Popular third-party iOS podcast app Overcast reached version 4.0.1 on Thursday, bringing some much-requested features including a new true-black dark theme and sleep timer option.
The new Black theme, shown above, joins the existing Light and Dark themes, and has been designed with the iPhone X in mind, offering a slick new look for the smartphone's 5.8-inch OLED display as well as being easier on tired eyes.
As before, users who like to change things up depending on the time of day (or night) can swipe up or down with two fingers to quickly change between a light and dark interface – the only difference being that the Light-Switch gesture now simply chooses the most recently used dark theme.
In another neat UI appearance tweak, users can now also opt to turn on the system font for whichever theme they choose.
Elsewhere, there's a new sleep timer option that stops playback at the end of the currently playing episode, plus a bunch of smaller improvements including one that's supposed to fix auto-resume playback after taking a call.
Overcast 3.1 is available as a free ad-supported app for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
Overcast's ability to remove dead air in podcasts and speed up play speed in smaller increments than Apple's Podcast app makes listening to podcasts a much better experience. And the podcast management is a lot clearer... shows don't appear 2 or 3 times on a single screen, and deleting a podcast does just that instead of simply removing it from a list requiring you to navigate back to some arbitrary location where the actual file exists in order to delete it.
PS: Overcast is free. Always has been.
I paid money for it as well. Since it went freemium, nobody who initially paid has had full access to every feature.
I get developers want to make a living (though it’s hard to feel bad for Marco in his $100K Tesla)...
But if you initially charged money for an app - and later decided to move to freemium... how dare you not give full “pro” access to those who were early adopters/supporters. No argument justifies what Overcast, and many other apps, did.
It’s one thing if a huge update comes along, such as Things releasing an all new version. But Overcast literally has gone back and forth on stupid UI decisions - and is constantly breaking (both UI and functionality) because Marco is too good to use standard iOS resources.
It’s sad... Instacast is still miles better than Overcast. And it’s general design hasn’t changes in years. But remains relevant because it adheres to iOS’s design standards. Glad Instacast Core is around now, and being maintained.
And ironically, Overcast looks more and more like Instacast with each UI refresh.
The silence skipping is the only thing I can find appealing... but honestly, what’s the point? What use is it, at the end of the day?
The EQ is no better than iOSs Late Night setting, which applies system wide.
Are these trade offs worth relying on a non-standing audio engine requiring ongoing fixes? I personally don’t think so.