Airr | Audio Conversations Reviews

There is no app that I use and love more than Airr. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve always been a loyal Overcast user, but after taking the Building a Second Brain course I was introduced to Airr and have never looked back. I used to listen to podcasts over and over but the incredible note taking features in Airr allow me to listen once, take the notes I need, and then move on. Not only is the tech getting better and better, but the customer service is simply OUTSTANDING. For some reason I keep asking ‘PLEASE LET ME PAY YOU’ lol... the fact that AirrAudioConversations is free is beyond insane and I am a lifer. My productivity and creativity have massively increased due to the workflows AirrAudioConversations enables....now I just wish the team would take over audible and fix it! Haha. If I could give this 10 stars I would.

I never write reviews for apps because the opportunity cost is too high but I wanted to say something so hopefully the Airr team hears this and gets around to addressing the recurring application/implementation bugs before I’m forced to find a new app….I love you all and I love AirrAudioConversations but it’s a love/hate relationship and I’d rather stay than go.

Okay, TL;DR

Been using Airr for a year now… I know it was basically first in the space and competitors have sprung up because I’m familiar with the interface and it was recommended by a friend I respect.

However, AirrAudioConversations is so darn buggy it crashes CONSTANTLY, interrupts playback and deletes bookmarks I send.

Also, I want to love the sharing snippets feature for audio but the loading is so slow or nonfunctional I give up and end up not sharing my airrquotes…..

I know it’s hard to run a mobile app company in a space that’s eventually going to shift away from mobile (but you’ve still got time), and you’ve got lots of other concerns but nailing your core functionality so the UX it is less of a headache / heartbreak situation will ultimately improve the value of your company/app.

… I realize that was more than you probably wanted or needed and sorry for being on my soapbox but I love the premise of what you’re doing and I have been loyal and don’t want to get lost to churn or competition.

Good luck!

- CC

The concept of Airr is amazing and I am looking forward to the day when I will want to give 6 or 7 stars but right now, I just want it to do the basics of playing a podcast. If you use the skip forward or skip back, Airr gets confused quickly and if you use it at the end of a podcast to skip the list of executive producers to interns Airr cannot figure out you have listened to this episode and will continue to play it over and over and over again. This would of course be fixed if there was a way to tell Airr I’m done with this podcast and mark it as played but you can’t do that either. It does not remove or clearly make those that have been played. It does not show which of the podcasts you are listening to at this moment. The list goes on. These things are the basics of what a podcast player should do. You can’t put a jet engine on a car and expect it to fly. It just goes really fast when it crashes. Airr will be great someday but not today.

First of all, let me just say AirrAudioConversations offers the answer to a lot of my frustrations. I listen to MANY long form podcasts and I often want to capture snippets on-the-go. AirrAudioConversations purports to let me do that, and it sometimes does.

Still, AirrAudioConversations has a long way to go.
1. It’s very buggy. It crashes all the time, and I’ve been unable to find a log that might allow me to troubleshoot why it’s crashing.

2. The interface is poorly designed and difficult to use. I’d like AirrAudioConversations to launch on my library page, not some page with a bunch of random quotes from random things that I don’t care about at all. I already know what I want to listen to…I just want to listen to it in as few clicks as possible. I’d also like my podcasts to be organized together, in two-level structure, like most podcast apps.

3. FAQs are missing or hard to find. It has taken me a long time to figure things out (e.g. how can I export my quotes? if I delete the downloaded copy of a podcast I have listened to, does it delete my quotes too?)

It has a long way to go, but like I said in the beginning - AirrAudioConversations is exactly what I’ve been looking for so I will persevere through the bugs, etc., and keep using it!

Update: One of the co-founders reached out to me. It sounds like AirrAudioConversations is having issues on older models of the iPhone (I have an iPhone 7), but the team is actively working on them. Updating to iOS14 helped. Bumping up to 3 stars because the team seems great and I can’t fault them too much for not supporting my dinosaur of a phone.
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This seems like it would be the perfect podcast app if I could actually get it to, you know, play podcasts. Unfortunately it crashes pretty much every time I try to use it. I also don’t understand why the discover page is the default while I need to dig (admittedly not much, but still) to find my subscriptions. Will definitely revisit in the future, though, since I’m itching for a way to take notes while I’m listening to podcasts on the go.

