Podcast App & Player - Castbox Reviews

I had been using Apple Podcasts, but the overall design was getting to me. Is it just me or has Apple gotten a bit lazy more recently with the design of some of their apps? Anyway, I tried another app that looked like a winner as PodcastAppPlayer itself looked more like something Apple could have created but it just didn’t seem to have any reason for why the put certain things within certain sections (example, it had a section for recommendations but in the podcast section, it had recommendations as well). That’s when I decided to try Castbox, boy was I blown away at the design, just wish it wasn’t so big of an app. It looks like something Apple could have designed. The only issue I have is that is when you click on a podcast under library section, under details, the suggested shows that show up aren’t always even the same type of show. For instance I listen to Steam Deace Show and none of the suggested shows are even closely related to his shows. There are many Blaze podcasts that should probably show up there instead. How are we suppose to discover similar podcasts that we might be interested in, if they don’t show up for us.

It might be the one. Like many people, from time to time I just get too frustrated with Apple’s Podcasts app and I go searching for something better. I think I’ve tried basically every alternative, and there’s always some reason why I go back to Apple. But Apple just can’t seem to get it right. I don’t understand. I really like Apple products and software design in general.
Anyway, I’ve only just started using this one, but it appears it’s just perfect for me. It’s got the right balance of clean, attractive design, easy usability, and general features. It doesn’t have the fullest set of features out there, but I have found that the ones that do are just more complicated than what I want to deal with for podcast management.
For me, I like a clean interface, intuitive management of downloads and playlists, and, most important, a great searching platform that makes it easy to find both podcasts to subscribe to but also individual episodes that feature people or subjects I’m interested in. This one seems to have it all—and no ads! (My other favorite, “Podcast App,” was just as good but had annoying full screen pop-up ads.)

So much to like about PodcastAppPlayer but there are several key issues which need to be addressed especially for a premium app.

The biggest and most important is that PodcastAppPlayer has trouble picking up new episodes and showing them in the new releases section. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of subscriptions but I went through my shows individually and found seven new episodes that PodcastAppPlayer had not surfaced. Of all the features a podcast app must get right, this is number one. Until this is fixed, I can’t recommend people trust PodcastAppPlayer .

Secondly, if you share the link to an episode and the person opens it on a computer, they get a nice web interface to listen in. This is a great way to share and to get people curious about PodcastAppPlayer . Unfortunately, they’ve taken the opposite tactic on mobile. If some one open the link on their phone it forces then to download PodcastAppPlayer . This is just bad user experience. I can promise that no one ends up downloading PodcastAppPlayer from a tactic like this. This just click out of the link and never listen to the episode. And as almost 100% of what we share is opened on a phone not a desktop, this makes the user stop sharing. I have. Make the web app available on mobile browsers. More people will share and hence more people will know about castbox.

Update: Just want to say that developer responded right away to my issue. Whether it can be fixed remains to be seen. In any case, this is still my favorite podcast app:
This has been my podcast app of choice for quite a while now. I love the playlists and the ease of use. Lately I’ve been having an issue with badges showing unplayed in my library. I have to go into the podcast to check for episodes I have missed and find the indicator in error. Also, when I unsubscribe from a podcast it disappears from my library initially but then shows up again, which is quite annoying. These are both recent issues that were not solved by deleting and reloading PodcastAppPlayer . I am leaving the five star review for now based on my experience with PodcastAppPlayer over a long time, but I am looking at other apps now to try to find one that meets my needs without these annoying bugs. Hoping these issues will be addressed. It seems they began after most recent iOS update.

Really wanted to like PodcastAppPlayer. Mostly because some podcasts I listen to are partnered with Castbox, so it would benefit them to listen through Castbox instead of Apple Podcasts. Anyway, here is why I am going back to Apple podcast and deleting Castbox:
1.) If you’re in the car and listening to a podcast on Castbox, the podcast will not pause during the Maps instructions. So you can count on every 1-3 mins missing about 5 words of what your podcast is saying if you’re not on the highway. I looked through the settings and couldn’t find a way to pause the podcast during Map instructions.
2.) First two pages are “discover pages”. I like the “Subscribed” but it would be nice if the “Listen” page showed your recently updated podcasts. Also, “Subscribed” is not in order from most recent uploads, so it’s easy to miss a new podcast if you don’t scroll down and look for the tiny orange “1”. Also, if you want to change the discover page or anything you have to pay.

