RadioPublic - The Podcast App Reviews

by Amycapl

**Update
Unfortunately, RadioPublic has gone downhill significantly in the past few weeks. Constantly crashing, unresponsive buttons when tapped and I can’t get ahold of customer support after reaching out multiple times. Really disappointing. Changing my review to 1 star until these issues are fixed

RadioPublic is awesome! Very easy to use, great features for discovering new shows. It also allows you to organize your subscriptons into folders that you create and name yourself, a feature that is lacking in almost every other player. And my FAVORITE feature so far is the fact that if you find that they do not carry a show that you're looking for, you can reach out to them with the name of the show and they will add it. I have gotten a good 6 shows added in the last week alone. Thrilled that I found RadioPublic!

by Literal-Minded

I started using RadioPublic to listen to the Radiotopia shows I like, in order to support them. At first, I liked a couple of advantages RadioPublic had over Stitcher, which I’ve listened to for years: it had fast-forward in 15-second increments, and had at least one podcast that Stitcher didn’t: The Tobolowsky Files. The “radio mode” sounded good, too, though I’ve never ended up using it yet.

But now I can’t even find the fast forward button any more, and the Radiotopia playlist I created is nowhere to be found. Such a list is there, but it has lots of shows I never subscribed to, and I can’t find the list of just the Radiotopia shows that I put together. I go back and forth between the profile page and settings and other pages I find, but feel like I’m in a maze trying to use RadioPublic. It’s terrible! I had enough, and just now deleted it.

by Slarkin

I just downloaded this app after enthusiastically seeing its many great features on the developer’s website.

Upon downloading I was immediately disappointed. I saw ONE MAJOR PROBLEM👎🏽 - unable to view and use RadioPublic in LANDSCAPE VIEW ‼️

Viewing in portrait is problematic on my iPad Pro with attached Apple KEYBOARD 🤔 I must either use RadioPublic by craning my neck sideways OR disconnect my keyboard. Neither option is easy.

The developer needs to offer OPTIONS for using RadioPublic in both viewing modes or indicate in its App Store description that viewing is only available in Portrait mode.

I hold Apple and its App Store mainly responsible for NOT REQUIRING developers to indicate an app’s viewing mode.

Listing the viewing mode[s] of ALL Apple Store apps, to me, is a smart thing to do and would help all Apple Store customers.

I have DELETED MANY wonderful apps because they were available ONLY IN PORTRAIT MODE. It’s a waste of my time to research and find wonderful apps, only to discover that they can only be viewed in PORTRAIT MODE ☹️

by Larl19

I downloaded RadioPublic because I wanted to find an app that was better than apple podcasts. I found an article that recommended this one, but this is mediocre to just bad. It doesn’t refresh correctly, I have to manually refresh it every time I open RadioPublic to see the newest episodes added to the home feed. Also doesn’t show new episodes on the home feeds sometimes. I have to go to that show’s page to see if there’s a new episode. RadioPublic shows some of the shows you listen to along a bar at the top, and often you’ll tap on a show icon and it won’t bring it up that show, it’ll bring you to another one. So then you have to go to the shows tab and scroll down to the one you’re trying to find and tap on that. I also *always* have to press play twice for it to start.

by TheCosmobiologist

The player works well and has the usual set of controls most players offer. I wish that I could keep an episode in my queue until I choose to remove it rather than having to finish it before I can listen to another episode (not all of us want to finish a 3 hour episode in one listening). The developers seem to think that any time someone starts a new episode that they want to skip the one they were already listening to rather than save it for later. Also, for some reason, I have one played episode in my list of downloaded episode that I can’t get rid of.

by Black Worm

I love how simple it is and filler free… I don't want bells and whistles, and I don't need them. But the downloading of episodes is so filler free it doesn't work. I've set RadioPublic to download new episodes and it doesn't happen. I've set individual shows to download new episodes and it doesn't happen. I've manually downloaded shows only to have them aggressively cleaned up before I listen. In fact, I no longer even get notifications of new episodes… RP was a good thing when it started, but it feels abandoned now.

