones that let Apple transcribe it, it's really nice.

But the big new feature for Apple Podcasts has been shows with video in the latest. "Primary Technology" again, my weekly tech podcast. We've adopted video, and you can still listen to it with the video off, or you can choose to turn the video on. But the whole experience gets worse aside from the video. Namely, there is a transcript, but it doesn't follow along with what's actually being spoken. Another app actually has transcripts for videos and it follows along, so Apple could surely do it, but that part is a worse experience, and you can't also share from the timestamp from the transcript anymore. So if a show has You lose a bunch of those features, and unfortunately chapters are gone when you add video to your show. Now I've added chapter timestamps in the episode description, which I wish there was a way to show the show notes easily from the now playing screen. The only way to do it is to actually tap right here on the episode title, which people might not know that right away, but I put the chapter timestamps down here at the bottom, and you can tap a timestamp and choose to play from there, but it is nowhere near as good a chapter experience as with audio-only. even here in Apple Podcasts.

Now, Apple also added features like enhanced dialogue, which is kind of like the voice boost feature in other podcasts. You have the different playback speeds here. Again, I leave mine at 1x, believe it or not. And of course, you have the sleep timer here as well. But one of the weakest parts of the Apple Podcasts app is the up next cue. You can tap here. And as you can see, my cue is empty for some reason, even though there's new episodes of shows that I already listened to. Now, I can add an episode to a cue by tapping the three dots. I can tap play next. And that episode will show up in that cue. OK, great. Well, if I tap that episode to want to jump to it, the episode I was listening to disappears. That's not a great behavior. Other apps like Pocket Cast will put whatever episode you are currently listening to back in the cue to play next. I feel like that's how it should be. Also, you can weirdly add shows back to the up next cue, even while you're listening to it. I've had this happen multiple times where I add an episode to the up next cue, but it was already in my continue playing area. So the episode basically repeats as soon as it's over. Other apps, again, like Pocket Cast is smart enough not to duplicate the episode in the up next cue. So I still feel like the weakest part of the Apple Podcasts app is the up next cue. And that's why I mainly go to my library.

And here you can also create custom stations like you create playlists and Overcast or Pocket Casts. But I just go to the latest episode area, mark episodes as played. And I treat this as my up next cue, even though it doesn't really work that way. Also, if I add shows to my cue, so I'll add a couple here. I'll play another show. So maybe I just wanted to start listening to the show I've had cued for a while. Now, if I go to my cue, these episodes are here. But sometimes they'll also be a continue playing area. And it's just not great. Now, there are some settings for Apple Podcasts, but of all the podcast apps, it basically has the least amount. There is a new toggle for downloading the video or leaving that toggled off. If you need to save some iPhone storage, I would keep that toggled off. You can choose to hide played episodes. There's continuous playback. The skip forward maxes out at 60 seconds. Mac apps at least give you 90. I feel like 60 seconds is nowhere near enough for the skip forward and back. And there's no options to do things like skip the intro of a show. And there's just really not a lot of show-specific options in general.

Now going to their other apps, I feel like the Mac app and the overall sync for Apple Podcasts has improved over the last year. I do find, like you just saw in my up next cue, that omnibus episode did show up in my up next here on the homepage. And it's been syncing my time left or current progress on episodes pretty well. The Mac app is overall pfft. Strangely, you can't watch video for shows that have added video in the Mac app, although you can watch it in the iPhone and iPad and on the web for some reason. Also, the podcast app on Apple TV still doesn't have video either, which feels really bizarre. There is also a decent Apple Watch app for Apple Podcasts. There's also a nice live activity for when you're actually listening to an episode. So if I start playing it here on my phone, you'll see it appear here on my watch. I can see my up next cue here on my Apple Watch, I can go to my home library and access even my my latest episodes, which have synced. If I try to play an episode, it is a really nice design on the Apple Watch, taking colors from the episode or show artwork and putting it here on the Apple Watch face. But I find the Apple Watch app doesn't sync as well as things like Overcast and the Pocket Cast Apple Watch app. And it's a little more difficult to see what episodes are physically on the watch versus on the phone and actually making sure they're downloaded before you leave the house without your phone. So the Apple Watch app is fine, not as good as the other apps. Apple Podcasts has been my default player again for years, but we'll see if that changes after this video. I also use the Apple Podcast widgets here on my iPhone. They have all the sizes, medium, large, and I do like their small size widget, which will actually change the color of the widget depending on the show that's currently playing.

