Castro 3 brings about a change in the pricing structure as well. Previously, Castro was a premium app that had a cost of admission to enjoy the features. Now, Castro 3 is free to download, so anyone can grab the app and give the unique triage system a try. If you bought Castro 2, you'll continue to get Enhance Voices and Dark Mode for free.
Castro is a beautiful, full-featured podcast player that makes it easy to track lots of podcasts. Here’s how it works: 1. New episodes land in your INBOX. Read their descriptions, add episodes you like to your QUEUE, and archive the rest. Press play to listen to episodes from your QUEUE in order.
Queued episodes are downloaded automatically. Add to and re-order your QUEUE to plan your next few hours of listening at any time. Browse your ARCHIVE to review your back catalogue of subscriptions, quickly access starred shows, and see your listening history. With Castro, subscribing to a podcast doesn’t mean making a commitment to listen to every episode. You don’t have manage a huge list of subscriptions or choose a few shows and miss the rest. FEATURES - Drag and drop podcasts to triage and reorder your next few hours of listening with Castro’s unique queue.
An elegant dark mode and thoughtfully designed sleep timer offer the best in night time podcast listening. CarPlay support makes it easy to pick up where you left off while driving. Apple Watch app to control playback and select another episode from your queue. Our servers find new episodes across every podcast, so your phone doesn’t have to, saving battery life and data usage.
Episode notifications include a summary of the episode to help you decide if it interests you. Play, queue or archive the episode directly from the notification without opening the app. CASTRO PLUS Castro Plus is an optional paid subscription available for $8.99/year or $2.99/quarter (both include a one-week trial). Plus unlocks a range of advanced features: - Sideloading allows import of audio files directly, just by dropping them in iCloud Drive. Trim Silence — With this option on, the app will analyze audio as it plays to detect silent parts and accelerate those parts. Get through more episodes faster.
Enhance Voices improves the listening experience for many podcasts and makes it easier to hear in loud environments. Under the hood, Enhance Voices applies a dynamic compressor and a peak limiter to increase volume just where it’s needed. Mono-Mix — Mixes a stereo podcast to mono, which makes it easier to hear podcasts that pan some guests on left/right channels.
Chapter Support: Skipping & Pre-selection. Chapter and episode artwork. Customize settings per-podcast: Episode Limit, Trim Silence, Enhance Voices, Mono Mix, Skip Intros, Playback Speed. REVIEWS “Castro 3 is an incredible app.” — The Sweet Setup “Castro 3 is everything Castro already was, but better.” — MacStories Castro 3 Is a Great Modern Podcast App” — Beautiful Pixels “Unlike other podcatchers, Castro's primary virtue is its simplicity and ease of use. The app combines sleek visual design with crystal clear audio.” — Tom’s Guide CASTRO PLUS SUBSCRIPTION TERMS Castro Plus costs $8.99 per year or $2.99 per quarter.
Prices are in US dollars and may vary in countries other than the US. Castro Plus is charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. It will renew on the day before the current subscription period ends. You can cancel auto-renewal any time from the Castro settings screen.
You can switch between the two subscription periods after you pick one, but your trial period will end immediately if you do, so it's best to wait till your free week is over before changing. Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable. Privacy Policy & Terms of Use: http://supertop.co/castro/privacy. NEW.
Adds 'Support This Podcast' button to now playing screen for podcasts that include payment links in their show notes. Adds haptic feedback to more player buttons. FIXED. Fixes an issue where Castro could interrupt Siri and resume playing behind it. Fixes a crash that could happen when restoring from backup. Informs the user properly if there's an error with a backup file.
The downloader now gets episodes serially in order to avoid an iOS downloader bug when downloading multiple episodes in parallel. This appeared in Castro as “Error -3003”. Fixes an issue where a new episode’s progress could get set to the previously played episode’s progress, and then automatically archive from the queue. Fixes an issue where scrubber could jump when starting to move it. Changes “Archive this Episode?” notification to active with. NEW Sideloading Action Extension: From a webpage with an audio file on it, tap share, then More, then toggle “Sideload to Castro” on.
After that you can use that action to save audio files to your iCloud Drive folder which Castro will pick as Sideloads. NEW Watch app now includes volume control. NEW Adds Siri shortcut to Archive & Play Next + “Switch to Night Mode”. CHANGED. Reworded “Star” this Episode Siri Shortcut to “Fave” this Episode, which Siri doesn’t interpret as an asterisk. Improves performance when playing your first episode after launching. Tapping the status bar in a drag session now scrolls to the top of the queue and closes the player screen if open.
