Overcast

A powerful, simple iPhone podcast app.

Last Notes

2026-07-23 18:04:48 UTC

2026.7.1 is now in the App Store!
It's a big one:
- Playback speeds up to 5X
- Smart Speed and Voice Boost on Apple Watch
- AirPlay fixes
- Streaming fixes
- Sync fixes
- Storage fixes
- Performance fixes
- Intents fixes
(in other words… a lot of fixes)
https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1v4lff6/202671_released_higher_speeds_watch_audio_effects/

2026-07-16 15:38:03 UTC

Happy 12th birthday to me! 🎉🔸🎂🔸🎉
We've come a LONG way since 2014. Remember what 1.0 looked like?
https://www.macstories.net/reviews/overcast-review/

2026-06-28 15:11:45 UTC

The latest TestFlight beta tackles Overcast's most-hated bugs:
- Sync sometimes resets your changes shortly after you make them
- Incorrect ordering of new episodes in playlists with priority settings
- Unexpectedly large storage usage (usually corresponding to download failures)
- Episode progress resets to 0:00 on some failures or output-device changes
…all thanks to a new friend you may know: https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1uhzlcu/testflight_build_1161_tackling_the_mosthated_bugs/

2026-06-01 19:39:53 UTC

The 2026.5 update is now live in the App Store!
It contains big fixes and improvements for transcripts:
- Selectable text
- Better alignment for podcasts that use DAI
- Better performance!
🎉

2026-04-08 22:19:12 UTC

My first update with transcripts is now in the App Store!
It's a phased rollout that will auto-update over the next week for everyone, or you can update manually from the App Store app whenever you'd like.
More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1sg7epz/version_20264_released_transcripts/

2025-05-20 16:34:02 UTC

I'd love to bring back multi-item drags in playlists.
SwiftUI appears not to support it yet, so it would involve a LOT of awful hacks to get it to work today, and it's just not worth the complexity or bug potential.
The best solution would be for Apple to add multi-item drag-and-drop to SwiftUI List, just as UITableView and UICollectionView have had for a VERY long time. It continues to be on my wishlist for every new iOS version.
https://mastodon.social/@silber/114540720675128594

2025-05-20 13:51:59 UTC

- reply

Additional nerdy details:
- Migrated entire iOS app to SwiftUI Lifecycle, which improves launch time and fixes some minor behaviors (and was actually necessary, for still-unknown reasons, to get universal links working properly again)
- The new Apple Watch app has the modern single-target infrastructure, rather than the legacy watchOS dual-extension combo
- With the old Watch app gone, the old sync engine is now replaced across the entire app, which is why sync bugs should become less common

2025-05-20 13:46:29 UTC

Big 2025.5 update in the App Store today!
- Completely rewrote the Watch app! MUCH faster and more reliable, and should eliminate MANY sync bugs.
- Disabled Lock Screen time-scrubbing by default to reduce accidental seeks (previously in Nitpicky, now in regular settings)
- Chapter rows no longer accidentally activate while scrolling
- Fixed universal links, CarPlay blank screens, certain audio conditions, playlist-reordering bugs
(And opened a restaurant on Fire Island in the meantime. 😉)

2024-09-13 14:52:52 UTC

This update also has:
- A bugfix that could've lost listening progress when switching to/from AirPlay.
- A new setting under Nitpicky Details that lets you change the mode from AirPlay 2 to original AirPlay, which fixed issues with some people's AirPlay setups in beta testing.
I'm still tracking AirPlay bug reports — that setting shouldn't be necessary, but it feels like AirPlay has changed a lot, especially in iOS 18, and I’m still working toward a universal fix.
https://mastodon.social/@galonsky/113130745903934144

2024-08-23 22:08:38 UTC

Streaming is simplified now to accommodate dynamic ad insertion (DAI):
Streams always start from the beginning of the file, and must download the entire file.
If it fails or times out, it saves your position and stops playback, and you need to retry the complete download again when you can.
(The previous system could download any arbitrary parts of the file, and could retry with multiple attempts to fill in each segment, which doesn't work in today's DAI environment.)
https://mas.to/@TheTrepanier/113013590224253022

2024-07-16 13:01:45 UTC

Today is Overcast's 10th birthday, and to celebrate, I'm launching a major rewrite of the app: https://marco.org/2024/07/16/overcast-rewrite
The first decade has been great, and this new foundation brings it into the next one!
(Spoiler alert: It's fast. REALLY fast. And there's more coming soon.)

2023-09-04 14:54:08 UTC

Featured in the App Store!
https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1551846862
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/007/448/132/952/476/original/3e1ae9bebd1df9aa.png

2023-08-14 14:34:10 UTC

Substack is currently blocking Overcast.
It looks accidental, via Cloudflare misconfiguration. I'm trying to get in touch with them.
I cannot stress enough to podcast hosting companies: DO NOT HOST PODCAST FEEDS BEHIND CLOUDFLARE!
If you do, you MUST create a Cloudflare rule that changes the "Security Level" to “Essentially Off" for all feed URLs. Otherwise, if you host many feeds (especially per-member feeds), most podcast apps will be throttled or blocked from accessing them.