Breaker—The social podcast app Reviews

by LP955

I’m going to delete BreakerThesocialpodcastapp . I used it regularly and loved the interface. They deleted all my history, meaning I have to manually go through and mark each episode listened. Can you imagine a podcast with 300 episodes, and I have no idea which I heard? There is no way to export my information. I reached out, and they have not done anything to help at all. It’s a canned statement about needing room on their servers.

Also, there is an upgrade button when listening that seems to purposely be located in a spot you’d accidentally hit it. I listen while I drive, and I imagine this would be an issue. Best features are gone and behind the pay service. I’m switching apps and deleting.

by Ad0071

I downloaded BreakerThesocialpodcastapp to move away from other podcast apps. I love the layout and UI. I would rate BreakerThesocialpodcastapp higher, but my issue is that the pause and play button is not working on any other screen (home screen, pull down, car buttons, or Apple Watch now playing screen). When I do go back to app to get the podcast going again the last time I listened before pausing is not the same for when it starts up again. It is actually very behind depending on when the error occurred it could be that I am almost done with the podcast but in the podcast it shows that I am less than half of the way through.

I apologize if I am not explaining this correctly, but it is an issue that I am continuously running into.

by Megalomac

Seems solid for social features, but unfortunately that's not what I want from a podcast app. I want full control over the podcasts I listen to and the ability to listen to them anywhere. BreakerThesocialpodcastapp has no settings for individual podcast subscriptions. I normally use Downcast, which is the most powerful podcast app out there for having control over your subscribed podcasts. I want different settings for each podcast and the ability to stop/start each with my watch. This doesn't have an Apple Watch app and no web-based app either. There's potential here, but it has a long ways to go.

by Tttuckerrr

I've been using this almost everyday for the past ~4 months, and I have to say I loved it at first. But recently BreakerThesocialpodcastapp has gotten worse week over week, to the point that it's simply not usable anymore. Some of the issues I've had:

- looses track of my place in podcast. Sometime its off by 5-10 minutes, other times - especially if it's been more than a couple of hours since pausing - it will lose my place entirely and start from the beginning.
- fails to fetch most recent episodes
- 500 errors when refreshing feed
- streams podcast that it says was downloaded ( I tested this several times by turning all data off with an episode I downloaded in BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and it won't play)
- play/pause button state gets flipped occasionally - the button will show paused and actually be playing, vise versa, etc.
- app will just crash from time to time

For now, I will reluctantly return to the Apple podcast app...but I'll keep an eye on future updates hopefully fixing these bugs that render BreakerThesocialpodcastapp unusable.

by Mgamble

I really like BreakerThesocialpodcastapp. The user interface is great and I have listened to a lot of podcasts through Breaker. However, recently podcasts stop after 2-3 minutes. I restart and then it stops again, and on and on. I have uninstalled BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and reinstalled it and it will work correctly for a while and then it all starts again.

I travel a lot and it’s a real bummer when I’ve downloaded a bunch of podcasts for a flight and have to restart them every 2-3 minutes. Usually I just quit and read a book.

I’d love to know how to fix this. I want to be able to use BreakerThesocialpodcastapp .

by A.Catesby

Stitcher made some horrible life choices and I’m on the search for a new podcast app. After briefly looking at the others, Breaker seems to be a pretty clear leader. It does so well what Stitcher used to do, it lets you prioritize your favorite podcasts, sort them and listen to them in the priority you choose.

I still have yet to test it with my CarPlay (who is driving many places in 2020 anyway?). So this may be a feature request.

The things I want to see that would quickly take it to 5 stars and keep me from ever going back to Stitcher (if they get their App together again). 1) Ability to search and add shows while you are listening to a show. I’ll start the search, but it doesn’t actually work until I pause the show I’m listening to. 2) have “back 15 sec” in the minimized view or the lock screen. 3) Start play on App open!! I don’t want to go dig around for the play button when I first open BreakerThesocialpodcastapp . I’m usually ready to just start listening. 4) an alarm feature, but I’m pretty sure with other automation I can tie this to the iOS alarm.

Things it does better, but I haven’t had a chance to explore. The social aspect of it! Rating and liking podcasts. The longer I use it, I’m sure I’ll find more features that will keep me a forever convert.

by Psychodarwinist

Years ago I used a podcast player that totally nuked their functionality overnight so I started using breaker. I figured that the social media aspect was good and in a few years they’d sort out its many issues. Just now, after an advertisement to buy a paid version of BreakerThesocialpodcastapp I has to watch a new podcast download on my phone for three minutes because if you navigate away Breaker stops downloading. I’ve spent hours of my life watching podcasts download on breaker. Their emails keep suggesting I listen to a podcast for redpilled black men (I actually checked it out, but not for me). More like heartBreaker. Amirite?

by CWB427

I’ve spent years bouncing between Podcast Addict, iTunes Podcast, and Soundcloud to have access to and manage dozens of subscriptions.