FIXED. Fixes issue where Castro could interrupt Siri under some circumstances. Fixes an issue where Castro would crash if you dropped an episode at a particular point in the queue. Fixes a interface issues on the watch app. Fixes issue where sideloads could cause incorrect artwork/chapters to display. Fixes issue where sideloads that failed to download in Castro wouldn’t show download icon in the retry download button. Fixes issue where queue would occasionally animate incorrectly on launch in dark mode.
Fixes an issue when importing a backup that could prevent per-podcast settings from being restored. Fixes issue where URL schemes wouldn’t work if the app hadn’t been launched in the foreground. 3.1.3 Sep 23, 2018. Adds Siri shortcuts for “Play my Queue”, “Play and Sleep”, and “Star this episode” — see Castro settings to add these. (requires iOS 12). Support for new phone and watch sizes. Dragging an episode up the queue is no longer awkward.
Brings back tabbed CarPlay interface. Reduces memory usage when loading artwork. Improves background fetch memory usage substantially. Improves performance and memory usage when getting new episode metadata. Fixes an issue where pressing play on an un-downloaded sideload could fail to load chapters / podcast artwork. Fixes an issue where dragging an episode to the top of the queue wouldn’t set it as the now playing episode. 3.1.1 Aug 14, 2018.
Sideloads in formats other than `m4a` or `mp3` were failing to play, but now any audio file that iOS can play should work, including `wav` and `m4b`. Fixes an issue where Castro could crash when restoring a backup. Reworks skipping pre-selected chapters to make it more precise. Fixes an issue where the play progress shown in the app could lag behind, which was leading to issues where chapter pre-selection could play the first few seconds of a skipped chapter. Sideloading readme file now renders properly on Windows (delete the iCloud sideload folder and restart Castro to recreate the file). Renaming a sideload file no longer confuses Castro.
Chapter Pre-Selection toggles no longer work when you’re not a Castro Plus subscriber (the feature was still locked but you were able to tap them on/off). Fixes a bug where “Intro” chapters that we insert when the first podcast chapter starts after 00:00:00 were not playable for Castro Plus users.
Fixes an issue where the “shake” to indicate that you’re already on that tab wouldn’t work in some circumstances. Fixed another issue that could cause Castro to appear to be playing but no audio would come out; specifically when connecting and reconnecting to CarPlay, but likely this would have affected AirPods too. This has been a tricky one to track down and there may be other causes.
Get in touch ([email protected]) if it’s not fixed for you yet. Tapping the currently playing chapter no longer restarts the chapter. Fixes an issue where skipping near the beginning of a podcast with chapters could actually end up skipping forward to near the end of the last chapter. No longer sends cookies with download requests. This will make it harder for analytics companies to track you and target ads. New Features in last weeks build 3.1 1.
Sideloading 2. Chapter Pre-Selection. Sideloading. Import any audio to Castro! Drop audio files into your iCloud Drive/Castro/Sideloads folder on your Mac, or using the iOS Files app, and they’ll appear in your inbox (or queue, depending on how you set it up).
![App App](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125497994/743442119.jpg)
This lets you use Castro’s queueing and player features with any audio you have. It’s great for bonus episodes from kickstarters, DRM-free Audiobooks from the library, draft episodes of your own podcasts that you want to play through before releasing. You can use the share sheet to “Copy to Castro” files from other locations in Castro and it’ll import them to that iCloud Drive folder then they’ll appear in Sideloads.
Sideloading is a Castro Plus feature. Thank you to our subscribers for supporting the continuing development of Castro — Not a subscriber yet? There’s a 7 day trial so you can experience Sideloading before committing. Chapter Pre-Selection. You can now toggle on or off each chapter of an episode in the player — use this to have Castro play the parts you want and skip the rest. Open the chapter skip screen by playing an episode with chapters and then tapping the chapter title bar in the player. Each chapter has a checkmark beside it that you can tap to toggle it off.
As the episode plays, it’ll jump past unselected chapters. 3.1 Aug 6, 2018. NEW FEATURES 1. Sideloading 2. Chapter Pre-Selection. Sideloading. Import any audio to Castro!