Simplicity is wonderful. But only if the moving parts all work. I hope this gets sorted so RP is truly lean and mean.

by DarrianLea

RadioPublic seems very poorly optimized. The description of RadioPublic says you can stream or download, but it only lets me listen to the podcast if I’ve downloaded it. The sound quality is fine, and I’m able to listen after I’ve downloaded, but sometimes RadioPublic glitches out and I have to restart several times in order to do what I want. The layout is not ideal and I sometimes have to search for my podcasts again, even though it still says I follow them. Last but not least, the advertisements at the beginning are all the same. It’s just advertising radio public and nothing else, which would be fine if it wasn’t two ads only and one of them (Phoebe Judge) is off-putting.. I’ll use RadioPublic in order to support the smaller podcasts I listen to but I won’t use it as my main podcast app.

by Mrmatthew

RadioPublic realllly wants to be the best podcasting app around. Unfortunately it’s just not quite there. It’s very buggy. Several times everything has disappeared from my queue it the blink of an eye, but then when I try to put episodes back into the queue it tells me they’re already in there. The only solution seems to be to remove everything from the queue and add it back one episode at a time. Also, the queue can only be reordered be manually dragging one episode at at time up or down - try dragging an episode from the bottom of a queue of 25 episodes up to the top! There needs to be a way to send an episode to the top with one click. Also, the ability to sort the queue by different criteria would be good.

by Emmabee14

I started using this app a few months ago after I finally hit my limit with the default podcast app.

Some favorite features:
- Folders! I listen to a lot of podcasts so it’s really nice to be able to sort them so I’m not scrolling all the time
- Hearmarks— I use them all the time and they’re way better than writing timestamps in the notes app

However it tends to crash when I’m scrolling through the home page or the folders. Sometimes it won’t if I scroll slowly, but it’s not reliable. The benefits definitely outweigh the negatives, but it’s annoying.

Also, sometimes I need to press play twice in order to make the podcast play when unpausing outside of RadioPublic itself. It will play for a second and then automatically pause. Again, not so bad that I’d stop using RadioPublic , but definitely irking.

Some other things I’d like to see:
- Putting individual episodes in a folder
- Listening on a computer/through the website

It hasn’t been updated in a while, but I hold out hope. Definitely recommended (especially over apple podcasts), but be aware that there are some quality of life issues.

by Jgilet13

I really enjoy RadioPublic over the changes Apple made with their Podcast app. Especially when I could import podcasts from other apps which made the switch more smooth than add all the shows manually. However, after that initial addition to my library of shows, the new shows I follow don’t show up in my list of shows. Also, the new episodes don’t show up in my feed. It still shows I’m following it though when I manually search for it. I hope this gets changed in an update soon.

by Empaloalto

This is the first podcast tool I have liked the UI. It has taken me a little while to figure out but it does the things I want. I can queue all the shows I want, I can see which ones I started to listen to, I can book mark. I can easily see the show notes. I can save them I to folders for later (though I am not good at it). However I find that not every show I search for is not available. At one point I was able to contact them and get the new show added but I forget where that was, and now I can’t do it again. I have to go to other tools to find them.

by Anon4837

I’ve been using RadioPublic for a few months and am loving it so far. Way better than the standard iOS app.

However, after a recent update, I’m having major issues with battery drain during background use. I basically use RadioPublic all day every day and my phone rarely gets below 60-70% charge on any given day, but the past few days, I have seen my percentage plummet over the course of a few hours. After checking my battery statistics, the only app with any significant drain attributed to it is this app. Today, for instance, I have had RadioPublic running in the background for two hours, while nothing else was running, and I’m down 50%. I’ve also noticed that my phone gets extremely hot when RadioPublic is running.

This has never been an issue before, and I only noticed it after the recent update which changed a bunch of UI stuff. I’m worried the update introduced a leak or something.

I love RadioPublic , but I cannot use it if it’s going to continue destroying my battery life like this.

I tried to find a way to contact the dev, but couldn’t find one on their site or social media, so I’m putting this here, hoping they will see it.

I hope it gets fixed because I really do enjoy the features of RadioPublic, and would be very sad if I have to switch back to the crappy basic Podcasts app because of it.

by Apple_sux_a$$

I like RadioPublic ..it’s actually pretty cool. What I like that other podcast apps don’t have: Curated playlists in variety of genres, cool suggestions with featured channel, the ability to bookmark within the podcast
How to improve (my) experience: needs the ability to search by content not just title, needs more suggested/trending podcasts within each genre (need 100 vs. 10)
I plan to keep it for a little while longer to see if it starts to suggest more podcasts as I listen. It definitely has potential!

by NikoGreenwood

I want to like it. Paying podcasts per listen sounds like such a great idea to encourage and support smaller casts. Maybe I just haven't gotten past the learning curve or whatever, but I am frustrated by just how many steps it takes to do any of the things I'm used to doing, if I can even figure out how to do it. The UI is not intuitive, and there are loads of tools I'll never use, but it is missing ones I use all the time. I don't even know what help I would ask for except, "help, I want to like it, but I don't get it!"

