Pocket Casts is one of the most popular podcasting applications for Android, if not the most popular one, and the company has just announced a huge revamp of both its Android and iOS applications. We will focus on the Android side of things, even though the changes are almost identical. This revamp comes with version 7 of the application, in case you were wondering, and it completely changes the look of the application, which is the first thing you’ll notice once you update. There’s much more to this update than just design, though, as the company has introduced quite a few new features and changes in general along with this update. The company claims that this update “greatly improves the listening experience”.
The company has listed all the changes that come with this update, and the first change is “Improved Discovery”. The company says that a new human and algorithmic curation will bring forth great recommendations to Pocket Casts users, and thus making it easier of them to discover new podcasts to listen to. “Episode Search” is the second feature that has been added in the mix, and this feature will allow you to search for a specific episode within any podcast series you want, and that will make things a lot easier to find, of course. “Play Without Subscribing” is the third feature that has been added, and this has been one of the most requested features, actually. Up until now, you had to subscribe to a show (for free, just tap the button to start following the show) in order to see and play its episodes, well, that’s not the case any longer, you can both browse and play episodes without the need to subscribe first.
“Up Next Syncing” has also been added, and this feature will make sure that lists and show progress sync seamlessly across all platforms, says the company. The company has also introduced “Filters”, which are essentially more powerful organization tools that will help you organize your favorite shows, and even create playlists. “New Web Player” has also been added to Pocket Casts, as the company claims that this one looks far more modern than the old one, and it also has some new features. On top of all that, the company claims that “Dozens of Quality of Life Improvements” have been added as well, including new archiving features, playback effects while streaming, listening history, and so on. Needless to say, this update is already rolling out to both Android and iOS, but do note that it’s a staged rollout as with every other app via the Play Store, so it may take a couple of days for you to get the update.
Background: Pocket Casts is an Android podcasting application, a paid app, which has been created way back in 2010. Pocket Casts is one of the most popular podcasting apps, and the company claims that its listeners engage more than industry averages, nearly 7 hours per week with 50-percent of users returning daily. There are over 500,000 podcasts available via Pocket Casts that listeners can enjoy, in fact. Pocket Casts was actually acquired by the leading podcast publishers a couple of months ago, including NPR, WNYC Studio, and WBEZ / This American Life, in case you did not know, so this update comes only a couple of months after that acquisition took place.
Impact: This update brings a ton of new features to the table for Pocket Casts users, and it does look quite clean as well, though it steps away from the company red and white color scheme that has graced the app thus far. Some users may miss that, or may not like this new design, it’s all a matter of preference, but it’s hard to deny that the new features will be highly useful, as we’re looking at quite a few improvements that the app received. If you’d like to download this application, or see if an update is available for your device, a link has been included down below, along with a gallery of official images for the Pocket Casts v7.0 update.
