Overcast is my preferred podcast app and I have been using it daily since 2015. Before that, I had been deep in the Apple ecosystem for years, first using iTunes and then the Podcasts app to listen to podcasts. Over the years, I have listened to thousands of hours of podcasts while working, commuting, exercising, and living my life.
Apple’s Podcast app has had its share of problems and bugs, but it also affords a lot of perks for being Apple’s homegrown app. One of the biggest perks for me is Podcasts having a macOS app, as I’d love to be able to listen to podcasts on my computer without a web interface. Some days, I think I may be the only person who uses Overcast’s UX-unfriendly website, if only so don’t have to keep switching my earphones between devices.
Overcast has just gone through a significant redesign, and the developer, Marco Arment, has introduced great quality of life improvements within the app’s main screen. It’s a bold redesign. Where I would describe the previous playlist management as being minimal and austere (not a knock!), the new Overcast brings colour and icon to the main screen. And while I typically only listen to podcasts via playlists, I appreciate that the redesign helps better sort podcasts between unplayed, active, and archived. (As someone who listens to too many podcasts, there used to be a lot of scrolling to reach individual podcasts.)
Why Overcast is my favourite podcast app
Here are the three reasons I’d recommend Overcast for podcasts if you have an iPhone:
- Smart Speed
- Streamlined interface for managing podcasts
- Integration with Siri Shortcuts
Smart Speed
We’ve all been there. You’re watching a video on YouTube or listening to an audiobook, and you want it just a little faster. So you inch up the playback speed, and suddenly you’re listening to Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.
Smart Speed is the number one reason I love Overcast. It dynamically compresses the silences between sound, without NPR sounding like The Chipmunk Adventure. (No shade to NPR or the Chipmunks.)
What’s even nicer is that I can set different speeds for different podcasts. So while true-crime podcasts may get sped up between 1.3–1.5x, I can listen to 99% Invisible at 1.0x… because you don’t mess with Roman Mars’ voice. (You just don’t.)
To give you a sense of how much I love this feature… I have saved over 749 hours by using Smart Speed in Overcast. That’s more than 31 days of silence cut from podcasts alone. (Thanks Marco!)
Streamlined interface for managing podcasts
It’s simple to add and manage podcasts with Overcast. If anything, it’s too simple. Earlier this year, I had over 140 GB of podcasts queued up, waiting to be listened to. (I need to permit myself to accept that I’ll never listen to a fraction of them. But let’s ignore that fact for now…)
Overcast allows you to make smart playlists so that you can curate your podcast queue. You can include full podcast feeds, but also select which feeds to prioritize. You can add specific episodes, or exclude episodes you don’t want included in your playlist.
In early 2021, I was looking for a change to my personal knowledge management system. I had been using Evernote since Evernote 3.0 launched in 2008, and it had long been a pillar of my personal productivity system. Despite my love for the green elephant, it no longer met my needs for the subscription cost. It was time for a change.
I used Overcast to compile a playlist of episodes about productivity tools and ideas. In previous episodes of Cortex, CGP Grey had talked about Zettelkasten, it didn’t click. (In its pure form, it still doesn’t for me.) But using that search term in Overcast, Zettelkasten resurfaced an old podcast episode. His tool of choice was a knowledge base application called Obsidian.
Integration with Siri Shortcuts
If you’re a fan of automation, Overcast provides out-of-the-box integration with Siri Shortcuts. This is true of Apple’s Podcasts app, but Overcast offers many more options for control than Apple’s native app.
It allows me to quickly create or append information from Overcast into my Obsidian vault. And this is where the magic is with Shortcuts to help automate part of my notes.
Using Overcast with Obsidian
Apple’s built-in tool, Shortcuts, allows me to be able to create notes in Obsidian. I use a combination of metadata and community plugins to make this work. There are two kinds of notes I make: appending to my daily note, and a reference note.
Both types act as a log or record of what I’ve listened to, which allows me to not only keep track of content I’ve consumed but be able to act on it. And most importantly, because I use Shortcuts, it reduces the friction for me to be able to track what I’ve listened to, and to be able to make quick notes about a podcast episode.
Since they serve different functions, I’ve detailed my workflows for both keeping a podcast log in my daily notes and for reference notes, and have included my shortcuts in each.