Drop audio files into your iCloud Drive/Castro/Sideloads folder on your Mac, or using the iOS Files app, and they'll appear in your inbox (or queue, depending on how you set it up). This lets you use Castro's queueing and player features with any audio you have. It's great for bonus episodes from kickstarters, DRM-free Audiobooks from the library, draft episodes of your own podcasts that you want to play through before releasing. You can use the share sheet to “Copy to Castro” files from other locations in Castro and it’ll import them to that iCloud Drive folder then they’ll appear in Sideloads. Sideloading is a Castro Plus feature.
Thank you to our subscribers for supporting the continuing development of Castro — Not a subscriber yet? There’s a 7 day trial so you can experience Sideloading before committing. Chapter Pre-Selection. You can now toggle on or off each chapter of an episode in the player — use this to have Castro play the parts you want and skip the rest.
Open the chapter skip screen by playing an episode with chapters and then tapping the chapter title bar in the player. Each chapter has a checkmark beside it that you can tap to toggle it off.
As the episode plays, it’ll jump past unselected chapters. FIXES / CHANGES 1. Fixes issue where Castro could show outdated podcast metadata if you opened a podcast through search that you had previously viewed but were not currently subscribed to. Adds an alphabetical index to the right side of the podcasts list in the Archive.
Keeps screen on when plugged in and showing the player screen. 3.0.4 Jul 23, 2018.
As a bonus feature, Castro Plus subscribers can now choose from a collection of alternative app icons. If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing to Castro Plus to support ongoing development and unlock the new app icons and these advanced features: - Trim Silence - Enhance Voices. Mix to Mono - Chapters - Per-Podcast settings - Skip Intros - Episode Limits - Night Mode. You can try all these feature for free for a week, then it’s $2.99 per quarter or $8.99 per year. (Prices in USD any will vary by country).
Night Mode and Enhance voices were already available in Castro 2, so customers who bought that still have access to those features whether they subscribe to Castro Plus or not. 3.0.3 Jul 17, 2018.
Fixes an issue where audio would appear to play in the interface but not actually be playing. This would usually occur after an audio routing change (e.g. Connecting / disconnecting lightning-jack earphones). Invalid audio files appeared to play but no sound comes out. Castro will now display an error if it can’t play a file. Fixes a bug where an incorrect play progress position could get stored, which would cause various problems such as: podcasts resuming playback in the wrong place, episodes archiving from the queue unexpectedly. Skipping forward or back arbitrary amounts using Siri was always jumping by the app’s skip interval instead of the amount requested to Siri.
“Archive All” confirmation text in dark mode was the wrong colour. Unsubscribing from a podcast now deletes our artwork cache. (It’s now possible to force an artwork refresh by unsubscribing and resubscribing to a podcast.). Fixed dragging to re-order the queue in iOS 10. Fixes issues where incorrect chapter/episode artwork could be shown in the player. The “confirm streaming over cellular” warning is shown/spoken if you press play manually, not only when continuous play would start it. castro://play and castro://pause URL schemes now work.
Fixes a crash that could happen when seeking in an invalid episode. This led to a crash loop for some users. Our servers are now better at selecting the audio enclosure in an RSS feed when multiple options are included; they’re also stricter at rejecting episodes that don’t include an audio enclosure. Made background continuous play transitions between episodes more reliable.
3.0.2 Jun 29, 2018. Fixes issue where downloads could get stuck “Waiting To Download”. Fixes some crashes and other issues with the sleep timer. Fixes issue where pausing from AirPods or Bluetooth remotes could fail after a new episode started through continuous play.
Lowers minimum iOS version support to 10.3 and watchOS 4.0. Adds new SSL/TLS pinning cert.
Fixes issue where Widget says “Tap to Setup” when the queue is empty. Separate remote settings for Skip Forward / Skip Back under chapters. Archive All by long pressing on Queue is now an alert so its a little harder to do accidentally. Adds Supertop Podcast to the About screen. 3.0.1 Jun 4, 2018. We fixed some bugs:.
Fixes issue where automatic backups could fail unless one manual backup was created first. Fixes crash when streaming episodes that redirect endlessly.
