Himalaya: Stories and Courses Reviews

Himalaya is great and far superior to the Apple podcast app I’ve been using for so long. It’s amazingly easy to get around, easy to find the podcast you’re looking for in you library, and it’s designed really well. I also really love that I get better recommendations from Himalaya than on Apple podcast. I always see the same shows on Apple and nothing new.

But Himalaya isn’t without its bugs. The thing that annoys me the most is that it always starts playing what you’re listening to when you open Himalaya which means you’ll be at work, unlock your phone, go to Himalaya to search for a new show and as soon as it opens it starts playing a podcast for all to hear. It’s not too bad when your alone but it always happens to me public. Also when I pick an episode to listen to it will either play another episode that I didn’t choose or will start playing the episode at a random point so you have to start it from the beginning. Also I’ll be half way through a podcast, stop to listen to something else, and then come back to it it won’t remember where I was. It just plays it from the beginning again and I have to find where I was.

Other than a few performance bugs I really love Himalaya. I just want the developers to have a new update to fix them. Then they’d easily have a 5 star from me.

Himalaya is broken. For months, the refresh is much slower than it used to be. Playback is often buggy, with periodic cut outs. The most aggravating thing is that the “feed” list doesn’t work. When displaying podcasts by Show, organized by Episode, it only shows about 10 Episodes before requiring a pause to refresh. Sometimes it just a stops there, sometimes it will populate more around 10 more Episodes before requiring a pause to keep scrolling to another batch. The worst part is that it never allows more than around 5 of these “scroll, pause, populate” experiences before it simply stops scrolling further. This means there is no way to scroll into your feed more than a few episodes! This is so frustrating when I want to scroll back even 1-2 days to see if I missed something interesting. Scrolling thru episodes just simply doesn’t work. iPhone 11 ProMax. Latest iOS. Please fix scrolling through episodes to make it faster and mostly allow continuous scrolling back in time without cutting out after a few lines.

Switched over to exclusively using this app over the Apple podcast app because it had become too frustrating to navigate. I like Himalaya overall, but there are a few bugs that are driving me nuts. First, it crashes constantly. Usually while I’m trying to search for a new podcast or browsing discover to find a new podcast. Second, it will randomly start an episode in the middle when I’ve never listened to that episode before. This makes it a little difficult to distinguish if I’ve already started listening to something and moved on, or if it’s just the weird glitch and I should just restart the episode. Besides those two issues though I really like Himalaya and the way it’s setup. It’s easy to find things and to get to new episodes, and I’ve officially switched over all my podcast listening to this platform. Wish it was slightly better, hoping there will be more updates that hammer out these minor flaws in what seems to be a promising app.

Himalaya was great & my chosen podcast app (I listen to a LOT): simple, clean, has everything available, ability to make playlists (which means u can follow podcasts without getting spoilers from most recent episodes downloading).

However ever since the most recent update a couple weeks ago I’ve been having lots of streaming playback issues, podcast often starting from the beginning after crash, and more importantly— the audio shuts off whenever my iPhone goes to sleep, which renders this unusable, unless u happen to be on your phone doing other things while listening. It works in lock mode but not when the screen goes black to sleep. Really annoying & impossible for battery life when traveling. I could not find settings anywhere to do anything abt this & wasn’t previously an issue that I noticed. Was working flawlessly before.

Will update my review back to 5 stars when this gets addressed- hope it does soon & I don’t have to download a new app, for now reverting to the dreaded apple podcast app!

I’m the kind of person who needs to keep my brain busy like pretty much all the time, so I’ve always got headphones in. I like music for when I need to focus on getting work done, but whenever I’m doing chores, or especially on my morning run (or on those rare occasions when I actually have to drive somewhere), I love using that time to learn stuff. This is fantastic for that. I can knock out an episode or five whenever I get the chance, and I get a way bigger productivity hit I ever got from podcasts. It’s like cocaine vs caffeine. Except without the nosebleeds and jail. Seriously though, some of the stuff I’ve listened to on here are complete game changers. I’ll keep giving them my money as long as they keep making me smarter.

Worst customer service ever. Not even because they’re rude, but because they are negligent and will literally ignore you and not respond to your emails, which is the ONLY way to reach them. I did a this app+ free trial for a specific podcast, but did not like it enough to keep it past the trial, so I follow the instructions on how to cancel a trial/this app+ membership, but there is no option to cancel like the FAQs said there would be. I get charged since there is literally no way for me to cancel in Himalaya , so I email support with my issue on Jan 8th and ask them to cancel my membership for me. They respond the next day and say they will reach out to their finance and engineering team to look into this problem for me, but that is the last time I hear anything from them. I get charged again on Feb 10th and email support (with screen shots of the charges and email trail) to let them know the issue has not been resolved. I haven’t heard a peep from anyone in support yet, hence why I am writing this review. I would really like for someone to contact me ASAP. This is unacceptable.

