Using Pocket Casts Filters

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A few weeks ago, a big Overcast update shipped and while I was mostly happy with it, I did find myself poking around Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts and Castro while I was waiting for the showstopper bugs to be addressed.

I’m no stranger to Pocket Casts – I’ve been using it on and off for over a decade due to it’s cross-platform nature, customization and great user interface. I love that I can play my queue on my Sonos speakers, on my phone, the web and really any device under the sun. However, out of the box it suffers from some of the same challenges that Overcast has when it comes to queue management. Listening to a handful of podcasts is pretty easy, but if you subscribe to a number of shows that you only selectively listen to, the noise can become an issue.

Castro’s got a great queue system where you’re presented with an inbox that you go through, adding to your list or deleting. It’s intuitive, fast and it learns from your habits. That got me thinking about if I could use the filtering system that Pocket Casts has to set up something similar. After a little bit of fiddling, I’ve mostly nailed it.

Setting up queue management in Pocket Casts

First up, I automatically add all of my favorite podcasts to ‘Up Next’, which is what Pocket Casts calls their queue, and have items in this list download by default. This is a per-podcast setting that you can edit.

I then created a new playlist of podcasts released in the past 2 weeks that I call “Inbox”, sorted by newest episode at the top. However, it does not show any podcasts that have been played or downloaded. That way, as soon as it’s added to Up Next and downloaded, it falls off this list.

Finally, I changed a global setting to automatically archive any podcast over 3 months old. That way, even if I don’t mess with the “Inbox” playlist and only play stuff that is auto-added to my Up Next queue, those old episodes will filter out eventually.

With this setup in place, I’m able to subscribe to all of the podcasts I enjoy and have the my must-listens automatically added to Up Next. The one thing I wish Pocket Casts allowed for is more customization of swipe actions. If it did, I could then quickly swipe away podcasts from the list to archive, or add to Up Next in the other direction. There are ways to accomplish this with other apps, but it is super intuitive with the powerful filtering system that Pocket Casts provides. If you haven’t tried the app in a while or at all, I highly recommend it.

Apple Maps on the Web

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Yesterday, Apple announced that Apple Maps is now in beta for all to use on the web. By visiting the intuitively named https://beta.maps.apple.com URL, users can get most of the functionality that one could by using the native apps. It’s only available on a subset of browsers (Safari/Edge/Chrome on Mac, Edge/Chrome on Windows and Safari on iPad), the performance is kind of hit or miss, and some of the functionality is missing at the moment. However, the announcement mentions that there’s a roadmap to bringing more browsers into the fold as well as adding more functionality.

While I don’t anticipate this is going to put Google out of business any time soon, I’m hopeful that this does a few things. First, having this available on the web will hopefully drive more visibility into the hit-or-miss nature of some of the POI data on Apple Maps. I’m crossing my fingers that we see an improvement in the quality of data on the platform. Second, I want this to see this trend of Apple opening things up continue – even if some of it is mandated by courts. Third, competition is almost always a good thing. Giving users another choice beyond Google Maps should push both companies to improve their products.

Overcast Update: Mostly Great™

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Overcast rewrite list.
Overcast rewrite nowplaying.

Big news in Apple podcast land. A new version of Overcast, my favorite Podcast app (and one of my most used apps), was released this week. Marco Arment, the app’s developer, wrote more about it this week on his site. It’s a multi-year rewrite to modernize the now 10-year-old platform, and it will allow him to use a lot of new technologies and development practices as a result.

So far, I’m very pleased with the UI updates – it’s familiar but modernized – but there are a lot of rough edges I hope Marco is able to iron out over time. Here are my initial thoughts on what I hope he addresses:

  • Relaunching the app after a while doesn’t take you back to the playlist you were on. Instead it takes you to the home screen. This feels like a regression from the previous version.
  • I can no longer swipe to the right to play items next. It’s now 3 taps away. I hope this can be re-added in some way.
  • When I play podcasts from the new “recent episodes” section, it appears to always stop after the podcast. I’d expect that podcast to be added to whatever your current playlist is so playback could continue.
  • I’ve noticed inconsistent playlist behavior – played podcasts are being displayed in playlists for a while before disappearing. Not always, but I’ve seen it many times so far. Sometimes the episode will disappear from the list after being played only to reappear later.
  • I wish I could customize what goes in the menu when you tap on a podcast or view an episode’s details. I never share podcasts but I use “go to podcast” very frequently.

One of the big selling points of this multi-year rewrite is that it will enable new features and more rapid iteration. I’m really excited to see what new goodies we’re in store for, and I’m also hopeful that at least a few of the items I called out above get addressed in the coming months.

Jurgen Klopp to Leave Liverpool

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This morning I woke up and scanned my RSS feeds as I normally do. I didn’t anticipate watching a 30 minute video while getting my kids ready for school, but the news that Jurgen Klopp is stepping down at the end of the season became my focus. I wrote about my love for Liverpool in 2020, but it’s worth restating how much Klopp means to the city and the club. He completely transformed a massive club that had been underachieving for decades. His man-management, technical ability and leadership are all superpowers that make Liverpool one of the toughest clubs to play against and one that nearly anyone would want to play for.

