Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen to Podcast Apps on Default Settings
Take ten minutes to improve your next year of listening
Most podcast apps now come with powerful features that are easy to overlook, and all it takes is around ten minutes playing around with a new app to get yourself up to speed. Consider this your guide on how to maximize the obvious and not-so-obvious features sprinkled throughout the podcast app landscape.
The apps I chose to thoroughly dig into were Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. I know there are dozens of apps out there, but this collection provides a good cross-section of what a majority of listeners are likely to use.
Maximizing the Most Common Settings
Listening Speed
If you’ve never listened to a podcast at anything other than at 1x speed, 1.5x can feel downright silly. One of the advantages of listening to a podcast (versus listening to music), however, is that you can slightly turn up the speed it plays without any noticeable difference.
Going straight from 1x speed to 1.5x speed can be overwhelming. While some apps (like Apple Podcasts), offer a limited range of listening speeds, most apps provide a more granular level of control, allowing for increments of .1x or .2x. Listening at 1.1x or 1.2x feels nearly the same as 1x, and it still shaves off a noticeable bit of time. Even among podcast purists, it has become more socially acceptable to turn up the speed.
A handy guide to speed listening:
- 1x: Good for a show that relies heavily on music, like Song Exploder. But I will say, listening to music shows faster than 1x isn’t all that bad. Call me a monster.
- 1.1x: You can easily listen to almost any show at this speed with barely a notice. You get used to it fairly quickly. A nice way to shave a little time off your entire queue.
- 1.2x: Still manageable for pretty much any show, particularly if you’ve grown accustomed to 1.1x.
- 1.3x: Perhaps starting to get too fast for highly produced and tightly edited shows or fiction where you don’t want to miss anything.
- 1.5x: A sweet spot for interview shows where there aren’t any particularly fast talkers, or shows that you are very used to. The Daily has a pretty slow cadence and works for me at this speed.
- 1.7x: Very quick. I only do this for one or two chat style shows that are lengthy and have a consistent format.
- 2x and up: Similar to skimming a book. Good for getting the general idea of something. Your brain will have no problem following the words of what people are saying, but your understanding and retention will be dramatically affected.
A word on listening below 1x:
As Galen Beebe said in a recent Bello Collective newsletter, the sweet spot for certain shows might be .8x. She says she gave herself “the gift of time — not time saved, but time spent in a place I really wanted to stay.” Life isn’t always about speeding through a queue as if it’s a checklist that exists simply to be checked.
Removing silence
This setting does exactly as advertised: it analyzes the audio of the episode and clips out any unnecessary silences. It keeps the conversation flowing without the typical pauses that naturally happen while someone is thinking as they are talking.
It depends on the show, but there could be as much as three or four minutes removed per hour of audio.
Pocket Casts even gives you three different options for the aggressiveness of their “Trim Silence” setting, labeled as mild, medium, or “Mad Max”. People who choose Mad Max are living on the edge.
Beware of this setting with highly produced shows. Pauses might be added on purpose, and the more highly produced the show, the less likely there is to be unnecessary silences. On just the second or third episode of testing out this setting I came across a situation where it conflicted with the storytelling. On part three of Carbon Valley, the host was commenting on someone’s speaking cadence. He said, “lots of pregnant pauses give that away, like this [cue obligatory silence].” And then instead of the pause, it just immediately cut to the next voice, which was unexpected and a little amusing.
Skipping ahead or back
There are many reasons to skip ahead on a podcast. Getting through early episode banter, jumping through ad breaks, or trying to find that one part of the episode you want to tell someone about or take notes on.
If you are like me, you also are constantly skipping back because you missed a word or phrase someone said.
Every app under the sun allows you to skip forward or back while listening. Many apps default to 15 or 30 seconds per press, but they mostly allow this amount of time to be tweaked. A big exception to this is Spotify, which doesn’t allow any deviation from 15 seconds.. The cynic in me wonders if this is no oversight, and is part of the plan to make it harder to completely skip Spotify served ads.
The sweet spot for me is to do 30 seconds for skipping forward, and 15 seconds for skipping back. This way I can fairly quickly jump forward a few minutes if I need to, or jump just a little bit back to catch something I missed.
Voice boost
The basic idea with voice boost is that the quiet voices will be boosted in volume without increasing other sounds in the podcast or requiring an increase to the overall volume of your phone. Each third party app that uses voice boose has its own secret sauce on how this is accomplished, but they all involve the same basic idea of processing the audio as it plays using dynamic range compression.
