It’s the easiest to use in my experience. One of the places Overcast excels is with its Now Playing screen. Overcast, like most apps, is pulling from the Apple Podcasts directory to power its directory. And it runs at less than 1% CPU usage on an iPhone SE. Voice Boost 2 is a mastering-quality audio-processing pipeline that applies broadcast-standard loudness normalization, light compression and EQ, and a true-peak lookahead limiter to your podcasts, in real time, without sacrificing quality or battery life. For shows with less-than-ideal editing, Voice Boost can make shows easier to listen to, and it was upgraded to version 2 in early 2020. Voice Boost is a feature that aims to normalize the volume and make shows easier to listen to when in noisy situations, such as a car or airplane. All of your shows will be shorter, but you likely won’t be able to tell any difference in listening quality. Conversations still sound so natural that you’ll forget it’s on - until you see how much extra time you’ve saved.” For those who want to save some time listening to certain podcasts, yet who don’t want the distortion that comes with 1.5x or 2x speeds, Smart Speed is a happy medium. Smart Speed is described as a way to “pick up extra speed without distortion.” Smart Speed “dynamically shortens silences in talk shows. Before Overcast, a few smaller apps had implemented it, but I prefer how it sounds with Overcast. One of the features it brought to the mainstream was the trim silence feature. The main navigation includes a list of your playlists, subscriptions, and buttons to manage your subscriptions and playlists further. The default color scheme is light and unobtrusive. Overcast’s design strikes a nice balance between following modern iOS design standards, but remaining unique. In the tech-podcast community, I’d argue it’s the most popular outside of Apple Podcasts. Overcast has been around since 2013 and has a significant following. Is it the best podcast app for iPhone? If you want the default Apple experience, it’s a pretty solid choice. It lacks some advanced functionality that other apps offer, but it holds its own. You should use Apple Podcasts if you want the default Apple experience on macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. As Spotify continues to grow its market share, Apple is hopefully going to invest in not only exclusive content but also its app, as well. I’d love to see Apple invest in adding functionality like the ability to follow friends, share snippets of a show, more options around playback (voice boost, smart speed, etc.), password-protected feeds, and just overall stability.

If you listen to a couple of morning shows like The Daily and Up First, you can group them in a “Morning News” station. This feature will allow you to group podcasts together that you can trigger via Siri. If you tap on the Edit button, you’ll see the New Station option. One of the most unsung features of the Apple Podcast app is to create “Stations.” This feature is under the Library section. I wrote an article back in 2021 that details my frustrations with the service. If you plan to use Apple Podcasts, I advise that you only use it on an iPhone and maybe an Apple Watch. I am not sure why Apple can’t figure this aspect out. Syncing playback position and unplayed episodes across devices is a bit of a struggle on Apple Podcasts.

Search will allow you to search for specific shows. Browse will allow you to browse the Apple Podcasts directory by featured, top charts, and by category. Library will show you a list of all the shows you have added to your subscription list. Listen Now shows you the unfinished podcast episodes from shows you subscribe to or one-off episodes you have added. On the bottom menu, it includes Listen Now, Library, Browse, and Search. I wish it would include a “social” aspect similar to Apple Music, though. I think it does a great job of recommending new shows as well. On Apple Watch, it’s one of the best ways to listen to podcasts when away from your iPhone as it supports streaming over LTE. It has a native app for tvOS and macOS as well. It’s got a lot of good things going for it. Usage-wise, it’s one most popular podcast apps on smartphones. Is Apple Podcasts the best podcast app for iPhone?Īpple Podcasts is the dominant player in the podcast app market.

The wirecutter apps