Breaker has eliminated the need for multiple apps. It has also been a huge time-saver by allowing me to import all of my previous subscriptions from other apps, creating a streamlined and customizable playlist I rarely have to touch, and the wonderful skip silences feature!

Last but definitely not least, the social aspect of Breaker is second to none. No other app offers the same level of user-to-user engagement. Don’t believe me? Then download it and send me a message telling me I’m wrong ;)

by El Jimmy Rustler

Great app all around. Two things that could use some more work are the search function and more bug removal. The search itself isn’t the worst but sometimes it takes almost until the last letter of a podcast title for it to find the correct one, not very intuitive. The bugs can be a bit frustrating, some of the worst ones I get are toward the end of episodes that have been in a playlist for a while, they often will loop at random intervals. Three minutes will go by then that same 3 minutes will play once more. The absolute worst however is that your progress on an episode will often get deleted. This isn’t normally a huge issue, but with shows like Hardcore History that sometimes have nearly 3 hour episodes having to routinely scrub through to find my position is aggravating.

by Cool Kid Billu

Usually I use the pocket casts app but always have breaker downloaded on my phone because I like BreakerThesocialpodcastapp but the pocket casts app is just easier to use in my opinion. breaker would get 5 stars but it’s difficult and takes too many “clicks” to find what podcasts I have downloaded. I tried to tweet and ask about that but I couldn’t find an account so I did it here. 4 stars isn’t bad and I totally will still use it as my back up or to just play around with but unfortunately right now pocket casts is more streamlined imo

by Grafted27

I love the idea to try and get listening to podcasts to be a more social activity with “like” and “comment” functionality and a easy way to mark episodes as listened!

Unfortunately I think I’m going to have to go back to Apple podcasts because playing and pausing from the iPhone lock screen is inconsistent. I’ll hit pause, the screen will indicate it is paused but the audio continues! Navigate into BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and sometimes it’s frozen. If it does pause successfully, and then I play it again from the lock screen, it seems like BreakerThesocialpodcastapp often doesn’t track my progress through the episode any more. All very frustrating. I really hope the developers can fix this issue and I’ll come right back!

by Nacquatella

This year I was all into Podcasts. I switched from Apple Podcasts to Overcast, and lately to Breaker. Huge change! Love the user interface and social experience and overall shows/episodes management. However, have found more than usual glitches re corrupt audio, podcast switching back several minutes while listening and trouble downloading old episodes (not while streaming) - never experienced these on aforementioned apps.

Overall, love Breaker - hope they keep improving.

by Eligovt

Switched to iPhone recently and have been having trouble finding a good podcast app (which seems absurd). This one is the best I’ve found but still has some annoying quirks. I like to download episodes since I travel a lot. BreakerThesocialpodcastapp adds episodes to my playlist, but it doesn’t always download them. Even when I force it to download and watch it complete the download, I will go back later and it will show that it isn’t downloaded. Where does it go? I just watched it complete the download. Frustrating! Also, I listen to most podcasts oldest to newest, but a few current event podcasts I want to listen to when they are released. This seems to confuse BreakerThesocialpodcastapp . Why is this so difficult?

by ITif

Give me the podcast all Apple had out originally, and I’d be happy. Breaker is a great alternative to BreakerThesocialpodcastapp that Apple ruined- all my episodes download when they should and are easy to locate. My issue lies with being able to delete an episode after listening. The episode “disappears” from the playlist and you have to go into subscriptions to find it, and you still can’t do much with it there. If you don’t listen to all (or any) of an episode, it remains in the playlist, and you can swipe left to remove it from your playlist....but it’s not deleted from your phone (exists in subscription area). Not sure if I’m missing something that’s right in front of me, or if this was just overlooked.
A welcomed feature would be to be able to share an episode with people not on Breaker- sometimes I would email myself the episode to know to come back to it, and sometimes i would like to share it with others (who don’t use Breaker). Being able to create multiple playlists would be a bonus, too!

by Pintoftomatoes

The feature of being able to share your queue with others is really cool and interesting. My husband and I have been using it to see what each other are listening to. My only issue is I wish there was a way to immediately skip to the next episode in a series without having to navigate all the way back to the show page, scroll around and find the episode I’m listening to, and then play that way. If there was a next episode button it would be 1000x better.