Next up is one of my favorite podcast apps for years, and that's Pocket Cast. Number one, I love the opening podcast page for the show. I like seeing all the artwork for all the shows that I follow. Easy to search for a podcast or add the RSS feed right from the main page. Now, before I talk about all the features, is a difference between the free and paid version. It's either $4 a month or $40 a year for Pocket Casts Plus. Things like folders for your shows, bookmarks, selecting chapters for playback, the cloud storage for sideloading apps, the Apple Watch app, and generated transcripts. Those features are behind the Pocket Casts Plus plan.

Now when it comes to actually going to a show page, unfortunately, it doesn't show the episode artwork for each episode. That's unfortunate, as Apple Podcasts and Overcast shows that custom artwork, which is really nice. And even if you go into a specific episode, it doesn't show the artwork here. But I do really like how Pocket Cast displays the show notes as one of the most nicely formatted ones. And there's lots of power features just right here on the episode listing. You can see your progress for different episodes just by seeing the little circle around the play button. Lots of swipe actions for adding to your queue, sharing, or archiving an episode. And actions if you swipe the other way. And I really love some of the custom settings Pocket Cast places for each show. When you choose to add new episodes of a show to your Up Next queue, which is, I think, the best of any app. You can choose the position, whether to go to the top-- That's one of my favorite features in Pocket Casts. And also you can choose the skip first or skip last part of a show. So if you want to skip the first 45 seconds of a show or a minute, you can do that as well. And one other settings shout out, there are lots of settings here for general notifications appearances, but if you go to the general tab, the skip forward button, you can make this all the way up to like a lot of minutes. So if you want that skip forward to be five minutes, if you listen to some shows with super long ad breaks, I love the ability to just have that be almost as long as you want. You can also customize episode grouping, row actions, the intelligent playback resumption, which Overcast had that as well, where it'll go back a little bit to make sure you caught what you might have missed. So lots of great settings for like power features.

Then when you start actually playing an episode, I think the now playing screen is really good. First, you get to see the custom chapter artwork right here in the now playing screen. You can use these little two arrows to navigate between chapters. And you can also choose to bookmark specific sections of an episode. So if I want to create a bookmark, rather than just starring the episode, I can actually create those bookmarks for the timestamps, especially if you want to talk about or write about something in an episode. Really handy. Then you can also see my skip forward button is super long. You can swipe over and see the show notes right here, which is great. And you can swipe again and see all the chapters. Overall, I really like the now playing section of Pocket Cast the best. Plus, you have all the playback controls here, including a volume boost, trim, silence, and the speed. You can adjust these per podcast or globally, and you can tap the three dots and you also can star the episode, set your. Sleep timer, add it to a playlist, which you can do custom playlists as well. And you can share a link to the episode, the podcast as a whole, or a timestamp link to the current position. You can also clip the podcast. And what I love about Pocket Casts is the up next queue is just a tap away. Now I can see all the episodes are gonna be playing next. I can choose to shuffle it. I can select some if I wanna remove it, select them all. And it's very easy to just tap and drag episodes up and down. It has been this way for a long time, But I find Pocket Casts up next queue and the way to manage it. of any app. I love that it's easily accessible. There's even swipe actions here in the up next queue. You can move it to the top or bottom of a list. And then if you go back to a shows page, you can go to the bookmarks. And now you can see all the timestamps that you've bookmarked to different episodes. Again, that is a plus feature, but really nice. There's also a tab here at the bottom to navigate to the up next queue. Specifically, I like that you can get to it multiple ways. And of course, you can create multiple playlists if you'd like to do that. But whenever I'm using Pocket Casts, I'm usually using the up next queue.

