Of course I enjoy listening to music, but when I am driving to and from work or doing chores around the house, I prefer to use my iPhone to listen to the spoken word — specifically, either audiobooks or podcasts. I’ve been listening to podcasts since Apple first supported them in iTunes 4.9 (released June of 2005), and if you don’t listen to podcasts, you’re missing out. It’s essentially talk radio with a million different channels, as there are shows on just about any topic under the sun. My favorite podcasts deal with technology (especially iPhones/iPads) and law — I know, big surprise, right? — but I often listen to podcasts relating to other subjects too. In all of the years that I’ve published iPhone J.D., I’ve never once reviewed a podcast app, in large part because I never found one that I really liked. And I’ve tried just about all of them. So until recently, I found myself just using the built-in Podcasts app made by Apple, even though I always knew that there should be something better.
Last month, Marco Arment released Overcast, an app that downloads and plays podcasts, and I’ve used it just about every single day since it has been available. Overcast quickly became my favorite podcast app, so finally I have something to recommend to folks who are looking for a good one. Instead of charging for the app, Arment made the app itself free so that anyone can download it and kick the tires a bit, but to enable the features that make the app so great, you need to pay a one-time in-app fee of $4.99. So just think of it as a $5 app.
The main screen of the app lists your playlists, followed by each of your podcast shows. Buttons at the top right let you create a new playlist or add a new podcast. I myself just use a single playlist that I call “New” which includes all of my podcasts that are either new or that I haven’t finished listening to yet and sorts them in order from newest to oldest, because I usually want to listen to my most recent podcasts first. But there are some podcasts that I always want to listen to first, even if I have something else that is newer, and Overcast has a very useful feature called Priority Podcasts where you can select one or more podcasts that will always rise to the top of the list, even if something else is newer.
To listen to podcasts, either select a playlist or an individual show. I virtually always listen to a playlist, which I like because when one podcast ends, the next one starts to play automatically.
The interface when playing a podcast looks simple, but there is a lot of power in there. Most of the screen is composed of the cover art for the podcast. The orange bar at the top shows you how far you are into a podcast, and you can drag the bar at the end of the orange color to move to a specific location in a podcast. The main button below the art is a big, easy to tap play/pause button. To the left and right are buttons that you can tap to jump backwards (useful when you get distracted and then realize that you just missed something in the podcast) or forwards (useful for skipping commercials or otherwise skipping ahead). I have mine set to 15 seconds back or 30 seconds forward, but you can adjust that in the app settings, accessible by tapping the overcast icon at the top left of the main screen. (The choices are 7, 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds.)
The Playback button at the bottom left lets you control what happens when this podcast ends (play next podcast or stop) and also lets you set a sleep timer. But one of the coolest features of the app is the Effects button at the bottom right. Tapping Effects gives you the option of speeding up the podcast, and what is neat is that you can do it in two ways. First, you can adjust the speed using the slider, a traditional control which makes everything faster but does a good job of keeping the voices at the same pitch so that it doesn’t sound like you are listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks. But even better is the Smart Speed button, which analyzes the sound waves in the podcast and appropriately shortens the silences — the space between words. I’ve never seen this feature before in any other app, and it works really well. The end result is that I can make only a slight increase to the speed — I usually just go one notch above 1x speed — plus use the Smart Speed button, and the end result is that you can listen to an entire podcast in much less time, but do so without the voices sounding obnoxiously fast. It just sounds like you are listening to someone who speaks a little fast and doesn’t waste time between words. Just above the Smart Speed button, the app tells you the net effect of these settings (which changes throughout the podcast, depending upon how long the pauses are in the speaker’s voice), but for me the net effect is usually around 1.3x speed. So I typically listen to a 60 minute podcast in only about 45 minutes.
The faster speed is nice because you have more time for other podcasts, but I also like the faster speed because I find that it makes all of my podcasts even more engaging. It’s like the difference between listening to an energetic speaker and someone boring who just drones on and on and on…
When you tap a playlist, you see a list of all of the episodes that are upcoming. As noted above, any of your priority podcasts are automatically moved to the top. But if you want to make further adjustments, you can also manually adjust the list to move any specific podcasts up or down by tapping the Edit button at the top right.
You can also tap the Info button to get information about a specific podcast.
As you can see from the above pictures, on just about any screen in the Overcast app, a bar at the bottom lets you control the currently playing podcast.
From the main screen, you can tap on any podcast show to see all of the episodes, either the ones that you have downloaded and haven’t played yet or all podcasts that are available to download. You can also adjust the specific settings for that show such as whether to subscribe to all new episodes or just include the ones that you manually download, whether to give you a notification when a new episode has been downloaded, and how many unplayed episodes to keep.
One thing that Overcast cannot do is stream an episode that has not yet been downloaded — i.e., play it while it is also downloading. I believe that this is because an episode needs to be downloaded first for Overcast to perform its Smart Speed magic, although I understand that Arment is considering adding streaming in the future. But since Overcast automatically downloads all of my new episodes when I am using Wi-Fi and I am usually on Wi-Fi many times during the day, that’s not a problem for me. Any episodes that have not yet downloaded, because the app is waiting for a Wi-Fi connection, can be viewed by tapping the download button at the top of the main screen. By flipping a switch at the bottom of the screen, you can tell Overcast to go ahead and get that episode using your cellular connection if you don’t mind using up some of your monthly data allowance to do so.
Overcast includes all of the features that I have been looking for in a podcast app. It does a great job of handling playlists, and while I like that I can rearrange the order of podcasts in a playlist when necessary, the great Priority Podcasts feature usually takes care of that automatically for me. The controls for playing and skipping around in a podcast work great. And the Smart Speed button is as useful as it is innovative. Overcast is a fantastic podcast player, and is my #1 recommendation if you want to play podcasts on your iPhone.
Click here to get Overcast (free; $4.99 to enable all features): 
Overcast is one of the best podcast app I ever used. The only competitor is Podbean podcast app. I hope Marco will add support to play video podcast in near future.
This is not how it works for me with playlists in Overcast. I have to start each episode manually . . . is there a setting I’m missing?
“I virtually always listen to a playlist, which I like because when one podcast ends, the next one starts to play automatically.”
You need to create a playlist. You can make it automatic — like always include the three most recent episodes of X podcast. Then just play from the playlist. When one episode is over, it will go on to the next one.
-Jeff