by Elmorri

I cannot believe I suffered through the apple podcast app for so long. Even stitcher has a horribly clunky and hideous UI. this app works, is beautiful and easy to use, and doesn’t have the annoying qualities of other podcast apps. It used to drive me crazy that stitcher and apple both prioritized IMMEDIATELY PLAYING AT MAX VOLUME when you were just trying to set up a queue of episodes to listen to later. Or trying to read an episode description, not IMMEDIATELY PLAY. this app just works. The only cons: 1, not every podcast is in their library, so two smaller I listened to previously I just gave up on, bc I have not been successful with the RSS import feature; and 2, I wish I could manually chose my “favorites” on the home page instead of the auto generated “Shows you listen to often” list, which isn’t always accurate. But all in all, of several podcast apps I tried, this one is in a league of its own for its easy interface and intuitive playback and download defaults. It works how you wish the others would work.

by Matthew Keys

Simple to use, great for discovering new podcasts and the “Radio Mode” helps ensure there’s always something to listen to.

A feature to select/exclude which podcasts appear in Radio Mode would be nice — I have a number of radio serials that play out of order mixed in with news bulletins and radio documentaries, and Radio Mode doesn’t distinguish between any of them. Ideally I would like to shuffle the documentaries while excluding everything else.

Other than that, this is a huge contender for replacing all your podcast apps. Give it a try!

by Jamesonapple

Most podcast apps have a playlist/filter function. But it’s episode based, and otherwise all you can only browse your subscriptions in a single large list.

Stitcher does it pretty well, allowing you to make folder-like groups of podcast shows. Makes them easier to browse for me, when I’m looking for something to listen to. But Sticher has those full page ads.

this app does the interface even better, with smart folders. And no ads on the interface. It’s great.

by Grow Du Wo

Hey guys! Love the shows. So glad there’s an app like this out there for the avid podcast listener such as myself. A few big glitches like not being able to skip an episode without RadioPublic crashing which distracts me. I struggle through it bc I love the radio mode and new shows RadioPublic exposes me to. I would love to see playlists. I know they exist but it’s hard to navigate to them through RadioPublic . I would also love to make playlists for others based on theme and subject matter. If someone could help me out with that, I would appreciate it. Thanks! Keep up the good work!

by Fakename111

This is by far the best podcast app that I’ve found because of some key features like, allowing you to import your own RSS feeds and having a mark all as head button.

I saw the dev responding to other reviews so here is some constructive criticism:
- The mark all as heard button is great but it’s labeled the same as the mark all as unheard and it took me a while to realize that
- I know you advertise that you don’t need an account but I would like the option so I can transfer my heard podcasts between phones
- There’s no feedback button that I’ve seen so I have to do it here
- Notifications don’t seem to be working and the settings just redirect to the settings page
- The import from Apple podcasts just hung for me so I had to do it manually (this might be my fault for having over 1k podcasts downloaded)
- Why is there an edit button on the customize home page?
- The smart folders tab links to the customize home page, it should just be labeled customize home and should probably be in settings
- I have no idea what the promotions tab is

I know most of those are pretty minor but I just want help make RadioPublic better :)

by Newyorksportsandrhymes

this app seemed pretty generic at first, still, I decided to import my podcast, New York Sports and Rhymes, online and RadioPublic . I've received some of the best advice on how to advance my Podcast and RP goes out of their way to offer you gems. It's not overkill and you're set up for success. They also put you in a position to potentially make money without paying. As long as your content is correct, Radio Public will guide you to wherever you want to go, ensuring your Podcast reaches new heights. Extremely simple to use. I have my Podcast on a variety of listening apps and this app has provided me with the best Intel. I'm just getting familiar with the tools they offer. It makes no sense not to have your Podcast on this app. As long as your content comes correct RP will help you level up.
Strongly recommend, 10 stars.

by Needsnewbrain

I want to like it. Paying podcasts per listen sounds like such a great idea to encourage and support smaller casts. Maybe I just haven't gotten past the learning curve or whatever, but I am frustrated by just how many steps it takes to do any of the things I'm used to doing, if I can even figure out how to do it. The UI is not intuitive, and there are loads of tools I'll never use, but it is missing ones I use all the time. I don't even know what help I would ask for except, "help, I want to like it, but I don't get it!"