There's no video option here in Pocket Cast, at least the HLS video. You can watch shows that have done video for years using Video RSS specifically, and you can start playing it, and it will play the video here in Pocket Cast. But there's no HLS video or switching between video and audio like in Apple or Spotify and YouTube, which we'll get to. Also, if you have Pocket Cast Plus, it will generate transcripts for shows automatically, so you can get a transcript per show, but if a creator or podcast provides transcripts via the RSS feed, those are actually... right here in Pocket Casts. Now, just to specify, when it comes to transcripts, Pocket Casts will either use a creator's transcript from the RSS feed or generate its own if the podcast doesn't provide it. That is the same with Apple Podcasts. It will honor the transcript uploaded by the creator or create its own. Overcast doesn't seem to honor the transcript that I've actually included in the RSS feed. So like this episode of Primary Technology, there is actually a transcript linked in the RSS feed that other apps like Pocket Cast-- and Apple Podcasts will actually honor. But if I go to the transcript for this episode, you'll see that this was actually generated by the Overcast system. So it seems to ignore the transcript linked in the RSS feed, which, to be honest, most shows don't include. But if a show does, that is not shown here in the Overcast app. If I'm wrong about that, Marco, let me know. But back to Pocket Cast, the transcript doesn't follow along as someone is speaking. I've actually uploaded a .srt version of the transcript, which includes timestamps throughout. So it should be able to at least-- at least go line by line or paragraph by paragraph, but the transcript just does not follow along. You can also tap the transcript and share from it like you can in Apple Podcasts, but you can search for it and also just share the transcript from the share sheet. Also, if you search for something, you can see all the results for that search down here, but you can't actually tap to go to that part of the episode, which is unfortunate. So the transcript experience in Pocket Casts is not the best.

Now, one nice feature that Pocket Casts and the Castro app offers is being able to. sideload audio files. So here in my file section, if you have Pocket Cast Plus, you can add these just raw MP3 files or even import them from your files app and just play them as normal podcasts. This is great for like previewing an edit of a show like Mac Power Users. So if I had the actual MP3 file, but the show is not live yet, I can actually listen to it in Pocket Cast like a podcast. If chapters are embedded in the MP3, Pocket Cast sees and honors those as well. And you get all the controls like you would if it's a normal podcast. I can also add audio into the Pocket Cast app. For instance, I can tap and hold on an audio file just in my files app. And you can see I can sideload to a couple other podcasts app we're gonna talk about like Sniped and Fountain, but you see I have the option to just send it to Pocket Cast and also to apps like Downcast and iCatcher, but not Apple Podcasts or Overcast. If I tap Pocket Cast, it'll just open the file in the Pocket Cast app. I can even add an image if I wanted to, tap save. And now I can treat that audio file as though it's any other podcast episode. I can add it to my up next. And on the plus plan, the sideloaded files of audio actually get synced to the Pocket Cast cloud.

Pocket Cast also has a great Mac app. You do download it directly from their website, not the App Store. But as you can see, there's a whole section for those files, and the same files that I've been adding on my iPhone, they get synced over to the Mac app. I also find that the playback syncing for Pocket Cast and syncing shows I follow my overall library. It is one of the best and fastest syncing back ends. I'm playing this episode of Top Five Tech. That's my new show where just five minutes every Friday, I share my top picks of the week. And if I pause it here on the Mac, here back in Pocket Cast on my iPhone, the episode is already here, even in that little mini player. And if I press play, I can pick up right where I left off. Overcast still is really good sync. Apple Podcast sync has gotten better. But however, Pocket Cast does it. It feels super fast, really good. Pocket Cast also has a great Apple Watch app, I think arguably one of the best. There's no hidden Pong game, which is pretty wild. with the Pocket Cast Apple Watch. If you go all the way back to like the front screen, you can choose whether to play back from the Apple Watch or the phone. I love this very clear binary option. You can choose to play from the phone. You can even see the now playing is what's now playing the Top Five Tech. Your up next cue is still synced between the Apple Watch and the phone. Again, syncing is super great with Pocket Cast. I can see the whole up next cue right here on my watch. And it's very clear that if I want to go for a walk, leave my phone behind, I can see what episodes are here on the watch as well. Start playing it directly from the watch. I can make sure it's downloaded and I'm good to go. You even get the playback controls right here. And if you swipe over, you can mark it as played or even see the episode details. Even all these options like to start the episode, remove it from the app next, delete it from the download. You get the nice artwork there. I do think Pocket Cast has one of the best Apple Watch apps.