I have an iPhone 8+, no access to Wifi, a limited data plan, and chronic insomnia. Decided to check out this app after hearing the host of True Crime Historian recommend it.

The Apple podcast player was driving me nuts-new episodes would drop and I’d eagerly hit play only to get an error message the show was unavailable. I listen to podcasts to help me sleep/relax and create playlists to last hours. Apple would play one or two in the list before giving me the ol’ unavailable error and disrupting my peace with infuriating silence.

this app works. It’s always available. And it even offers me suggestions of new podcasts to listen to that I love and never would have found through Apple or anywhere else.

Himalaya looks great, and I really enjoyed using it until you are overwhelmed by the lack of features. You can’t filter apps by played/unplayed in your library. You can’t even short your podcasts you follow alphabetically. Second missing feature is the web app wont label a episode as played, even though Himalaya tracks this. So if you were to use a desktop you have no idea which episodes you’ve listened to. Himalaya also has a tendency to automatically pause while listening to podcasts. These features won’t break Himalaya , but make navigating your library very difficult if you follow more than 10 podcasts. I like that this app is trying to offer more options for revenue for podcast by allowing tips, and subscription models. The social aspect is also a interesting spin to allow people to comment on each episode. I hope this app adds these features so Himalaya becomes easier to navigate.

First of all, I wanna thank you. Himalaya is fantastic and powerful. I’ve recommended Himalaya to many of my friends. I tested many apps for podcast and your app is the best and the most user friendly app.

I have a suggestion, if you make the sleep timer more easier to access & bring The sleep timer to the main page of playing podcast, instead of being a choice between that podcast’s options, it would be more user friendly, because I think sleep timer is an important option & every professional podcast listener wants to have a quick access to it.
Thank you for all of your efforts

I like Himalaya well enough, but there is one feature I would love to see implemented that would make it easier to use. It would be nice to set up a temporary queue that would delete itself when I reach the end or something like that. It’s bothersome to have to pre make a list and then go back and delete it when I’m done listening to it. It would also be nice to add a show after the one I’m listening to just in case I find something I want to listen to right away rather than wait until the end of my playlist to hear it. I listen to my shows while I work and sometimes I don’t have time to move things around in my list. I hope this made sense... but I do love Himalaya and how it treats my favorite podcasters. Keep up the good work!

I’ve been using this app for about 6 months now and it’s been great. It has every podcast I listen to and the interface is sweet. I do have one issue. When the phone is locked and playing a podcast through this app, I can pause with my headphones just fine. However, when attempting to resume the podcast, it plays for about a second then stops playing again. This requires me to hit the play button on my headphones again. Not a huge issue, just a minor annoyance. I’ve had this issue with three different phone now and several different versions of iOS. I also have this issue with wired or wireless headphones. Anyways, hope you can use this info to help solve a bug. Thank you!

Hi,
I tried looking for a bug report portal online but couldn’t find one. With the old version if I was 30 minutes into say episode 240 and i clicked on episode 241, it would start me 30 minutes in and I’d have to rewind. Then if episode 241 was shorter than 30 minutes it would immediately start playing the episode after that. I then got a bug where it wouldn’t let me play to rewind because every time the episode immediately finished. So, I just updated.
Now, my app crashes immediately upon opening every time, even after restarting my phone.

Himalaya has a nice layout and I’ve used Himalaya pretty consistently but for the moment it’s unusable. Please advise, I’d prefer not to delete/reinstall and lose my watch history.

I love Himalaya. I've tried almost every other podcast app out there but keep coming back to this. The discover section is above and beyond all others and the features within Himalaya are top notch.

The reason I give it 4 stars is because I've constantly contacted support to get them to fix the download feature. Himalaya only downloads episodes when Himalaya is open. So if I forget to open Himalaya before stepping out for work in the morning, I'll end up having to stream. In addition, it only lets you download 3 episodes. I wish there was a way to increase/decrease this.

Lastly, it would be nice if the playback speed didn't reset back to 1x every time Himalaya is restarted.

I love this app. I think there are a lot of awesome features in here for both the creators and the audience, like the ability to give a thumbs up and leave a comment on an episode, I also appreciate they give the content creators the ability to charge for extra content so if you’re interested in more stuff from a specific person, you can see if they have any available instead of having to search for the patron they might not have.

Himalaya works significantly better than the one apple has put out. However, I wish I was able to get all the podcasts that are through apple. So far that has been the only downside for me in using Himalaya.

Update: I have been enjoying Himalaya for a while. However, every time they update something it seems to be for the worse not the better. If they don’t change some things back or at least give users options to change things back I will be deleting Himalaya too. I hate it because I have yet to find a truly good podast app. I had hope for this one but that is waning.

