Podcast client Overcast for iPhone: New design, new code
Developer Marco Arment has taken the 10th birthday of his app as an opportunity to program a new basic structure.
Overcast is available for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
(Image: Entwickler)
Sometimes it pays for a developer to wait a little before completely restructuring an app. This is exactly what the well-known indie developer Marco Arment has now done with his popular podcast client Overcast. Just in time for the tenth birthday of the application for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, there is a wholly new foundation, as he writes on his blog. "For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for its second decade. I've spent the last 18 months rebuilding most of the app with Swift, SwiftUI, Blackbird and modern Swift concurrency."
Faster, more modern - audio engine remains
Arment has not completely overhauled Overcast with version 2024.7, which already contains the changes. The app is still minimalist with a refined design and not overloaded, and the popular audio engine, which can increase the sound quality, skip pauses and normalize the volume, among other things, remains the same. He also emphasizes that nothing has changed in his business model, he remains a one-man company with no outside money - but as co-founder of Tumblr, which was later sold to Yahoo, he can afford that. He wants to continue developing "the best podcast app" while respecting customers' time, attention and privacy.
No more streams, but downloads instead
However, with Overcast 2024.7 there are also some areas that will be omitted in the future. For example, Arment has decided that the app will no longer allow streaming of episodes. "Downloading episodes in full before playback is much more reliable," he writes. In fact, this is one of the issues that can be annoying with rival apps such as Pocket Casts, which then simply freeze during playback in the dead zone.
"In the future, the playback screen will open, the download will start and then playback will begin," said Arment. There will no longer be any buffering in portions. With new, smart features, users will be able to selectively trigger downloads in future so that not everything is always downloaded. Support for shortcuts, OPML feeds and storage space management are still missing currently: "That will be back soon." Overcast is available as a subscription for 9.99 euros per year.
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