Fixes issue where the top episode in the queue could fail to load after a multiple drag and drop. Fixes issues where the watch app wouldn’t be updated when a new episode started. Castro no longer detects and links phone numbers in show notes. Changing the playback rate in the app wouldn’t update CarPlay or the Watch App. Fixes a bug where CarPlay was not updated when an episode ends and a new one begins. Hides keyboard when player screen is opened. Fixes issue where opening the same podcast from the charts multiple times could duplicate episodes.
Fixes a crash that could happen when dropping a lot of episodes on the queue. Fixes issue where episodes could stream without confirmation. Speeds up initial load time. Fixes issue where Castro could fail to resume when interrupting an alarm using AirPods.
Fixes an issue where a recently queued downloaded episode could ignore the download and stream anyway when played. Fixes a number issues where the Now Playing information on the iOS Lock Screen and Control Centre could end up showing incorrect information. If an episode is of a file type that requires a full download before it can be played, notify the user if they try to stream it. Fixes an issue where Castro would ignore certain types of chapter. Next / Previous Track car controls weren’t working (they now skip back / forward by the chosen skip intervals). Fixes an issue where scanning past chapter artwork would load for that chapter even if you've already scrubbed past it by time it's ready to show.
Fixes an issue preventing artwork from appearing for image urls with invalid characters. Fixes an issue where Castro would silently fail to play invalid episodes.
Fixes issue where an incorrect episode could play if there was an error while streaming the top episode. Drag and Dropping the now playing episode to the archive now correctly removes it from the player. Archiving a currently playing episode doesn't automatically start the next episode anymore unless the continuous play setting is on.
Queueing an episode to an empty queue now sets it up in the player properly. 3.0 May 18, 2018. CASTRO 3. We rebuilt the player engine from scratch. The app is much faster to start playing when streaming and the controls are much more responsive. The player screen has a new cleaner, simpler layout. Star the current episode from the player by double tapping the artwork.
Easily access AirPlay controls from the player screen. Use the new Apple Watch App to control playback and choose new episodes from the queue to play. Castro 3 is a free app, but everyone who paid for Castro 2 continues to have access to Enhance Voices and Night Mode forever. CASTRO PLUS FEATURES “Castro Plus” is an optional subscription to unlock a range of advanced player features.
There are quarterly and yearly options, and both include a one week trial. + Trim Silence — With this option on, the app will analyze audio as it plays to detect silent parts and accelerate those parts.
This means listeners can get through more episodes faster. + Mono-Mix — Mixes a stereo podcast to mono, which makes it easier to hear podcasts that pan some guests on left/right channels.
+ Chapter skipping and selection (in episodes that include chapters). + Shows Chapter and Episode Artwork (in episodes that include them). + Episode Limit lets users specify what number of episodes of each podcast to keep — I use this with The Daily so that I can auto-queue and keep the most recent one without getting overwhelmed if I don’t listen for a few days in a row. + Set a start position for episodes of each podcast; this is useful for skipping intros / promos at the starts of episodes on podcasts that use them regularly. + Customize player settings per-podcast: Episode Limit, Trim Silences, Enhance Voices, Mono Mix, Skip Intros, Playback Speed Thank you for using Castro Oisin and Padraig.
2.6.2 Feb 5, 2018. Confirmation alerts at the bottom of the screen (e.g. When using Archive All) are now dark when Castro is in Night Mode. After archiving all in Inbox with a podcast filter selected, the selected filter no longer jumps to All, instead it’ll jump to the adjacent podcast filter. Time remaining is shown on the queue cells, even when streaming. Fixes an issue where new podcast episodes found when pulling to refresh on a podcast screen weren’t added to the inbox / queue.
Fixes a misleading error message that implied that we were streaming even when an episode was downloaded. Using Enhanced Audio should no longer cause the play position to skip to incorrect locations when pausing, changing speed, skipping etc. Fixes a frequent background crash. Fixes a crash when restoring a backup on older devices. Fixes an occasional crash when Archiving All.
Fixes an issue where Castro now playing information would flicker every 20-30s on BMW iDrive. Fixes an issue where the sleep timer voice could cause the volume to get stuck at quiet level. Show a friend how to get started with Castro. 2.6 Dec 15, 2017. New Features:. Backup your Castro data to iCloud Drive Castro will automatically back up your user data every 24 hours. This means that if anything else goes wrong that causes you to lose your data, you will be able to restore everything back the way it was at the time of the last backup.
