Overcast, the popular podcast player for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, by developer Marco Arment, has received some really useful updates. The app now has a new smart resume feature, support for password protected podcasts and a new auto-deletion enhancement, along with a number of bug fixes.
Smart Resume is one the best new features in Overcast 4.1 and is getting tons of praises from around the web. Smart Resume does the following:
- Jumps back a few seconds in the podcast, after you resume, to help you catch up with the conversation
- It adjusts resume and seek to play from the silence between words, whenever possible
It does not seem like a big feature when you look at it, but once you get used to it, you can’t help but wonder that why don’t all podcast apps work like this. It’s the kind of feature that just ruins all other apps for you in the same category because they do not have this feature.
The other new notable features in this update include an enhanced auto-deletion feature which deletes podcasts 24 hours after completion. This adds to the existing auto-deletion options which include ‘manually’ and ‘when completed’. Overcast has also gained support for password protected podcasts, which works via HTTP Basic Auth. You need the URL of the podcast, username and password to add them to your list of subscriptions. However, these podcasts do not appear in search or recommendations so you have to manually add them to the app.
Marco has also removed rotation support for the iPhone version of the app as it wasn’t used enough to justify its development cost, specially for new screens like that of iPhone X. Not sure how many users would miss this feature but I personally never used Overcast’s landscape mode on my iPhone 7 Plus.
Overcast is available in the App Store for free, while Overcast Premium is available as an in-app purchase for $9.99 per year.