Overall, good app but is not a replacement for Apple podcasts. You don’t have to pay for Apple Podcasts, and you don’t have to discover new podcasts unless you want to. In app purchases is a no-go considering podcasts are free

Not sure when it started (less than a month ago), PodcastAppPlayer started to never continue playing episodes in my downloads. PodcastAppPlayer use to just continue on playing things in order in my downloads. Now it plays an episode, then stops or the sound freezes at the beginning of the next episode. Then if you press pause then play again, it starts playing the latest episode from the podcast, not the downloads. I can no longer just listen for hours on end, one podcast after another. I have to babysit PodcastAppPlayer between episodes and it’s super annoying. Another thing (this might have just been fixed the other day), when I finish in episode, the next episode would start playing at normal speed even though it said it was set to the 1.3 speed. I would have to toggle the speed to get it to continue playing at the correct 1.3 speed. I wish I could choose the order of the downloads to play in as well.

So, first - huge compliments for the design and interaction flow of how PodcastAppPlayer works. After going through about 5 alternatives, this really is the best.

My one unhappiness is that I occasionally see off hiccups where PodcastAppPlayer won’t play already downloaded podcasts, forcing me to force quit or reopen the episode to get it going. This almost always seems to happen when there is an issue with an ad loading. Maybe I am right at the edge of connectivity or something - not sure why each time.

I would love to pay for PodcastAppPlayer to turn off ads and that is it. I really don’t want to pay for another subscription and just don’t see that making sense to have to repeatedly pay over and over for - to essentially fix a buggy issue. Other than a great design, I really don’t use anything else that the subscription would add, other than wanting to just have no advertisements. So 4 stars on a 5 star product. Please consider something a $10 cost to just remove ads. Thanks!

I never rate apps, but I love this one so much that I had to! I tried half a dozen other podcast platforms before Castbox, but none of them let me organize things the way that I wanted. Castbox, on the other hand, has so many different organization options that you can really personalize it however you like.

Some features that I love include being able to create and organize playlists without having to download the episodes, categorize your subscribed podcasts, mark favorite episodes, filter your playlists based episodes you have and have not listened to, and so much more.

There is a slight learning curve to figure out all the features, but it’s not too bad. I was a little thrown off by the fact that there’s not a queue like in most other podcast apps, but I just created a “Queue” playlist that honestly works even better for me than actual queue features.

The one suggestion that I have for PodcastAppPlayer is to potentially let users filter their playlists based on episode lengths. A lot of times I’m looking for an episode that’s just long enough to last a car ride, so being able to filter by length would be awesome!

Anyway, PodcastAppPlayer is phenomenal and if you’re on the fence about trying it out, definitely download it!

PodcastAppPlayer has been wonderful for years running with virtually no issues plus it’s a fairly intuitive (easy) layout. Unfortunately recent updates have really disappointed! Ads are more often & recently becoming very intrusive-claiming the screen while you’re in the middle of interacting with PodcastAppPlayer . This has really taken away from the experience! Now today as I open PodcastAppPlayer an ad immediately took over. After finally finding it’s close button I think “well, at least the ad is out of the way” thinking I won’t have to deal with another for awhile. BUT swear-to-God another ad pops up just seconds later! I understand ads help pay the developers but this is too much.

Recent updates also ended the ability for PodcastAppPlayer to play in the background. Why would a developer allow their good app to fall to this level? Podcast apps are in great supply & I’m starting to try out others. Just check out all the recent bad reviews PodcastAppPlayer has received. DO NOT download PodcastAppPlayer. There are better alternatives. This used to be a 1st class app but now it’s just another bloated glitchy waste. :(

I tried PodcastAppPlayer out (long term, like 5 months) because one of my top podcasts endorsed it.

I liked the layout better than apple podcasts.

There were issues with the badges that each podcast gets (for new episodes)…I repeatedly tried to turn them off and they always came back, whether I wanted them or not.

But the issue I absolutely could not get over is the (intermittent) problem of pausing on bluetooth.

Sometimes it just simply wouldn’t pause at all, then I had to go find my phone (while working) to pause when someone was trying to talk to me. Other times it was even worse, where it would pause but it would play my itunes at the same time. The music was usually louder than a podcast. So here I am trying to listen to someone talk at work, trying to pause a podcast, and even louder music plays.

I contacted them twice on this issue and all they could say is swipe my itunes app away.

That is not convenient because I listen to it in the car 3xs a day.

An audiobook app had the exact same issue, and it was fixed at their next app update.

PodcastAppPlayer has consistently had this issue, and they don’t care to fix it.