Castro says that “under the hood, Enhance Voices applies a dynamic compressor and a peak limiter to increase volume just where it’s needed.” Marco Arment, the creator of Overcast, lays out exactly how hands-on he is with this feature in this blog post, and how he “had to write every component from scratch.”
If you have this feature available, it’s a no-brainer to check it out and potentially leave it on.
Auto start or finish
Do you listen to a show that doesn’t really start until five minutes in, or always has several minutes of ads at the end? Several apps, like Pocket Casts or Overcast, allow you to jump directly to a certain time stamp when starting a show or even end it early and move on to the next show.
Show-level customizations
Speed listening, voice boost, and starting or stopping a show at a certain time stamp are beautiful features, but they certainly aren’t interchangeable from show to show. Listening to Desert Island Discs with their heavy use of music and light ad load is a much different experience than listening to The Tim Ferriss Show, which has a predictable block of ads at the very beginning and for the most part involves conversation that could easily be sped up a little bit.
Luckily, many apps allow customization at the show-level. You can set it and forget it for your most listened to shows, so that you won’t ever have to fiddle with settings as your queue moves from show to show. Using the above as an example, in both Castro Plus and Pocket Casts you could customize The Tim Ferriss Show to always start five minutes in, play at 1.5x speed, and remove silences, all without affecting what your default settings are.
Listening history
Not enough apps have a listening history. I love being asked if I’ve listened to anything good lately because the answer is always yes, but I usually need a little prompting from my app to remind me of everything that passed between my ears. Once you are able to see your listening history, you’ll have a hard time ever going back to an app that doesn’t have this feature.
Playlists and up next
If you’re a power listener that follows or subscribes to more than a handful of shows, you may want to add some organization to your queue. For example, it can be helpful to split your shows into various playlists — most apps have this feature, but with varying fine-tuned control. Some apps allow for the creation of episode-specific playlists that are great for road trips, and some apps also allow for set-it-and-forget-it playlists that automatically filter future episodes into a playlist of your choosing. Playlists allow you to design a personalized “discover” page all for yourself.
Web listening via synced accounts
Sometimes it’s quite handy to seamlessly switch from listening on your phone to your computer, or vice versa. I’ve heard this feature mentioned by several people as the main reason they love Pocket Casts Plus and why it’s absence is a deal breaker when it comes to other apps. Overcast and Spotify also provide decent capability for switching between computers and devices.
Uploading audio files
An easily overlooked feature on many podcast apps is the ability to load non-podcast audio files into the app. This is a great way to utilize the playback and organization features of your podcast app for any personal MP3s. Podcast Addict allows you to add a “virtual podcast” for free, and Castro, Overcast, and Pocket Casts all have this feature in their paid version. The “Sideload” feature in Castro is particularly great, as referenced further down.
Clip sharing
Every app allows you to message an episode link to friends, but only a select few allow for clipping a section of audio and posting that to social media. Castro and Overcast both make this feature extremely easy. With both apps, there is a button you can hit right from the listening screen that brings you to a clip editor. You choose the length of the clip, where it begins and ends, and just like that you can send it to someone or post it online.
Sleep timer
This setting is fairly universal, and a godsend to anyone who falls asleep to podcasts. You can set your app to automatically stop playing after a certain time, or sometimes even at the end of an episode. That way, you won’t accidentally blast through eight hours of your queue after you pass out (as sometimes happens in my home, without naming names).
Apple Watch
Even though I don’t own an Apple Watch, I always thought a neat use case would be going for a run with only the watch and wireless earbuds. It turns out this capability was quite limited in the early days. Things have recently improved in the partnership between podcast apps and the Apple Watch though, with many favorite third party apps allowing the watch to act as a standalone podcast device once set up properly. Several apps reserve this feature for their premium version, which might make it worth the price.
Discovery and curation
This might seem obvious, but make sure to really explore the discover and search area of your app. Although newsletters are my favorite place to find recommendations on what to add to my queues, new shows regularly catch my eye in curated lists and top charts within the various apps.
Exclusive shows or content
The fracturing of where exclusive content lives is unfortunately a feature of the podcast landscape that is only going to get worse. As just one example, I enjoyed Gimlet’s How to Save a Planet when it was available everywhere, but now I have to open up Spotify if I want to listen to it. Various apps and platforms take different approaches, but the truth is that most podcast listeners are going to have to navigate multiple locations to listen to shows they like or to support.
