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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Comment on Reddit