So I quit it, which is very inconvenient after you’ve listened to hundreds of podcasts, because you have to manually update your other app on each episode you’ve already listened to, unless you want to accidently relisten to them all.

Yes I tried several bluetooth devices.

About once a year, I get fed up with the Apple Podcasts app and go in search of an alternative, only to come crawling back. I’m so glad to see the Downloads view. It is the one feature I’ve been craving all this time. PodcastAppPlayer is simple and straightforward. Could be a winner. It’s almost there!

Here are the features I’ll be looking for in future releases that will get me to stay:

Need the ability to customize the order of my subscriptions list so I can put my favorites at the top and have a consistent order that I get used to so I can quickly navigate to my favorite shows.

Need to be able to quickly scan while scrolling my subscriptions to see which of my favorite podcasts have new episodes so I can decide between them which one I’d like to listen to right then. (I never use the running list of newly released episodes. I always start from my list of subscriptions.)

Need the ability to mark episodes as played. Implementing this might be enough to solve the previous issue. This is useful primarily for my most listened to shows that I keep up with. Might even be useful, since you can’t know which shows people are caught up on, to offer a Mark All as Played option. That would allow users to get PodcastAppPlayer quickly customized, making it stickier.

Need to be able to set the play order (I prefer oldest to newest in almost all cases, but there are exceptions).

I’m a big fan of the design of PodcastAppPlayer. In (almost) every way it is a solid improvement over Apple Podcasts. You can make playlists, create categories, and even “like” an episode of a podcast to add it to your favorites. All of these are welcomed innovations. Sure, there are ads, but the developer should make money somehow.

My main gripe is the unreliability of it all, at least on my phone. Castbox frequently crashes, forcing me to reload PodcastAppPlayer . PodcastAppPlayer is also slow to load in general, so I’m often left waiting long periods of time to simply play a podcast that suddenly stopped playing. Additionally, and this is pretty minor, it won’t let me press play from my iPhone’s lock screen or the little menu that appears when you swipe up.

I may stick with it, I may not. I really like the design and features, but can’t bring myself to pay a premium price tag for a slow app that constantly crashes.

I've tried quite a few podcast options in the wake of Apple's "upgrades". My priorities are large volume queue management for about 40 podcasts that I am either caught up with or listening through their back-log. PodcastAppPlayer does that wonderfully. The tools are all there with common sense features to allow easy and safe handling of all your episodes. My queue is usually around the 200 episode mark and I have no issue organizing the episodes.

Edit: Fixed
I say mostly fixed as there's a few sequencing errors where returning to PodcastAppPlayer and hitting play won't actually start your queue, but these are easy to work around and don't get in the way too much.

Edit: Fixed
There's also one or two podcasts that I've found that turn up errors when trying to listen or load their pages, but I still have the Apple podcasts app and it had to be useful for something, right?

I’ve moved to my backup app for a little after I lost my queue due to my own error, but I miss the navigability and the ease of use for the UI and especially queue management. The Devs have been really active in taking care of issues and even invited me to one of the recent betas.

This is definitely a solid app. I just need to get back over here!

Never mind I’ve got got 10,000 hours of free RAM on my phone, PodcastAppPlayer will insist on streaming everything live so you end up paying $5 per podcast on expensive cellular service. Controls are on multiple screens, forcing you to pull over to the side of the road and fiddle around with the clunky interface. Clearly the money is made in the promotion of podcasts — PodcastAppPlayer should be free. There’s no way to build your own playlist (if there is, it’s so cryptic you’d never figure it out). There’s no way to tell at a glance if the podcast has been downloaded or is streaming. I want to be able to sit down on Sunday night and download a whole week’s worth of programming on my cheap home WiFi network and not burn up my expensive cellular data plan. I bought this program because it is supposed to sync with my iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch but that feature does not work. If you’re a developer who wants to make the next “killer app,” design a podcast player with a clean, intuitive interface. This is not it and no one else has figured it out either.

I discovered podcasts back in 2005. I’ve been using and recommending Castbox for the last 2 years (premium subscription should also reduce advertisements during show). Totally understand at beginning and end, but plzzzzz edit the amount DURING the podcast). Castbox is my preferred podcast listening app. The boost sound and individualized speed are SUPER SEXY additions!!! I would have given a 5 star rating if there were limitless pods that could be saved (a recent and NEGATIVE adjustment-if I want to OD on podcasts, that is my decision). Also, about a 1/2-1/3 of my saved podcasts don’t automatically refresh/have notifications for new episodes- (the other half does). I will click on a podcast and there will be 1-3 new episodes. I would like to see a more diverse selections of podcasts added to the suggestions- overkill on the mainstream suggestions. Most are already on the ratings list. Mix it up!!!