by Yosef The Accountant

I thought that this Podcast was super informative with ideas that I had never heard before, especially the idea where individuals being interviewed should be treated as though they own the business and not from the perspective of clocking in 9-5 just to receive a paycheck. They need to show that they really care. When you have the mindset that you own the business you will do all that you can to keep the business and not just allow the individual or company calling in to just go to another competitor. It is a game changer when you hire people who sincerely care about the business they are involved with and not just go through the motions of just wanting the day to be over with.

by RalphIsMoma'sBoy

Peter Levin does a wonderful job interviewing Tobias Peggs of Square Roots. I like the relax manner of the dialogue between Peter and Tobias. As an immigrant to US, I can completely agree with Tobias that when you create a business somewhere outside of US and your company doe not succeed, you become a failure with ZERO prospects for the future success. Here, in US, if you fail at something, you can chuck it as a stepping stone and then move on to create a new venture. This is what makes this country incredible!

by Apple_sux_a$$

I absolutely love BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and I cant believe its actually free!! Every single other podcast app ive tried has been a disappointment but after downloading and using this one for a few days, Im baffled by all the smart features and user-friendly interface! Also, I love how I have the ability to comment on, follow and discuss each individual podcast with other app users without being redirected to some social media site..bravo!!!!

by Asiel Flores

So far I have found BreakerThesocialpodcastapp to be super easy to use and the interface is very clean and nice to look at. Couple of things I’d like to see in future updates is the option to auto download all the episodes of a podcast or a specific season of a podcast. Also the forward and backward buttons, it would be great if we could manually change how many seconds it moves forward or backwards. Last thing, please allow users to keep episodes even after they have been played. Other than that, the truth is that I don’t particularly care about the social aspect of it but I am very very happy with what I’m seeing on BreakerThesocialpodcastapp. I sense true greatness in the horizon for BreakerThesocialpodcastapp. Great work guys.

by CCAD Student

I really wanted to like Breaker—and to be fair, the social aspects of BreakerThesocialpodcastapp are the closest I’ve seen to what I want out of a podcast app. People don’t actually seem to be using those tools to be social yet, but that could just be an in progress network effect/critical mass thing. I run into too many bugs and confusing situations for me to recommend it to friends, though. My main complaint is that downloading episodes ahead of time rarely works out, which makes BreakerThesocialpodcastapp all but useless for me. I’m never certain when I open BreakerThesocialpodcastapp if I’m going to be able to listen to podcasts today.

by Chellllll

Things I like: skip silences, finding out about popular episodes, seeing what my friends are listening to
Things I dislike: extremely buggy / low quality (skip ahead is unreliable, sometimes crashes BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and removes the current episode from my playlist; episodes don’t always register as listened; “play” and “pause” doesn’t work reliably — or the symbol doesn’t reflect the truth, I’ve even heard the same episode being played twice SIMULTANEOUSLY but not in sync, and couldn’t figure out how to control it— could only control one of them), episodes recommended are too tech/VC centric

by The Real KiltedGnome

Despite Breaker advertising All Podcasts Available, I have found this to be untrue. One of my favorite Podcasts just celebrated their 500th episode (each episode is over 1 1/2 hours long), yet upon searching for it in Breaker, it does not appear. I was able to import it from the Overcast app into Breaker. I have used Overcast for years and started using Castro about two months ago. I really want to like Breaker as a replacement due to its “social” aspect, but I now wonder how many other podcasts I will miss out on due to search results saying “not found”.

by Jweeces

I love the many innovative features this podcast app has! There is a simple, not overbearing, social aspect. I love the recommendations it gives based on listening patterns! Some are obvious but others are not.

What BreakerThesocialpodcastapp needs is better audio quality and more easily customized playlists. I’m a podcast junkie. I’m used to fiddling with podcast apps to get them to do what I want. There were a few things in regards to playlists and selections that took me a while to figure out. Less experienced people would walk away.

by Ellwheeler

I love the concept of BreakerThesocialpodcastapp and have used it for some time. The download function has bugs and has for some time — it is not always actually DL’d even when it says it is, and sometimes upon opening won’t actually DL new episodes even when forced. Also have issues with Skipping forward toward the end of a podcast — sometimes it will skip to the next show in queue, auto-archiving the episode I was trying to listen to.

by Sorenrt

... and Breaker is exactly that; simple and beautiful. By adding the social aspects to podcasts, it gives a whole new dimension to Podcasts. Now I get to follow my friends from Facebook and idols from Twitter, listening to what they love to listen too, and seeing their favorite episodes - there is a gold mine of inspiration waiting for you from as soon as you instal BreakerThesocialpodcastapp .

Oh, and then I heard the vision of BreakerThesocialpodcastapp from founders; cool features on the horizon!