Overcast, developer Marco Arment’s popular podcast player, has received a major new upgrade today with a new design and additional capabilities. Arment described this as “part one” of the Overcast revamp he’s been working on, with the home page, playlist screen, font, and spacing being the main focus this time.
What’s New?
When you launch the app for the first time following an update, you’ll see the new appearance right away. Overcast’s home screen now has a much more modern look, with fresh colours, rounded corners, and personalization options. This is the “biggest revamp” in Overcast’s nearly eight-year history, according to Arment.
At the top of the Overcast home screen are your playlists, which may now be fully customized in terms of colours and icons. There’s also a new area for recently played and released podcast episodes below that.
Overcast has also updated the way you may watch podcasts in your library, offering three alternative options. In a blog post about today’s upgrade, Arment detailed the change:
I’ve also reorganized the old stacked “Podcasts” and “Played Podcasts” sections to better meet users’ requirements and expectations.
What’s More?
The toggle at the top of the podcast list now toggles between three modes: current episodes, all followed podcasts, and inactive podcasts (those you don’t follow and so won’t receive any new episodes from, or haven’t posted a new episode in a long time).
With today’s upgrade, overcast also adds a number of new features. Most importantly, a new Mark as Played feature has been added. A checkmark button and a left-side swipe action are now available on episode rows, allowing you to easily mark an episode as played.
Digging In More Details
This update also includes the following new features:
The ability to watch all starred episodes is the second most requested feature. It’s now possible to make playlists for Starred, Downloaded, and in Progress:
- Each of the light and dark themes now has a tint colour that can be customized from the contemporary iOS UI colour palette.
- The reliability of notifications and background downloads has greatly improved.
- Individual episode downloads can now be deleted or re-downloaded.
- Safari now has the ability to open links (under Nitpicky Details).
- With really large playlists and collections, performance has improved dramatically.
Bugs with episode duration recognition, Car Play lists, Mac-app sharing, and other features have been fixed. This version has so many improvements that I can’t even recall them all.