Overcast’s 10th Anniversary Update
First things first, a massive congratulations are in order for Marco Arment, developer of Overcast, for shipping the huge rewrite to his podcast app. It’s pretty cool that he was able to get it out on the 10th anniversary of app’s debut. Hitting those kinds of milestones isn’t important to everyone, but I understand why it was important to him. Marco has been working on this update for about 18 months and, as he noted in its announcement blog post, it sets Overcast on a new, modern foundation for faster iteration and feature development.
I’ve been using Overcast for all of its 10-year existence. With it, I’ve listened to thousands of podcast episodes and saved 1,142 hours (over 47 days!) of listening to silences in those episodes with its industry-leading ‘Smart Speed’ feature. I’ve learned, laughed, and loved shows and their hosts. It is quite possibly the app I use most.
Throughout those 10 years, I’ve dabbled with other podcast apps. I tried Castro and its unique queuing feature. I’ve tried the Apple Podcasts with its weird instance that I would continually want to listen to individual episodes of random shows rather than stick with the ones I’ve subscribed to. I tried Pocket Casts. I tried one called Airshow where its design looked amazing and had great ideas around chapters. I tried an unnamed Testflight beta of a podcast app. But I always, always came back to Overcast. It’s been fast, reliable, had the important features I cared about, and has always worked the way I think podcast apps should work (kind of like an RSS reading client, but for podcasts).
Overcast has been through major redesigns before, and although they can be grating at first as you grapple with your muscle memory for completing common tasks, they have all eventually felt right and become the new norm until the next redesign comes around.
The funny thing about this 10th anniversary release is that it’s not a major redesign of the app. The biggest changes are all under the hood, and the fact that Marco could get it to look and behave so similarly to the last version is quite a testament to his skill because, as I understand it, almost nothing of the old UI code remains in the apps. Sure, there are some notable changes to the UI (more slide up sheets for the Now Playing screen, controls, and show notes; horizontally scrolling playlist icons, a more colorful Settings screen), but overall its the Overcast you know and love. And yes, there are some missing features and bugs — because of course there are going to be some snafus in a ground-up renovation of a decade-old app. But I’m thankful that Marco only changed one thing — the backend — rather than also trying to rethink the entire UI of the app at the same time. It really is a new foundation. Now he can start redecorating and making new additions.
If you’re into hearing about the “why” behind the Overcast renovation, I highly encourage you to listen to Marco discuss it in detail on a recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast. I could feel the despair he described as he looked down the barrel of rewriting the entire app from scratch, a task that seemed insurmountable at the outset, but that he has now successfully completed. He’s not shy about admitting that the app has fallen behind in the last few years, but that he’s now enthused about getting it caught up with new features — something that he held off on in the old version because it would have only dug the old codebase deeper into technical debt knowing that this rewrite was imminent. He’s been developing Overcast for 10 years, and I’m willing to give him a grace period to get the app back to the forefront.
Now that I’ve prattled on for over 500 words about how much I respect this rewrite — even if its not exactly the chock-full-of-new-features update that we might have wanted — I’d love to share some short lists of the things that I love about the update and what I’d like to see improved. But first, if you’re like me and have been a happy Overcast user and willing to extend some grace to Marco as he finishes the second act of this rewrite, I encourage you to head to Overcast’s App Store page and give it a rating and review. Marco shared in a follow up about the update on ATP that his recent ratings have taken a nosedive as people displeased with the update have swarmed to express that displeasure. I’m certainly not unhappy with the update — like I said, it’s just a refinement of the previous design — and I know it’ll help both the app and Marco’s mental health to also hear from satisfied users.
Got that rating done? Great! Let’s get to the lists.
Likes
- The app is indeed fast. It’s always been the fastest app to see new podcast episodes, but now the UI feels extra zippy too.
- The horizontal playlist row. I have a lot of playlists, but only really use the first few regularly. I’m glad to have them take up less vertical space on screen.
- Smart Playlist management is way better. Priority ranking now has more options, and selecting included podcasts is much easier with a more compact view.
- The chapters list can now show longer chapter titles. They used to get cut off.
- Swiping gestures make the app feel more fluid and modern. I can make imprecise gestures to dismiss screens for example.
- The simplified list of ‘Current’ or ‘All’ shows in the main podcasts list. The “Inactive” tab was unnecessary.
- The ‘Undo Seek’ option. I’m so glad this works even when you’ve made an unplanned seek from the lock screen.
Dislikes
- Show notes take an extra second to load. This is the one thing that I’ve found to be slower about the app. It’s not a show-stopper, but when I switch the show notes view and see a blank screen for a sec, it really throws me off. I wonder if it’s fetching the notes upon my first request to view them, but it really seems like that data should be already waiting for me. (I’ve not heard anyone else mention this, so maybe it’s a me problem.)
- Losing the skip forward/back buttons on the minimized ‘Now Playing’ bar. I used those buttons quite a bit, and now I have to jump to Control Center or bring up the Now Playing screen to skip forward or back. When I just want to quickly re-hear the last thing spoken, I don’t want the extra step.
- The Sleep Timer is harder to use. It’s not hard to get to, but I use it every day and liked having it more accessible on the Now Playing screen. Marco has mentioned that it being buried further is a common complaint, and I expect it will make a more prominent return.
- The elimination of streaming means shows sometimes take longer to start. I understand and respect Marco’s decision to removing the streaming feature, but it does mean I’m waiting for shows to download more often than I was before. And since I don’t want my infrequently-listened-to shows to take up a bunch of space on my device, I had a lot of those set to stream. Better control over pre-downloading certain shows or playlists would make this problem mostly go away.
- Can’t skip or seek while looking that the chapters view. I like how you can seen progress through specific chapters, but without play controls visible, I can no longer easily seek within a chapter. (Showing chapter segments within the main scrub bar like Apple Podcasts does in the iOS 18 beta would solve this.)
Wish List
- More context menu actions. Long-pressing on a show or episodes feels like it should bring up some options, but it doesn’t.
- Quick actions from the app icon. I don’t understand why every app doesn’t offer quick actions when you long-press on its icon on the Home Screen. I want to quickly start playing from the most recently played list, start playing a designated playlist, jump into the search view ready to type, and maybe start or bookmark the currently playing episode or something. Or maybe start a new clip share from the current episode.
- More user customization overall. This is an app trend that I think Marco is missing. Let users customize which icons appear at the bottom of the Now Playing screen. I’d personally add the Sleep Timer and Share button, but I’m sure others might want the Star button or a way to quickly jump to the Podcast’s main page.
- A listened-to history view. I’ve pined for this for years. Sometimes I fall asleep listening to shows and wake up hours later with no idea of which shows I missed while I was asleep. That never feels good. Or I want to go find a link or share something from a podcast I just finished. Hopefully I can track it down via search or lots of scrolling, hunting, and pecking through the UI. A (7-day? 30-day? infinite?) history of every show I’ve listened to would be so helpful.
- Fun Spotify Wrapped-like stats. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I like seeing and sharing stats. Need I say more?
Even though it may look like I have many of gripes and wishes for future versions of Overcast, I’ll reiterate that I’m very happy with the app as it is. Marco pulled off a successful rewrite, and I’m still listening to many hours of podcasts every day with Overcast. Hopefully he’ll see these lists and make some of the improvements, but none of them are stopping me from enjoying the app. And I’ve very excited to see what comes next with the refreshed foundation ready for rapid development. Congrats again, Marco, and here’s to 10 more years!
This is post #2/31 for Blaugust 2024.