One of my coworkers shared with us that she found your podcast on. Now there is three of us in the office that get together in the morning and we have our own crime junkie discussion to share our thoughts and questions. We shut the door sometimes and listen to the podcast as a group. So thankful for the two of you and for keeping it real. I honestly have tried to listen to another pod cast while waiting for yours to come out but I find myself not as interested for lack of better words or maybe it’s that I can’t relate to the podcasters. Thank you so much for putting on a show and sacrificing so much of your free time to bring us another episode. Absolutely love the updates. PS- I think genealogy is going to be the future to solving a lot of cases.
Signed,
Nurse Crime Junkies

I am a podcast junkie so I use several apps to organize my shows. I recently cycled-back to Castbox and noticed that it no longer continued to play when I opened other Apps. After reviewing the Castbox Help Option, Checking my Settings, Searching the Internet, and Restarting My Phone (all without a success), I returned to my Castbox Settings and out-of-curiosity, selected the option, “Allow Tracking.” IMAGINE MY SHOCK TO REALIZE THAT PodcastAppPlayer WAS SUDDENLY CONTINUING TO PLAY, EVEN WHEN I OPENED OTHER APPS. Yes, I checked this several times to verify that my observations were correct. 1). Castbox— Are you telling me that you are requiring customers TO ALLOW SPYING/TRACKING in order for them to multi-task with your App?!? None of my other podcast Apps do this. 🤮👎🏼🤮 2). Apple— Are you telling me that you would ALLOW mandatory tracking from one of the Apps FEATURED in your “Store?!?”🤮👎🏼🤮 3). Clearly, NEITHER CASTBOX NOR APPLE has ANY RESPECT for their customers. This is a dealbreaker for me and hopefully a dealbreaker for ALL of your other customers too. 4). SHAME, SHAME, SHAME 🤮👎🏼🤮👎🏼🤮

I’ve been using PodcastAppPlayer for about a year now after being frustrated with Apple’s version. I wanted something that looked a little sleeker and still functioned professionally. There have been several key updates since I started and now I keep this at the forefront while Apple’s has been lost to the sea of Apple apps I never use. Much better production and the darker interface is so much more appealing. Easy to sort your subscribed casts, multiple options for displaying your library, picks up the last episode you were listening to at the correct time upon reopening. Personal favorite.

I really appreciate how tuned in to the community these devs are. They’re constantly fixing, updating, and adding things commented on.

One request I have is if we can add a blocker to commenters. Not completely necessary, but I notice a couple frequent commenters on podcasts I regularly listen to that just really bug me. I’d love the option to mute their comments from my feed via blocking their handle.

Still waiting for some solution to the toilet bowl every comment section has become.. I like using it for the odd legit convo with another poster but then the entire post is bombarded with off topic harassment and the report option doesn’t seem to address anything. At least I can meditate on it, I guess. 😉

I love castbox and its definitely my prefered podcast app.
Ive used it for years now, but Ive had an odd bug just in the last couple days. I made sure to update PodcastAppPlayer to make sure it wasnt that before writing this review, but since it just happened again Im not aure what it is.
Anyway, every now and then when im listening to something but using another app, like playing a game or something while i listen, the sound becomes distorted. Im not sure how to really describe it, it sounds very distorted and static-y. Once i pause the episode it will be fine as long as im on castbox but as soon as i switch apps it starts again and i have to close the other app completely sometimes to get it to work right and then reopen the other app and itll be okay for a while again.
Despite this i still prefer castbox to anything else, but if this were fixed it would be an easy 5 stars.

This player works fine, and has a large and diverse number of podcasts to choose from. Although I’ve only been using it for 3days, it seems they are focused on getting you to upgrade, and focusing you on content that I suspect they receive kickbacks for directing you to. Why do I want to livestream on PodcastAppPlayer— its a podcast player!! That said , it would still be a great app if the interface were only user friendly. The podcasts you download are accessed by hitting a small dim, miniature icon in the middle of several others at the bottom of the page. When driving - which is what a huge number of us choose to use podcasts for- it nearly impossible to access your content easily and safely. I can imagine the same is true for joggers hikers, treadmill users etc. Really misses the target audience in my opinion.

