Overcast, a podcast client for iPhone: new design, new code

Sometimes it is advisable for a developer to wait a bit before completely restructuring an app. Well-known indie developer Marco Arment has now done exactly this with his popular podcast client Overcast. Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the application for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, a completely new base like his has emerged on his blog writes. “For the future of Overcast, it needed a modern foundation for its second decade. I’ve spent the last 18 months rebuilding most of the app using Swift, SwiftUI, Blackbird, and modern Swift concurrency.”

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Faster, more modern – audio engine remains

Arment came with me Version 2024.7which already includes changes, but Overcast has not been completely transformed. The app remains minimalistic with a refined design and not overloaded, and the popular audio engine, which, among other things, increases sound quality, can skip interruptions in speech and normalize the volume, remains the same.

Arment also emphasizes that nothing has changed in his business model; he remains a one-man company with no outside money — but as the co-founder of Tumblr, which was later sold to Yahoo, he can afford to. He wants to continue developing “the best podcast app” while respecting customers’ time, attention, and privacy.

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No more streams, just downloads

However, with Overcast 2024.7, there are some regions that will be abandoned in the future. So Arment has decided that the app will no longer allow streaming episodes. He writes, “It is more reliable to download the episodes in full before playing them.” In fact, this is one of the issues that can be annoying for competing apps like Pocket Casts, which stop playing in a dead zone when playing.

“In the future, the playback screen will open, the download will start and then the playback will start,” Arment said. There should no longer be buffering in parts. With the new, smarter features, users should be able to start selective downloads in the future so that not everything is always downloaded. Support for shortcuts, OPML feeds and storage space management is still missing: “That will be back soon.” Overcast is offered as a subscription for 9.99 euros per year.

(B.Sc.)