You can find the feature in Settings-Backup / Restore Castro. Tapping a backup cell will initiate a restore.
You can now tap on a podcast’s description in search results to view the whole description. Fixes:. If Enhanced Audio is disabled you should be able to skip/change playback speeds without any issues. (See “Known Issues” below for more detail).
Fixes issue where restored backups from iCloud could fail to resubscribe on the server, leading to missing inbox episodes. Performance boost when opening long lists of episodes. Fixes issue where CarPlay would show 0x for the play speed, and toggling play speed would fail. An issue preventing the playback speed toggle from working on the Apple Watch Now Playing screen is fixed. The iMessage Recently Played app no longer draws incorrectly if you’re using night mode in the main app. Also, it doesn’t crash anymore if you have no played episodes.
A bug where the expanded player controls didn’t respect the rotation lock setting has been fixed. Known Issues. When Enhanced Audio is enabled you may encounter issues with skipping and changing playback speeds. For example, the play position might skip further than expected when you tap skip forward / back. 2.5.3 Nov 21, 2017.
2.5.2. Adds support for new hardware. Enjoy your new phones guys! 2.5.1. You can now share whole podcasts as well as individual episodes.
FIXED. Castro resumes properly after turn by turn directions. Restoring from an iCloud backup will no longer incorrectly show episodes as downloaded. When resuming a previously played episode through continuous play, Castro will no longer resume from the wrong position. 'Hey Siri, skip forward 5 minutes!'
Now works correctly. There was a crash that could happen in the background that has been fixed. 2.5.1 Oct 26, 2017. You can now share whole podcasts as well as individual episodes. Adds support for new hardware.
Enjoy your new phones guys! FIXED. Castro resumes properly after turn by turn directions.
Restoring from an iCloud backup will no longer incorrectly show episodes as downloaded. When resuming a previously played episode through continuous play, Castro will no longer resume from the wrong position.
'Hey Siri, skip forward 5 minutes!' Now works correctly. There was a crash that could happen in the background that has been fixed. 2.5 Sep 18, 2017. Drag and Drop!.
In iOS 11 you can tap and hold to lift an episode, then drag it. Drop episodes on the queue, inbox or archive to move them to these locations. While dragging, tap more episodes with another finger to add them to the bundle. Hold a bundle over any tab icon to switch to that tab, or just tap it with another finger. You can drop episodes in a specific queue location, not just top or bottom. Drag from the filter bar to pick up a bundle of all the episodes in that filter. Using drag and drop, you can now move episodes back out of the queue into the inbox.
CHANGES. Archiving all while filtered in inbox now selects either all or the nearest filter. You can now share an episode's current play position from the show notes share button, not just the player screen. New, much nicer navigation bar transitions. Player speeds adjusted slightly and an additional 1.7x speed was added.
Tap and hold on Inbox tab icon to present action sheet to archive all episodes. Tapping search icon with a current search already done now re-focuses the search field. The queue is now reordered by dragging episodes. BUG FIXES. Fixes issue where user could switch to inbox with an empty filter selected. Fixes a crash that could happen when updating episode download% progress.
Images no longer overlap text in show notes. Fixes an issue where notifications could get stuck switched off after restoring from an iCloud Backup. Fixes an issue where push notifications wouldn't get sent if you turned off the banner setting. Fixes an issue where push notification permission state could get out of sync with the system settings. Improvements to download behaviour when toggling cellular settings. 2.4.1 Jun 23, 2017. FEATURES & CHANGES.
There’s a new interface orientation lock in Settings-General. The notification that invites you to archive the episode when you press pause now triggers with up to 10 mins remaining instead of just 3 mins. Tapping a podcast artwork now shows all episodes by default instead of being filtered by the view you just came from. Tapping the inbox, queue, and archive tab icons when they’re already selected now scrolls to the top. Also switches back to all in inbox when filtered and activates the search bar in discover. BUG FIXES.
Improves Play / Pause / Toggle when using remote commands (e.g. Using control centre, lock screen, wired headphone, bluetooth controls). If you ask Siri to Pause playback, the pause now actually sticks properly; Castro no longer resumes after Siri is closed. Fixes a visual issue when queuing a few episodes quickly from the bottom of the screen upwards. Fixes a bug where filter bar could be sorted incorrectly. Fixes issue where a lower quality playback algorithm could be used for speeds faster than 1.0x.