Soccer has quickly become of those most important, least important things in my life, and I credit Klopp for a lot of that. Not sure any manager can step in and do what he did for the club, but I’m grateful that I got to experience it over the past decade. I just hope they can write the perfect ending to this story over the next few months. They’re currently first in the Premier League, in the Carabao Cup Final and still alive in both the Europa League and FA Cup. What an amazing opportunity.

Because I can’t write so good, I’ll leave you with these words from the great Roger Bennett:

Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union – Apple

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From The Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers’ apps in the European Union (EU) to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The changes include more than 600 new APIs, expanded app analytics, functionality for alternative browser engines, and options for processing app payments and distributing iOS apps. Across every change, Apple is introducing new safeguards that reduce — but don’t eliminate — new risks the DMA poses to EU users. With these steps, Apple will continue to deliver the best, most secure experience possible for EU users.

I love how Apple frames these changes as introducing risks to users. A few other items of note:

An Update On Personal Requests & Siri Media Intents

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So, I feel kind of silly.

In a previous post, I called out an issue I was seeing where Siri was unable to play from non-Apple Music/Podcasts sources. This was something I was hoping that my kids could use to play audiobooks in their rooms, but it wasn’t working and the feedback was pretty sparse from Siri.

The primary cause had something to do with “Voice recognition not available” status I was seeing on my Siri devices in my home.

I did some reading and didn’t turn up much. That led me to believe that this isn’t widespread and is likely just some sort of misconfigured state that I can blow up and start over with. Turns out, that worked! The steps to getting this to work correctly were pretty straightforward:

  • Disable Siri on all relevant iOS devices
  • Disable Personal Requests in the Home app for relevant HomePod
  • Re-enable Siri on iOS devices, re-train it on your voice
  • Re-enable Personal Requests for HomePods, etc in the Home app

After doing this, I tried to ask a HomePod to play something from my Audible library. It worked! I also was able to play audiobooks from Apple Books & Audible from my son’s iPad.

Crisis averted.

Shared Journals for Day One

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From Day One:

Shared Journals are a private space for your closest friends and family to shared life updates and memories. Shared Journals introduce a new dimension to journaling, offering a unique way to share your personal stories and experiences with up to 30 selected individuals, while keeping your individual entries private and secure.

I’ve tried to track most of the milestones in the lives of my kids in Day One, and knowing I can now share that with my partner is pretty awesome. I’ve been using tags to group these posts but now I can break them into their own journal that I can share and collaborate on. Day One is one of the best apps out there due to their constant iteration on an already outstanding product. I’m really glad to see they continue to thrive as part of Automattic, as I was a bit concerned when that acquisition went down a few years back.

Corporations Are Not To Be Loved

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From Brent Simmons:

Apple doesn’t care about you personally in the least tiny bit, and if you were in their way somehow, they would do whatever their might — effectively infinite compared to your own — enables them to deal with you.

Companies like Apple love to fashion themselves as a lifestyle or an identity brand, because they know that if people watch their specific actions too closely they’ll be reminded they’re simply a business that needs to keep growing to keep their shareholders happy. I think it’s great to admire a company and certainly to have strong preferences about where you spend your money, but go into it with your eyes open.

I think Apple’s struggles with bringing 3rd party developers on board to build apps for the Vision Pro have a lot of causes but it certainly appears that the App Store chickens have come home to roost a bit. Gruber covered this a bit as well, but it just feels like we’ve hit an inflection point where Apple’s behavior is getting almost no support because there’s really no logical defense aside from the fact that Apple wants to make as much money as possible. Good for them.

What Happened To Homepod’s Media App Integration?

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Last year, I was really excited to see Apple’s plans to allow HomePod to essentially set up streaming from any app on your iOS device with a media intent.

Fast forward to early 2024, and this functionality doesn’t appear to be anywhere to be found. My kids both have HomePods in their room and I was really excited to let them play some of the audiobooks that they own on their iPads to their rooms automagically. Not only does that not seem to work, I can’t seem to get any apps to do this. What confuses me is that this line:

Any app supporting SiriKit Media Intents today will be able to use this capability with no additional changes.

makes it pretty clear that many apps should be supported out of the box, but I can’t seem to fine even one that works.

I’ve tried this with a HomePod tied to my account as the primary as well as with my kids’ HomePods tied to their accounts (and to iPads, which I thought might have been the culprit). Very strange.

Edit (1/22/24): This likely has something to do with the fact that my home’s Siri devices now are all saying that “Voice recognition Not Available”, which would explain why it isn’t able to play media from an associated iOS device. Stay tuned for the conclusion of this gripping saga once I troubleshoot further.

Edit (1/23/24): So, updating everything to 17.3, turning off Siri and Personal Requests and re-enabling and re-training Siri on my iPhone seems to have done the trick. I was able to play an audiobook from Audible via a HomePod. Now to try to same process with my kid’s iPads.