I was really excited to be able to take quotes from podcasts and upon trying AirrAudioConversations I was very happy with it. That was until I started using it regularly. About once a day AirrAudioConversations just completely loses my place in a podcast. Sometimes it happens when taking an Airrquote (and it just skips randomly to another episode and sets the one I’m listening to back to the beginning). Sometimes it happens when I get a phone call and the episode skips back several minutes when the phone call is over. And other times it just loses my place entirely when I leave it overnight. The skip forward 30 seconds is also very buggy, only skipping forward maybe half the time and then usually jumping back a few seconds at random times.

I have been using Airr for over a month now and it is my favorite Podcast client. It is amazing to have the option of selecting blocks of audio from shows you listen to and to be able to come back to them. Integration with Roam Research is more than a plus. I truly recommend giving it a shot, even if you’re not
feeling the need to switch from Apple, Stitcher or any other Podcast management app you may be using. Plus, their support team is top notch. Highly responsive and fast to boot!

I want to love AirrAudioConversations. But when I’m listening to a podcast and hit the quote button, it frequently stops the episode I’m listening to and randomly switches to a different one. It’s so annoying I could throw my phone out the window. I keep waiting for an update to fix this. I would have preferred to email this as a support request rather than a review but I can’t find a contact or email for Airr anywhere

Update: they’ve reached out to solve the issue

Amazing how much more I’m able to engage with podcasts and retain knowledge now that I’m able to easily take notes on the content. It’s completely changed my listening experience.

Combine that with the fact that it integrates with tools like Readwise and has a super responsive and dedicated development team, and you have a killer app that stands out in a pretty flooded market of podcast players.

Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Upgraded to five from below a couple weeks ago: I had some issues and emailed them. David was quick to reply and problem solved with me. Followed up the next day with some other advice and pushed some updates. Voila! Problem solved. I’m into AirrAudioConversations hook, like and sinker.

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Giving 3 for the idea and deducting 2 for the issues. I do badly need this to work.

And then started having issues. I need to write the developers on a platform other than Twitter. It worked okay then a few weeks ago I upgraded to iPhone 12 Pro and now my app crashes on start 9 out of 10 times or when I get in asks me to log in every time to see my play list, then after logging in> crash. It’s driving me nuts. I had just finished my complete migration from pocketcasts the week before too.

I religiously use the triple-click feature of my AirPods to repeat the last 15-30 seconds of any audiobook or podcast I happen to be listening to on all other apps. Unfortunately, Airr has overridden this basic function with their “Airrquotes” feature. This is an extremely frustrating and, in my opinion, stupid design decision. I would love to use Airrquotes, but the number of times I want the last 15 seconds of a podcast repeated will be orders of magnitude higher that the times I want to record an Airrquote. It’s a complete dealbreaker for me, so I had to uninstall and go back to the overcast app.

This has been a game changer for my consumption of knowledge. I use it with Readwise and Roam to automatically save my Airquotes to pages. The way it automatically creates pages has been such a big time saver. Keep up the amazing work and find a way to let us pay you!

Minor nit: updating an AirQuote note after it has been made public or shared privately has intermittent issues saving new edits.

Great concept but it is marred by logistical issues. 1st, the default screen is "Discover," which is little more than tapping into other people's random Airr Quotes. If I wanted that experience in my face, I'd install Twitter. 2nd, because of the default, it takes longer to do anything productive. 3rd, unlike more mature products like Overcast, it is difficult to find a new episode of a podcast. You have to go to Library, select your initial, go to the podcast, find the episode, etc. Not ready to be used as a primary podcast player.

