Overcast, the popular podcast player by Marco Arment, has gotten a major overhaul. As it celebrates its tenth anniversary, Overcast has been completely rewritten to be faster, more reliable, and more accessible.
When you update to the new version of Overcast, you’ll immediately notice the difference. The new design will be familiar to anyone who’s used the app in the past, but with a far more modern finish. It’s also significantly faster than ever before, including for podcast playback and syncing, as well as the general fluidity of the design and animations.
One of my favorite features is the ability to undo a large seek. If you accidentally skip too far forward or backward in an episode, you’ll see a small button appear in Overcast that will undo the seek. This is particularly useful if you accidentally change your playback position via the Now Playing controls on the Lock Screen.
There are also new playlist-priority settings, quicker access to some of the most-used controls, and more. Overcast also continues to offer all of its signature audio engine and playback features, including Smart Speed and Voice Boost.
This major rewrite also lays the groundwork for Overcast to get more frequent updates going forward. In his blog post announcing the update, Marco writes:
Most of Overcast’s code was 10 years old, which made it cumbersome or impossible to easily move with the times, adopt new iOS functionality, or add new features, especially as one person.
That’s why there haven’t been many new features or changes in years.
You saw it, and I saw it. I wasn’t able to serve my customers as well as I wanted.
For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for its second decade.
I’ve spent the past 18 months rebuilding most of the app with modern languages and frameworks, and I’m thrilled to finally share it with you.
Now, development is rapidly accelerating. I’m more responsive, iterating more quickly, and ultimately making the app much better.
One feature that’s been removed in this new version of Overcast is streaming, a decision that was influenced in part by the advent of dynamic ad insertion in podcasts:
Most big podcasts now use dynamic ad insertion, which causes bugs and problems for streaming playback. On today’s fast networks, downloading episodes completely before they begin playback is much more reliable.
Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) splices ads into each download, and no two downloads are guaranteed to have the same number or duration of ads. So, for example, if the first half of an episode downloads, then the download fails, and it downloads the second half with another request, the combined audio may jump forward or back at the halfway mark, losing or repeating content.
What’s on the roadmap? Marco says to expect smarter options for downloading and deleting podcasts, upgrades to the Apple Watch app, and “the last few missing features from the old app, such as Shortcuts support, storage management, and OPML.”
9to5Mac’s Take
Overcast has been a leader in the world of podcasting for a decade (literally a decade!), and today’s update checks all of the right boxes. Rewriting an app that’s been around for so long is a daunting task, but Overcast has done it right.
The rewrite does an excellent job of laying a foundation for the future, while also offering immediate benefits for things like speed, design, and reliability. It’s a perfect balance with a promise of much more to come.
Overcast is available on the App Store as a free download. You can subscribe to Overcast Premium for $9.99 per year to remove ads and upload your own audio files. You can also hear Marco talk more about the Overcast rewrite in the latest episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast.
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