All right, next up is Castro. I know a lot of people love the Castro app. Now I don't pay for the Plus subscription. Castro Plus is $4 a month or $25 a year. a lot of money going with the annual plan if you want things like syncing playback, you need to subscribe to Plus. You get synced playback with Overcast, Pocket Cast, and Apple Podcasts for free. You can also sideload or play your own audio files from iCloud Drive. That's part of the Plus plan. The trim silence and enhance voices, that's behind the paywall, and hide banner ads, and that's one of the biggest things I've noticed trying to use Castro for the last couple weeks. It feels like there are a lot of ads. If I go to my inbox showing the latest episodes, you'll see there's a promoted show or episode right up here. I've been trying to dismiss them as we go. Obviously, you see the curated by Castro here in the explore page. If you want it to use Castro, I would really remove all that.

Now being a podcast listener that really navigates using the up next queue, I like that Castro makes that big and it's a whole tab right here in the navigation. You can go to the library view. You see all your shows, and the inbox shows you the latest episodes. If you go to an actual show, Castro actually displays the custom episode artwork right here in the list. So that's a plus. There are specific show settings. Like skip the intro and outro. But again, that's behind the paywall, and there's actually not swipe actions here per episode. If you tap an episode, then you get the actions down here at the bottom. You can add to the top of the queue, the bottom, star of the episode, and then tap the three dots and you get a couple more options. If I tap to go into the episode details, you do see these show notes, font styles, and some of the other design choices. You really have to like what Castro has done. It is pretty opinionated design, but it also shows the transcript. If a creator has provided that. Playing an episode, you'll see the now playing down here. I can tap the arrow to bring it up again. Very opinionated design and iconography. And you do get ads even here in the now playing screen. If you don't pay for the Plus, there is chapter navigation using these very small arrows right here. If you want to pre-select chapters, that is part of the Castro Plus. You can actually clip and make a little video file to share on social media with Castro. So that's nice. And if you swipe over, you get things like the sleep timer, playback speed, but also features like enhanced voice and trim silence. get behind the paywall. Also, kind of like Overcast, there's not a super quick way to get back to the cue or whatever episode is playing next. You do get the transcript from the Now Playing screen, and you can search it, but it doesn't follow along like it does in Apple Podcasts or Overcast.

Now, there are a lot of settings here in Castro, like for chapters, if you want to show the chapter artwork or show the chapters, that's behind the Plus. If you want to adjust the skip forward and backward buttons, that's also behind the Plus. Basically, if you want to use Castro, paying for the Plus actually gives you the full experience. Now Castro does have a Mac app. It doesn't feel great. It seems like a Catalyst app, but maybe that hasn't been touched for a while. And Castro does have an Apple Watch app. You can control what the iPhone is playing, or you can swipe over and actually play something directly from the watch if you upgrade. But I do like that it specifies what's on the phone versus what's on the watch. And like I said before, you can sideload individual audio files into the Castro app. And if you absolutely love Castro, let me know down in the comments of this video what it is you really love about it. If it's the sideloading, if you subscribe to Plus, and it's just a really great experience.

