Overcast, the podcast player for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch has gone for its biggest overhaul ever since it came into being about eight years ago. Almost everything has gone for a thorough makeover, which includes the home screen, the playlist screen to even the typography and spacing as well. As Marco reported, the update also comes with a lot of bug fixes as well besides incorporating features users have been requesting for quite some time.
To begin with, the playlist now comes with strong visual cues that make things easily identifiable. The Queue, Walking, and Music tabs are more marked out than ever before with the playlists now offering color customization options. Plus, there is also the option to select a custom icon from more than SF Symbols, all of which comply with the modern iOS design.
Further, the playlists can be arranged manually via the drag and drop method. The recently played and newly published episodes can also be placed on the home screen, something that makes them more accessible than before. Similarly, podcasts can be pinned to the top of the home-screen list. Plus, there is also a toggle on top of the podcast list that will let users switch between three modes – podcasts with current episodes, all followed podcasts, and inactive podcasts. The playlist screen however bears the same looks but has been refined to match the modern iOS design.
Among the features that the update introduces include a Mark as Played feature which comes in the form of checkmark button on the episode rows while being also accessible via a left-side swipe action. Another new feature addition happens to be the one that allows the creation of a new playlist for Starred, Downloaded, and InProgress. Then there are the light and dark themes that now come with a customizable tint color to be drawn from the modern iOS UI-color palette.
Bug fixes introduced include enhanced reliability for the background downloads and notifications. Users will have the option to individually delete or re-download episode downloads as per the requirement. The update also allows links to be opened in Safari. There has also been a bump in performance even with very large playlists and collections. Plus, as Marco Ament stated, bugs with episode-duration detection, CarPlay lists, Mac-app sharing, along with so much more have all been fixed.
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The post Overcast goes in for its biggest overhaul since its launch around eight years ago first appeared on Good e-Reader.