When I first got Himalaya about 6 months ago it was great. But, over the last two months about ready to delete and go with another app for podcasts. Here are my issues:
1. Some episodes will not play in order on any podcast, always going in reverse no matter how I have them sorted on Himalaya . Some play correctly, some do it.
2. Random episodes of all podcasts will continue to play with no sound. I can see the time clicking away but can't hear anything. Sometimes I can go to another podcast and come back to correct the problem but doesn't always work. Have tested and the episode will play on Stitcher just fine.
I do have the latest version of Himalaya and problems persist.

Used to be my favorite podcast app. My biggest issue that brought me to write a review today is that the “show notes” are no longer displayed on the episode page to easily see a description of the what the episode is about. You have to go all the way over to the show page, scroll through and find the episode and open the menu tab to select “show notes.” This is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING. Why was this changed? Makes no sense.
A lesser gripe is that the playback speed function on Himalaya is basically useless because there is a glitchy clicking noise when you increase playback speed. Other apps do not have this issue.

Easily the best podcast app for finding new shows, and especially for finding episodes about a topic across shows (for example, when I became obsessed with an author and wanted to hear all of their podcast appearances).

But when I know exactly what I want to listen to, it takes a surprising number of clicks and amount of time to get there. And there are some weird bugs where A completely different episode plays while my intended episodes graphic is on the screen

This used to be the perfect podcast app until the last several updates. With the latest update you can no longer see when a podcast episode was released and it also doesn’t show which episodes are new to me when I open a favorite podcast! With no ability to switch back to light mode it makes it very hard to use now for people with limited visual acuity. Dark mode is terrible for me with my eye issues. Also the new interface is no longer streamlined and intuitive like it was previously.
Please please bring back the features that made this Himalaya that I used to love but am now so disappointed with.

Love the amount of shows. Lots of new and lesser known podcasts. My problem is when trying to add a specific episode to a playlist (bc idk how to queue it to play next) or see the description of an episode, the ... is so small the episode ends up playing and cutting off whatever I’m listening to. Since there’s no queue (other than a show specific one ex. all episodes of one show) I have to try and find the episode I was just listening to. 😫 Hopefully I can figure something out soon and if I do I’ll change my rating but as of now the set up is very aggravating.

...but I keep going back to stitcher because there are some basic features that seem to be missing from Himalayas (or I'm just not finding them or setting it up correctly?):

1. What's the point of creating playlists if you have to create new lists or edit existing ones to get new episodes? Maybe I'm not doing something right but all of my stitcher playlists automatically update, downloading new episodes the moment they're released.

2. I have my this app app set to automatically download new episodes of the shows I'm following but it never does (and I don't need the past 3 episodes. Just the most recent).

3. Maybe my fingertips are too big but it always takes me several attempts to actually hit the "download" symbol because much of the time it just starts playing the show instead. I have to very careful touch the icon for it to work.

I REALLY want to like Himalaya. I like being able to more directly give support for my favorite shows, but if it takes me 30 minutes every morning just to set things up, manually download shows, edit playlists, I'm going to have to stay with Stitcher. 😕

So far it's much much better than the Apple podcast app. Thank you so much for the dark mode!

That being said - it doesn't have the"Play Next" & "Play Later" function which is essential to someone like me who listens to podcasts every day while working.

The Playlist function is not a substitute. Playlists need to be made of individual podcasts, not of the series' most recent release.

This means that everyday I would need to make a new Playlist & that playlist can only be complete when the newest release of any individual podcast has been dropped - which doesn't necessarily happen first thing in the morning...

Also - it would be really great if there were these additional two options:
1. Sort by newest release
2. List view instead of tile view

If you guys can add those 3 things without screwing up, breaking or removing any of the things that make it an already superior app I will definitely come back & update my review to 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟👍

Jamie and Doug,
I’ve listened to all your podcast. Today I listened to you talking about having Henley meet baby and all that sweet stuff to come. You were saying you didn’t know how long or how old a child should still be rocked to sleep or just rocked before bed. You waited a long time to have those babies, you rock them as long as you can. Life goes so fast. I rocked my kiddos and grands every moment I got the chance. You won’t regret it. Trust me.
Love, love, love your family.
Granny(Diane) Storey
Holland, Mi

I started using the this app app last week and I love the layout. Very clean and easy to navigate! However, episodes will occasionally start in the middle even though it is my first time playing them. This is frustrating! I also would appreciate an easy way to queue podcasts that I intend to listen to next. I cannot find that function within Himalaya if it exists. Overall, a good start but needs some work! Thanks for Himalaya . I look forward to seeing it evolve and grow.

I love the concept of the tip jar and how your work with your podcasters. It’s great! I specifically joined because one of my favorite podcasts (Obscura) talked so highly of it and I became a paying member to support some of my favorite podcasters. My only complaint is that Himalaya randomly stops playing - completely out of the blue. Multiple times a day. I have to kill Himalaya and start over. It’s so frustrating when you’re driving. If you could fix that bug - Himalaya would be the best podcast app out there.