Fixes an issue where faster playback speeds would play back choppily when device was powered down (e.g. Screen locked). Fixes layout issues on expanded player screen in landscape on smaller devices. Adds a work around for an issue where Castro would sometimes play silence when skipping back 30s and playing at 1.0x. Fixes a rare issue where a blank episode could get stuck in the queue.
Fixes a crash that could occur when changing episodes while playing. Fixes an issue that could have prevented continuous play from proceeding to the next episode. 2.4 May 26, 2017. CASTRO 2.4 INTRODUCES ENHANCED AUDIO Enhanced Audio improves the listening experience for many podcasts and makes it easier to listen in loud environments.
Under the hood, Enhanced Audio applies a dynamic compressor and a peak limiter to increase volume just where it’s needed. Enhanced Audio helps when playing a show where voices are at different levels and makes it much easier to listen to podcasts in a car, on public transit, or in a busy noisy place. You can toggle Enhanced Audio on and off from the player controls screen by tapping the up arrow on the player controls bar. We’ve also been working on some other changes and bug fixes:. CHANGED You can now toggle Continuous Play easily from the player controls screen without needing to go to settings. CHANGED The CarPlay app no longer uses tabs. This fixes a 'black screen' issue that has affected some CarPlay users.
FIXED Playback now resumes properly after using Siri. FIXED Scrubber bar colors no longer get out of sync. FIXED A crash that happened when a download completed after queuing an episode, then moving it to the top queue position.
FIXED An issue where 'Queue Next, Queue Last, Archive' podcast preference would be reset when a feed redirected. FIXED An issue where action buttons would be scrolled off screen after queueing or archiving from the bottom of Inbox. We've added support for iOS's new App Store rating prompt. If you enjoy using Castro please rate this version in the App Store, it really helps. 2.3 Feb 22, 2017.
We focused on bug fixes and polish for this version, but we also fit in some nice new features. If you enjoy using Castro please rate this version on the App Store. NEW.
Expanded interactive notifications, including podcast artwork summary text and have Queue Next / Queue Last notification actions. Now you have enough info to do triage right in the notification. If you pause an episode with less than 3 minutes left on a podcast, an interactive notification allows you to skip the rest of the episode or start the next one. Support FAQ site linked from settings. Pausing and then resuming the sleep timer with less than 60s left will extend the sleep timer. Adds new 5 Hour Queue Size setting. Adds 5s and 10s skip interval options.
Previously 15s was the shortest. CHANGED.
After interruptions (e.g. Turn by turn navigation) Castro will skip back 1.5s so you can remember where you were. Sleep timer no longer updates the lock screen every second (it still shows minutes, but if a notification arrived that turned on the screen, updating every second was keeping the screen on.). Toggling the notification settings off and on will re-register the device for push notifications.
(This is useful as a fix if you aren’t getting new episodes after restoring from an iOS backup). No more emoji on inbox notifications, since inbox is the default location.
Castro now requires iOS 10.0. Notifications are no longer grouped if there are 5 of them.
We decided that it conflicts too much with using notifications for triage. If you turn on notification permission, all notification types default to on now. Previously they defaulted to off, which confused people who thought that they only had to toggle the switch. Looking up a podcast by pasting feed://podcasturl.com/ into the search bar now works. Pasting a castro.fm share link into the search box will now find the podcast.
Pull to refresh on a podcast screen to reload that podcast entirely, rather than checking for events. This is handy for clearing up issues with missing episodes or cached incorrect metadata. FIXED. Streaming performance is vastly improved.
A bug where Castro would only inbox the first episode when a podcast would release multiple episodes together is now fixed. Improves error messages in search/subscribe when a podcast is offline. Fixes errors when subscribing to new feeds that have to be imported, these errors should be less common and more descriptive if there is a real problem.
Fixed an issue with pasting Overcast / Pocket Casts / iTunes links in search. Tapping the search bar when your Mac is nearby no longer hangs for a few seconds. Fixes an issue with podcasts that would download to 99% then fail, but would stream correctly. An issue where a podcast could be duplicated in the subscriptions list can now be fixed by unsubscribing to both copies, then resubscribing through search.