Now when it comes to podcast players, Spotify is actually one of the most popular, especially because it's cross-platform. But Spotify actually has some really good features. Now, I'll be honest, I don't want my podcast playing in the same app as music. So if that's a deal-breaker for you, like it is for me, then Spotify might not be for you. But if you go to the podcast tab, Spotify does try really hard to help you discover new shows. We've actually found some benefit from that. People find Primary Technology because we upload video directly to Spotify, and there's a feed of basically suggested shows and episodes. But you can go over to the following tab, and this will show you the latest episodes of just shows that you actually follow. If we go to an episode of Primary Technology, creators can actually upload vertical clips, or Spotify will actually clip your show automatically. So again, really leaning on the discovery features there. But Spotify does show chapters, and those chapters work both for video and audio. You also get the full show notes. Formatting is okay. Not as good as Pocket Cast and Overcast, but you have the full show notes. And when you actually start playing an episode, like in Apple Podcasts, you can switch between video and audio. Now, creators have to upload their video directly to Spotify for creators. I do that every week. But as you can see, even with the video, I can tap chapters and I get all the same great chapter experience. I can tap a chapter and it will literally go to that, even in the video version or the audio. I really hope Apple Podcasts implements chapters like Spotify did. Never thought I would ask that Apple implement a Spotify feature, but. here in the Spotify app. Spotify also has comments for shows, which we'll look at a couple apps that offer things like that. You get the full show notes when you're playing here as well. And you also get the episode transcript, and it will follow along both for video and audio. Now Spotify is not pulling this from my RSS feed. They're generating their own transcripts, but you get the transcript and it follows along basically word for word, and you can swipe around the transcript. You can even tap and it will play from that point in the transcript. You can't tap and hold and share like and Apple Podcasts. If you want transcripts and chapters, if you want those all in one app and have a pretty decent experience, the Spotify podcast playback experience is pretty good. I can also go to a specific show, and creators can either upload custom episode artwork or a full-on thumbnail. So I'm actually uploading the YouTube thumbnails per episode, but Spotify shows it here in the episode listing, which is pretty nice. Also, if you wanted to add an episode to your up next queue, you can tap the three dots. You see the subtitles, they're auto-generated. You can add to a playlist and add it to your queue. And when you're here on the now playing screen, you can get to the queue just by tapping that little symbol. You see all the episodes that are coming up. You got your speed playback, your sleep timer, and you can drag episodes up and down, but you have to be a Spotify Premium subscriber to do that, which seems kind of wild. It's a weird feature to put behind a paywall when they're not paywalling transcripts or chapters or video, but there you have it. You can also share an episode, and Spotify creates a nice little card here. You can copy the link. And if you go to your library, You can also create playlists. Spotify now even uses AI to create playlists, and it will include episodes of podcasts it thinks you'll like, which is again nice for discovery. Honestly, for those features like switching between video and audio with chapters with a transcript, Spotify is one of the best experiences. Now, unfortunately, it is also in there with all the music, and you might hear ads because you don't have Spotify Premium. But overall, the Spotify app has actually come a long way.

Now when it comes to settings, you're not going to see as many podcast-specific settings like in other apps. And these settings are applying to kind of both music. And podcasts, so you're not going to have like the skip intro per episode or making the skip forward button several minutes like you can in Pocket Casts. So there's some just weird trade-offs for using Spotify as a podcast player. You also have the desktop app if you want to use that. But again, it's music and podcasts all in one. Spotify does have an Apple Watch app as well. It's mainly for controlling playback on the phone, but you can swipe across, find something to play. It doesn't seem like you can load episodes onto the watch to play without the phone. So it's really more like a phone playback controller.