Getting information out of podcasts can be tricky if you’re not near a laptop or a journal. Airr makes it easy to grab quotes or bookmark interesting sections out of podcasts. Even cooler is you can share your quotes easily to friends or even on a public feed. There’s transcripts that you can read and create a quote from there. Really well polished. Looking forward to seeing AirrAudioConversations grow. Big fan!

This is hands down the best Podcasts app around. I really like the interface and options available but the ability to clip sections you like for future reference is the most unique and useful feature. On top of that you can import your highlights into Readwise for ready reference. If you're willing to give AirrAudioConversations a try I promise you won't want to use any other podcast app out there!

If this was just another me-too podcasting app, I wouldn’t waste my time reviewing it. If you use podcasts to learn and grow, this is the tool for you. Get transcripts, or snag quick snippets of a podcast with taps on your headphone while out walking, driving, etc. AirrAudioConversations truly made a difference in my ability to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that can be gained from podcasts.

The ability to capture audio / text note clips while listening to podcasts was something I’ve wanted for a long time. Finally found it with Airr, and will never be able to go back! Capturing a note is effortless (can even triple tap on AirPod if on the go), and their automated sync with Readwise funnels my podcast notes in with the rest of my highlights!

I mainly use podcasts as a means of learning new things and keeping on top of developments in my industry. The central feature of Airr for me is the ability to highlight segments of an episode and have it automatically transcribed and extracted to Readwise. It is a game changer.

The rest of AirrAudioConversations still needs a bit of polish before it is fully comparable to the major podcast apps but the gap isn’t too large to overcome.

AirrAudioConversations is superb! I can’t believe it’s free.

The only thing keeping it from perfection is that (1) I can’t use private podcast feeds and (2) sometimes (~1 in 7) AirrAudioConversations does not save a caption and I have to delete the AirrQuote and make a new one.

Including private podcast feeds would be nice even if the transcript would be missing, since sometime the free feed only includes half the episode and/or has ad reads.

The podcast world needed something like this to come out. I compare this to taking notes while reading. If you don’t take notes you’re going to forget all of the golden nuggets you’ve read. AirrAudioConversations allows that same process to be applied to podcasts. Take quick and easy notes, share them with friends even. Switch to this podcast app now!

Update: I talked with the creator of AirrAudioConversations and he is on all of these issues as of the date I posted this!!

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I love Airr for collecting notes from the podcasts I am following. It fits great into my workflow.

I do have a few problems with AirrAudioConversations :

1. When data is inconsistent, while I am at work, AirrAudioConversations has weird behaviors such as:
* Downloaded podcasts cannot be started.
* A downloaded podcast will stop playing.
* A podcast episode will not continue downloading and will not auto restart after internet returns.
* Random app crashes when connectivity is lost.
** After AirrAudioConversations crashes and I reload, AirrAudioConversations will refuse to go past the logo until I have internet connectivity.
*** This is especially frustrating considering I’ve downloaded podcast episodes but cannot listen to them now.

2. I cannot sort podcast episodes in any manner. Suggested sorts would include:
* Hide played
* Oldest to newest(when starting a new podcast)

3. There is not a dedicated page to see the progress of downloads as far as I know of.

4. Episode progress is not always saved.
* This generally happens when connectivity is lost.

I love the ability to capture notes. But, there is a long list of things other apps do better as base features. 1) Ability to pickup where you left off listening - app restarts the podcast. 2) Lacks ability to set different playback speeds by podcast. 3) ability to subscribe and unsubscribed in playback options. 4) buggy with auto delete after listening not working sometimes. 5) Searching for new podcast is not robust. Can find specific episodes but cannot find the actual podcast to subscribe and your unable to subscribe even if you find the episodes.

If the devs read comments updates these basic things and it would be a 5 star app.

Do you know how many times I’ve told my friends: “you have to listen to this: x podcast, episode y, timestamp z”? AirrAudioConversations makes that infinitely easier on everyone. I can just send them the audio I want them to listen to, and they don’t gotta spend a ton of effort looking it up. Maybe now my friends will actually take a listen to what I’m asking them to 😂