Features Unique to Specific Apps
Spotify and Podcast Addict include episode artwork by default
I love when podcasts have episode specific artwork. Shows that do this tend to commission unique and eye popping visuals from illustrators. The only problem is that this artwork is typically relegated to the website and social media links. Every app should display this unique artwork by default.
Apps like Castro and Pocket Casts have settings that allow for showing episode specific artwork, but it never seems to work.
You may think this is because shows that have episode artwork don’t always make it available, but Spotify and Podcast Addict are both able to figure it out, every time and with no fuss. I don’t love the UI of Spotify, but I’ll sometimes use it solely for this feature.
Overcast’s privacy mindset
For each show, there is a privacy policy link within the app that details what services are being utilized for hosting and serving the audio. There are definitions for each too, like DAI (dynamic ad insertion), what kind of stats get collected, and what hosting means.
No other app makes this information so easily available.
Overcast’s “wisdom of crowds” curation
Overcast takes a unique and simple path with their discovery page. The app ranks shows per category based on how many times Overcast users have “recommended” an episode by hitting the star button. Most apps take a two prong approach to their discovery page: one part with human curation and hand-picked playlists and another part that is some kind of directory that lists the most downloaded shows or episodes per category. By featuring only shows that people go out of their way to hit the star button for, Overcast provides a fairly unique “wisdom of the crowds” curation effect. Shows that are the most downloaded aren’t necessarily the shows people love the most.
Spotify’s auto transcript feature
This is a killer feature for Spotify that is currently only available in select Spotify originals and exclusives. The transcripts are auto-generated, and from the couple episodes I checked out, are fairly accurate. You can click any paragraph of text and it will start playing the audio immediately at that point. One feature I hope they add is auto-scrolling of the transcript that follows along with the audio.
Many shows have transcripts, but having them right at your fingertips is wonderful. I hope other apps at the very least allow shows to easily incorporate their own transcripts more seamlessly into the listening experience itself. According to Xavier Guillemane, the creator of Podcast Addict, shows are now able to include transcripts in the RSS feed, but this is not widely adopted yet.
Apple Podcasts paid subscriptions
Apple Podcasts recently went through a major update to allow for paid subscriptions and to change the entire backend of how the app works. Its launch was messy, to put it mildly. Growing pains aside, you can pay for and get the ad-free or bonus content right within the app itself for shows that offer it, without needing to paste special URLs into your feed or go through a different app like Patreon.
Castro’s Sideload feature for uploading audio from YouTube
As mentioned above, many apps have the ability to load audio files, but the “Sideload” feature within Castro is the best. Almost any type of audio file on your iPhone can be opened up into Castro as a “Sideload.” The feature that puts this over other similar options is how easy it is to turn any YouTube video into an audio file. Right from the iOS YouTube app, you simply choose “share,” scroll over to “more,” and then “Sideload to Castro.” This imports the video as an audio file that then appears in the “Sideloads” tab in Castro.
The ability to listen to the audio of a YouTube video within the comfort and queue management of a podcast app is game changing. This is much more useful to me than being able to upload other types of audio files, even though you can do that as well.
Pocket Cast’s listening stats
Castro has listening history but not a detailed list of listening stats. The iOS app that is the clear winner when it comes to providing just the right amount of listening stats is Pocket Casts. It has listening history, the number of shows you’re subscribed to, total days listened (and funny statistics on what that is equal to), and time saved by skipping, trimming silence, and speed listening.
Apple Podcasts’ episode search and ratings/reviews
One thing I will give Apple credit for is that they still have the best search function of those on this list, mainly because they allow for searching by episode, not just shows. Most apps are not built for episode or keyword search, which is mind-boggling. Apple also has the best ecosystem of ratings and reviews that is helpful when searching for topics and you encounter new shows that are an unknown entity to you. I use Apple Podcasts almost exclusively for searching and checking out the reviews on shows I’m not familiar with.
Major Features by App
There are many apps not on this list that check many of these boxes, but these features are a good starting point when evaluating a new app.
Don’t Forget to Shop Around
Once upon a time you could listen to any show on any podcast app, and whatever app you happened to try first was probably about as good as any other. Nowadays, it’s important to “shop around” because there are some dramatic differences in queue management, settings, and sometimes even content. After all, outside of your mattress or family, your podcast app could very well be the thing you spend the most time with in life. I recommend finding an RSS based third party app that you are happy with, paying for the premium version, and then occasionally using other apps when forced to.
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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