Now, speaking of apps with video and audio, YouTube Music is still an option, and it is cross-platform. It's on Android and iPhone. Now, you're still dealing with music and podcasts being put into the same app, which creates some clutter in my opinion. But if you go to a specific show, you can actually see the custom thumbnails in the episode listing. Pretty small, but they are there. And I hesitate to really call this a podcast player app because it's not pulling anything from an RSS feed. The show notes have to be formatted like they would be on YouTube, meaning not HTML links. Your link has to be fully laid out like that. But the playing experience when it comes to video and audio is pretty good. You can switch between audio and video here at the top. And if you like YouTube, well, this is the most YouTube experience in a quote unquote podcast app. You can like a video, you can comment, you can see all the engagement there. You can pull up the show notes. Again, they have to be formatted like they are on YouTube, but you actually get a pretty nice up next cue. So if you're using this for podcast playing, whether it's podcasts like Mac Power Users and you're gonna watch the video, or if you've added an RSS feed, like my private member feed for Accidental Tech Podcast, you can move all this around, and it's a pretty decent experience.

Now YouTube will actually caption everything that's uploaded. So you can turn on captions. If a creator has provided them like I do, it will be the uploaded SRT file, or you can get the YouTube generated captions, but there's no transcript view. So I can't see like a full version of the transcript, navigate via the transcript, which is a shame because the whole transcript is there. That's literally what the captions are coming from, but YouTube Music won't let you... navigate the transcript like in the other apps. I'm not one to use YouTube Music as a podcast player, and it doesn't have a lot of the features like... customizing the skip forward and back buttons. There's not a great way to navigate the chapters. You have to go to the details pane, tap a chapter timestamp, and then it will jump to it. And also, when I added a private feed, like if you support Primary Technology, and you add your private RSS feed, YouTube Music has to process that feed for some time, and it kind of takes a while. Not sure why that is. And also, there's no custom chapter artwork if you're listening here. There's no chapter artwork in Spotify, because the video is really the only piece of content, and you're just either turning the video on or off. And there's not really a desktop app for YouTube Music, it's YouTube, like the website.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Pocket Cast also has a really nice widget, both medium and small sizes. YouTube Music also has a widget. Spotify has their widget, multiple sizes, and Castro has their widget as well. And another app with actually a nicer looking widget is Sofa. Now, I've talked about Sofa before, done entire videos, but there was recently a huge upgrade to version 5. Not only a podcast player, but also an everything app. It is working to keep track of the books you're reading, video games, movies, TV shows, all of that. And there's actually a pretty nice podcast player now built into the Sofa app as well. So if you're looking for one app to rule them all for your media consumption, Sofa might be it. You can see some of the newer design with Liquid Glass, Sofa version 5. And if you go to the player, nice up next queue right here. I'll play an episode, and you can see the now playing screen, honors chapter artwork. You can navigate chapters using the little here, which is nice, and you can even tap here and see the full chapter listing. Nice little animations there. You can tap here and see the show information. Show notes are formatted very nicely, on par with Pocket Casts and Overcast, and there are some playback controls like listening speed, sleep timer, and voice boost. And you can also manage your up next cue right here. You can tap and drag episodes up and down. Again, I like when podcast players put an icon to get directly to the up next cue from the now playing screen, but it is a really nice podcast. app.

Now, there are a number of settings for podcast playback. You can go directly to the podcast player settings here. There are swipe actions. You can seek forward up to 90 seconds, better than a minute. But

Again, I like to see two, three, and more minute options. When finished, you can add episodes to your logbook, which is where all your movies, shows, and everything that you've watched and consumed can be put there. And you also have individual podcast settings. So I can go to Primary Technology, set an episode limit. I see the feed link right here. There's not specific settings to like skip the first minute of an episode, or things like booking timestamps. You don't have transcripts, and obviously, you don't have video.

But if you like keeping track of all your media in one place, I would check out Sofa. Now, the Super Sofa plan, which unlocks features across the app, not just podcasting, for four bucks a month or $30 a year. But you don't need to pay for it to actually listen to podcasts just in the app.

Some other podcast apps I want to mention: Newscast, pretty straightforward app. You can go to a show. There's no custom episode artwork here, and it doesn't even show the episode artwork when you expand the episode. Pretty opinionated design here, very like large podcast title up at the top. You can bookmark an episode. You get all the episode listings here, and there's a tab just for chapters if you want to tap there. And one feature I do like to call out: there's this links tab. Basically, all the links that have been included in the show notes, you can view it here under the links tab. Has a nice little preview of an image here, the title of the article, and you can tap one and then open it in Safari. That is unique to Newscast, and I do like that feature.

