Change Log

Under the hood improvements

• Performance: A big upgrade of stuff under the hood for better performance and stability.

New features

• Private feeds (GA). Follow multiple private/paid feeds from Patreon, Substack, and any other source by the RSS feed URL. Metacast Premium users can follow up to 10 private feeds. Free users can follow up to 3 private feeds.
• Transcripts, chapters, and summaries for private feeds. Premium users get up to 10 hours of audio content in private feeds per month enhanced with transcripts, chapters, and summaries.

Learn more about the improvements in private feeds in the Metacast v1.22 announcement blog post.

New web app features

• Chapters in transcripts. You can now see chapters in transcripts on the web when they're available. Chapters make it easy to navigate the content and link to specific sections of an episode.
• Links to Overcast, Pocket Casts and Episodes.fm. You can now share Metacast links with users of any podcast app. If they use Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast or Pocket Casts, there are direct links to those apps. If they use any other app, they can tap the Episodes.fm link that has links to most popular podcast apps. There is also a link to the RSS feed for users who want to subscribe directly.
• Direct links to audio files. You can now download an episode's audio file (usually in the mp3 format) directly from episode pages. In case you want to listen to it in your audio player of choice or use some of the content from another podcast, it's now easy—simply download the file. Just keep in mind that the content may be copyrighted, so reuse with caution.
• Podcast hosting information. You can now see where podcast feeds are hosted. At the bottom of podcast pages, we've added links to popular hosts (detected by the feed URL listed in the Apple Podcast catalog). At this time, we only show the information for Transistor, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio, Megaphone, and Spotify for Creators (f.k.a. Anchor). If you want your podcast host to be added, please send us an email at [email protected].
• Better download links. Now when you tap the Download button on an iOS or Android device, it'll take you directly to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to download Metacast.

New features

• Private feeds (beta). Follow private/paid feeds from Patreon, Substack and any other source by the RSS feed URL!

Bug fixes

• List view rendering issue. Fixed the issue reported on Reddit.

Other changes

• v1.20 is now the minimum required version. To support private feeds, we had to make v1.20 the minimum version.

Read the blog post about updates in v1.21.

New web app features

• Search podcasts. You can now search any podcast and play it in the Metacast web app. Just to go podcast search page or use the search box in the navigation bar at the top.
• System theme. Now you can set the web app theme to "system." It'll adjust to your operating system's preferences.

New features

• Episode summaries. See what the episode is about and quickly decide if it's worth listening to.
• App update available notification. When a new version of Metacast is available, you'll see a banner prompting you to upgrade right in the app's Home and Settings screens.

UX improvements

• Chapters in the episode info screen. See the chapters and start playing right from the the chapter you're interested in from the episode info screen.
• Faster loading of podcast/episode covers. We've made some optimizations to reduce the image load times.
• Deleted episodes are now hidden. When a creator removes an episode, it's no longer shown in the feed.

Read the blog post about updates in v1.20.

• New look: The app and the website now have a new logo and a new app icon. Did you notice that the new ((metacast)) parentheses look like broadcast waves?
• New feature: The podcast/episode sharing is completely re-vamped! Sharing URLs are now human-readable and open in the web app. It helps you easily access the full transcript on a web page. To open links in Metacast, there's now a big "Open in Metacast" button in the web app. Just tap it and the podcast/episode will open in the app.
• New feature: Light theme for the web app.
• Bugfix: Links to OPML and FAQ pages were broken on some Android devices.
• Stability & performance: We've upgraded a bunch of things under the hood to keep the app current with the latest security and performance updates.

Read the blog post about updates in v1.19.

UX improvements

• You can now see chapter progress in the chapters screen.
• The transcript now has chapter titles for easier navigation.
• The player progress bar now shows bookmarks with orange markers. Try it by creating a bookmark.
• When you search the transcripts, you can now see at a glance where the found segments are.
• New Introduction to Metacast audio tour, updated with the latest features.

Read the blog post about updates in v1.18.

New web app features

• Transcripts for all episodes. You can now view transcripts for any episode that has a podcaster-provided transcript or a transcript generated by Metacast with AI. We support transcripts in JSON, VTT, SRT, and HTML/plaintext formats. See example in The Panel podcast.
• Open podcasts by iTunes ID. If you know the ID of a podcast in Apple Podcasts, you can now open it by appending it to the https://metacast.app/itunes/ URL, e.g. https://metacast.app/itunes/1649447583 will redirect you to the Metacast: Behind the Scenes page. If you own a podcast directory, feel free to link to Metacast by using this URL schema.

New web app features

• Summaries. You can now see display summaries for episodes that have an AI-generated transcript. This is helpful for episodes that have no description, a super long description, or a non-descriptive description. Summaries are shown in episode pages and on podcast pages (e.g. Notes on Work).
• Transcripts. You can now view transcripts for episodes hosted on Transistor.fm that are provided in the JSON format in the RSS feed (currently ~700 episodes). Wherever the podcast provides speaker details in the person tag in the RSS feed, you can also see pictures of the speakers. See example in The Panel podcast.

New features

• Episodes now have chapters (beta). Tap the chapter name right above the progress bar to see the list and tap a chapter to jump to it. This feature is available for episodes that podcasters provided chapters for. Premium users will also see AI-generated chapters once the transcript generation is finished. Read the blog post for more details.
• New color scheme. We made the app a bit more stylish with darker colors.
• Run Metacast on a Mac. You can install the app from the MacOS App Store and run it on your computer.

New features

• Now you can scroll the screen in iPhone Mirroring app on your mac!
• Improved automatic detection of links in episode and podcast descriptions.

Bugfixes

• Fixed the issue where descriptions were not displayed correctly due to podcaster-provided text colors.
• Fixed the issue of podcast covers being cut off in some views.

Under the hood improvements

• Performance: A big upgrade of stuff under the hood for better performance and stability.

New features

• "Following" playlist a.k.a. episode inbox - this playlist shows new episodes from the podcasts you follow. It's great as a "triage queue" - go to Playlists - Following, pick the episodes you want to listen to, add them to Listen Later, and clear the "inbox" to keep it clean. New episodes are kept in the Following playlist for 14 days for all users. Learn more in our blog.
• View all podcasts you follow - if you follow more than 30 podcasts, you'd know that you could only see 30 on Home. No more. Tap "view all" to see all the podcasts you follow!
• Add to Listen Later with a single tap - see that plus button next to an episode? Just tap it to add the episode to the Listen Later playlist.

Business as usual

• Minor UX tweaks and bugfixes across the board.

New features

• Super fast transcript generation! Most transcripts are now ready in under a minute! We’ve also made the UX smoother while the transcript is being generated.
• Timestamps in episode descriptions. You can now tap timestamps in episode descriptions to jump straight to specific segments of a podcast.
• Metacast podcast links open in-app. Links to Metacast podcasts (like our Metacast: Behind the Scenes) now open directly in the Metacast app. Follow our journey and tap those links to jump right in!
• Continuous playback toggle. You can now toggle continuous playback in Settings. Start playing an episode or playlist, and it will automatically move to the next one. If you prefer it to stop, just turn this off.

Bugfixes and improvements

• When searching through a transcript, you can now see the timestamp of each search result, so you’ll know exactly where you are in the episode.
• Plus, we’ve squashed a few bugs along the way.