I love listening to podcasts and I am constantly trying to find a player that works for me. I like Castbox because if it’s simplicity and for the most part it does what I want and helps me control how I want to listen to podcasts. However there is one thing I wish it would do, I wish it would give me the option to download not the new seat episodes, but the oldest episodes. One thing I really do not like is going through a manually choosing the episodes I want to download. I don’t want to automatically download the most recent. I had a player that I love, it was the RSS Radio player. The option of choosing which episodes to automatically download and it would automatically build my playlist for me in the way I wanted it. I had to get rid of it because since the last update it did no work very well. It was extremely slow or unresponsive, PodcastAppPlayer kept shutting down, and it would get rid if my podcasts so I had to find them again. If Castbox would give me the option of choosing which ones to automatically download and build my playlist for me, I would consider this perfect. I have chosen to upgrade for now, but I will keep looking for the player that allows me control of how to download and listen. Also, this keeps crashing whenever I’m trying to work on my lists. Thanks for PodcastAppPlayer overall. You have a great selection and I love that you have old episodes of some of my favorite podcasts.

PodcastAppPlayer has podcasts that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere. It also has most of the features available on other apps even if they aren’t as user friendly. My two main issues preventing me from rating 5 stars are both rated to playback. If you aren’t using a playlist and want to play multiple episodes of the same podcast in the order they were released, sometimes it replays the episode over instead of going to the next episode. The bigger issue is that none of the shortcuts for restarting a paused podcast work. If you pause a podcast, you can’t restart it on your lock screen by pressing play, or by swiping up from from the bottom and pressing play, or by using a Bluetooth headset/car stereo and pressing play. You have to go back in PodcastAppPlayer and open the specific podcast and restart the episode there. It defeats the purpose of hands free car radios and seems like it should be easily fixable. You can use the shortcuts to pause the episode, and if you push play within a few seconds after pressing pause on a shortcut it sometimes plays, but if you wait even a few seconds after pausing, you have to go back into PodcastAppPlayer to press play again.

My old, 5-star review was titled, “love it.” I moved over to Castbox from Stitcher about a year ago, and at first I really loved it...even when it was often buggy.

Unfortunately, you’re now ruining PodcastAppPlayer by making it not a podcast player, but a “community engagement tool.” I’m sure the marketing department has said engagement is how to keep people in PodcastAppPlayer , but what it’s really doing is creating yet another space for trolling, fighting, meanness and all out hatred. NO ONE WANTS THIS ON A PODCAST PLAYER. You don’t need to be Facebook.

Pushing “community”, by placing user comment pop-ups over the listener controls means I can’t even ignore what Angry Bill has to say about politics (on non-political shows even!). Stop this! You are part of the problem by trying to push this user engagement crap. It’s not about free speech or banning users or deleting comments or even giving users the ability to block people - YOU’RE A PODCAST PLAYER SO KEEP OUT OF THIS WHOLE ARENA AND JUST MAKE YOUR PLAYER THE BEST PLATFORM FOR LISTENING TO PODCASTS!

Having used various podcast apps extensively over the last decade, I can now say with certainly that this is my favorite one. Presentation, features, and organization are top tier. That said, I do have one suggestion.

When it comes to deleting downloaded episodes, one cannot do it from the main podcast section, you have to go to the “downloads” section and delete everything from there. This obviously isn’t a deal-breaker, but it is inconvenient and the only area where Castbox doesn’t outdo the competition. I don’t have any other reason to go into “downloads”, so my stock builds up for a week or two until I run out of space and am forced to cull the herd en masse.

If PodcastAppPlayer was updated such that you can delete downloads from the same area you can mark them as “played”, this would bump it up to 5 stars.

I’ve searched for a good podcast platform and so far this is my favorite
However, it’s missing obvious features that may push me to continue my search.

For example: there are no settings to be able to change the play settings. No option to choose skip forward or backward time. Most apps let me choose between 15 and 30 seconds. It also has no option for me to turn off the auto play next episode. This one drives me crazy

It also does something super funky when you share an episode with others - it shares the image of the podcast, then the title, then the link so it looks like I’ve just sent 3 separate obnoxious texts to someone instead of just the link which includes all of that data anyway

Finally, I wish that when I click on listen, the page below my options for downloaded, playlist, and new releases that it listed my subscriptions there instead of a separate tab. It feels counter intuitive and I’m still getting used to the strange navigation.

Why I’m using this one over other apps - it’s a cleaner design, has the sleep timer, playlist etc.
The main game changer - this is the only app I could find that let me mark something as played without downloading the episode first or playing it and skipping it to the end and letting it play out.