Overall, I don't prefer the now playing screen. The library view is pretty minimal. There is a good up next queue, and you can add episodes to play next or add to the bottom of the queue. And you can also just see a timeline of the recent episodes for all your shows. Again, it's more of a minimal player. I wish there was more artwork and design kind of here in the episode page and now playing screen, but I do like that links feature. So shout out Newscast for that.

Another good app is Q. Q has a lot of fun animations around the app. So if you want to play an episode, you can actually see like little bubbles here in the mini player down at the bottom. There's fun animations when you expand something like the episode view. Opinionated design here when it comes to fonts and colors, but I like that it shows the episode artwork here. You can favorite the episode. Pretty nice formatting for the show notes, not as good as Pocket Casts or Overcasts, but formatted pretty well. You can tap to show the chapters. That is behind a premium subscription, $30 a year, $5 a month. You can see episode chapters are behind there. Custom skip intervals is also behind the paywall. You also won't find any transcripts here. And when you go to an actual show page, you don't see the custom episode artwork for each show. But when you press play, again, little tiny nice animations. There's also some preferences here. You can set the skip forward interval. You do again have to unlock the premium for that.

Q does have nice widgets, and you can see all the podcasts you follow in the app in the library view. Again, it's more of a minimal app, but nice design, nice little animations, but no transcript view, no chapter artwork visible, and the chapter navigation is behind that paywall. No watch apps for Newscast and Q, just FYI.

Now, real quick, just want to mention these last three as apps of interest. Sniped app. If you're a really heavy podcast listener, I would not recommend this, but it has some interesting ideas for a show. So if I play an episode here, again, last episode of Primary Technology, you got the queue, the play, but there's basically a bunch of AI features where you can get things like bullet points, a summary. It does show the chapters, which is nice, and the now playing screen is okay. You got your queue right here, so kudos for that, and you can tap the three dots.

But what this app is really made for is you can create a snip where you can create a new write something with the timestamp of what you're listening to. You can edit that, you can even tag it. And so if you really want to listen to podcasts because you're pulling information, you want to be able to organize and archive that, and then also run AI processing on this episode, you do have to pay for this feature. It is $7 a month or $84 a year, but you can run AI on the podcast. So if you listen to a lot of maybe leadership or business podcasts, and you're just interested in that information, I guess Sniped is a good option. Doesn't seem like it's an app for actually listening to and enjoying podcasts. It's more just to kind of extract information out of it, but, but yeah, that's Sniped.

There's also Downcast, which I actually had a listener say they use and enjoy. Downcast. It feels very utilitarian in its design. As you can see, there's no like episode artwork. Like the text and design is very like close to the edges. It feels a little claustrophobic, honestly, but it does support chapter artwork. You can skip forward things like two minutes. You can pull up the chapter list here and even shows the chapter artwork in this list. You can actually swipe on the artwork to go forward and back between chapters. You can create playlists. There is a bunch of settings here. You can choose to skip the beginning and end, but it seems to apply to all podcasts. It's not podcast specific, so not sure how useful that is. And you can adjust the skip forward really far. I mean, up to 10 minutes. Again, it is missing some features. You don't get transcripts. Again, the design is very utilitarian, but wanted to mention it because some people apparently love it. And it does actually do a pretty decent job of chapters, especially with the chapter artwork and the chapter navigation down here.

And last podcast app I want to mention, this is the most podcast standard forward app there is. This is the Fountain app, and this actually supported HLS video before Apple Podcasts. And what that means is if a creator includes an HLS video link with their episodes, which Primary Technology does this thanks to Transistor.fm, our host, and this is one of the few apps that actually take advantage of that. With Fountain, you can actually switch between audio and video. And if you switch to the audio side of an episode, and you get all the chapters, whether it's audio or video, you don't get the chapter artwork, unfortunately. But you can look at the show notes here, formatted okay. Text is a little small. And again, most of the shows that you might see in Apple Podcasts that offer video, you're not going to see that video here in Fountain. This is using an HLS link as an alternate enclosure tag. I know that's real technical. I've talked about it on Primary Technology.

But the Fountain app does have a lot of like sponsored areas, trending episodes. And if you want to adjust what the home tab actually looks like, that's actually part of Fountain's premium subscription, which is $3 a month. But you also get episode summaries, and you'll get transcripts that are actually done by the Fountain app if you do the $3 a month. Unfortunately, Fountain does not honor the transcript that I've included in the RSS feed like some of the other apps. If I tap here, which looks like a transcript, that's the $3 a month premium thing, and Fountain is going to generate a transcript rather than just displaying the one I already included. So Fountain is also trying to encourage things like.

There's also a good up next queue, which is right here from the now playing screen. So appreciate that. Overall, the design is not something I'm crazy about, although it does show the episode artwork. You do have lots of controls like swipe controls and adding to the queue, marking as played and trashing, and it does provide that chapter navigation for video or audio, but the app doesn't feel as fluid as some of the other options. You don't get the transcripts unless you pay for the premium, and that video experience is going to be supported by very, very few shows.

So that was a really in-depth look at a bunch of apps, but what is the best app for video and the best app for audio? I'm separating that out because it's really difficult for a podcast app to do both extremely well. But I think the best for video, which I'm surprised to say, I think is actually Spotify. Now, having it along with the music in a single app can be divisive. Some people love it, some people don't. I don't care for it. But being able to switch between video and audio seamlessly, having a great chapter experience, whether you're watching the video or listening to the audio, and also having a good transcript experience, both with captions on the video, being able to tap in the transcript to navigate to that point in the episode, actually helping video podcast creators be discovered. I think the best video experience is here in Spotify. If Apple Podcasts can bring that kind of chapter experience and transcripts back to the video versions of the shows there, then I think Apple Podcasts will be one of the best experiences, but not having the transcript follow along during the video, not being able to tap to navigate here when you're watching a video, and the fact that it removed the chapters if a podcast enabled video is really unfortunate. So for the best video experience, I'm actually giving it to Spotify.

But when it comes to the best audio experience, if you don't want to watch video podcasts, you just want the best audio with chapters, the transcripts, and all of that, while Pocket Casts is a very close second, and I still think it is a great app, I'm going to give this to Overcast. The new transcript feature in Overcast is incredible. The ability to transcribe any episode, any show, and it's going to be built right into the app. The way he has chapter navigation right here, displaying that nice chapter artwork here in the now playing page, nice little touches like these go back features. The transcript follows along as you're listening to the podcast. You can swipe around the transcript and tap to navigate the playback. Plus, I know a lot of people really find the voice boost and smart speed, which is not just making it faster, but actually doing things like eliminating some silences, but keeping the playback actually more natural sounding. A lot of people feel like that's the best listening experience for podcasts in any app. So for the transcripts, the chapters, smart speed, honoring all the artwork that a creator might include, and I include all the different artwork, I think Overcast is the best audio listening experience for podcasts. I'd love to see the up next queue at least accessible from the now playing screen somewhere. But other than that, man, Overcast has come a long way. I think the design looks really nice since the liquid glass and iOS 16 updates. Incredible work adding transcripts to all these podcasts, doing it all yourself as an individual developer. And if you've not tried Overcast in a while, maybe the design had thrown you off in the past and you weren't sure about it, that was the case for me. I would give Overcast another shot.

And the best part, you can follow all of my shows in Overcast or any app of your choice. I'll link all my shows down below. That's Primary Technology, Mac Power Users, Top 5 Tech, and Movies on the Side. You can watch or listen to Primary Tech in Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you would like. I'll link all the podcast apps I talked about down in the video description. I'll link a couple other videos up here that you'll really enjoy. Don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button before you go. And thank you for watching. I'll catch you next time.