A bug where some podcasts could end up in a state where they wouldn’t send notifications was fixed. App no longer crashes if you open the discovery tab with a Bitmoji in your clipboard. Pressing “Play Now” in a notification no longer fails when streaming. Downloads triggered off of “queue” notification action no longer require the app to be opened before starting. UI / VISUAL FIXES.
Performance of transition animations improved a lot. Cell layout glitch introduced in iOS 10.2 where the cell background would animate incorrectly when revealing/hiding actions is fixed. Moving the text cursor in the search box no longer triggers the swipe back gesture. Podcasts settings buttons were getting animated in the wrong order and from the wrong position. Episode title marquee on player screen could get stuck, but now it shouldn’t.
Fixes an issue where lists can animate bizarrely when scrolling if metadata changes in the background. Launch screen placeholder didn’t match launch screen properly. 2.2.1 Nov 30, 2016. FIXED IN 2.2.1 - Fixes a crash that could happen when downloading large artwork in the Widget. NEW IN 2.2 This release focusses on providing convenient access to your podcasts from new places, for those times when you want to quickly start listening with minimal effort.
NEW FEATURES - CarPlay: You've already queued the episodes you're interested in, so it's one tap to start playing one. Castro's powerful queue and inbox system means that you don't need to dig through collections of playlists to find the episode you're looking for. iOS 10 Widget reveals the next 4-12 episodes in your queue at a glance. Tap the podcast artwork to open Castro and start playing that episode. Add the widget to the Search screen by swiping to the right on the Home screen or the Lock screen, and tap 'Edit'. If you have an iPhone with 3d Touch, you can tap and hold on the app icon to reveal the widget. Quick Actions also allow 3d touch users to Start a sleep timer, Search for a podcast using the clipboard, open the inbox or the queue, by force pressing on the app icon.
When sharing, you can now add a timestamp to share urls using the activity in the share sheet that pops off (you might need to scroll it onscreen) - Handoff includes a timestamp so you can easily continue playing in safari on your Mac - Subscribe to Castro using a URL scheme from: castro://subscribe/example.com/feed.rss will open castro to the discover screen with that podcast loaded. FIXED - Fixes a crash that could happen when Castro is refreshing in the background - Fixes crashes that could happen when archiving/queueing an episode or when tapping on an episode cell - Changing skip duration would fail to update now playing info until I play/pause again - Deselecting a cell can no longer cause it to scroll out of view - If app is in night mode, messages app no longer uses dark cells. Fix an issue where Castro could occasionally fail to automatically download episodes in the background. Fix for issue where new episodes would not arrive in the inbox if you had restored from a backup. Fixed podcasts that were returning error 5009.
Discover screen no longer gets stuck with search results and errors on top of each other. Fixes a crash during background completion of downloads on older devices. If you like what we're doing with Castro, please leave a review and tell a friend about it!
There's a shortcut from settings in Castro to get to the app store review page. 2.2 Nov 28, 2016. This release focusses on providing convenient access to your podcasts from new places, for those times when you want to quickly start listening with minimal effort. NEW FEATURES - CarPlay: You've already queued the episodes you're interested in, so it's one tap to start playing one. Castro's powerful queue and inbox system means that you don't need to dig through collections of playlists to find the episode you're looking for. iOS 10 Widget reveals the next 4-12 episodes in your queue at a glance.
Tap the podcast artwork to open Castro and start playing that episode. Add the widget to the Search screen by swiping to the right on the Home screen or the Lock screen, and tap 'Edit'. If you have an iPhone with 3d Touch, you can tap and hold on the app icon to reveal the widget. Quick Actions also allow 3d touch users to Start a sleep timer, Search for a podcast using the clipboard, open the inbox or the queue, by force pressing on the app icon. When sharing, you can now add a timestamp to share urls using the activity in the share sheet that pops off (you might need to scroll it onscreen) - Handoff includes a timestamp so you can easily continue playing in safari on your Mac - Subscribe to Castro using a URL scheme from: castro://subscribe/example.com/feed.rss will open castro to the discover screen with that podcast loaded. FIXED - Fixes a crash that could happen when Castro is refreshing in the background - Fixes crashes that could happen when archiving/queueing an episode or when tapping on an episode cell - Changing skip duration would fail to update now playing info until I play/pause again - Deselecting a cell can no longer cause it to scroll out of view - If app is in night mode, messages app no longer uses dark cells. Fix an issue where Castro could occasionally fail to automatically download episodes in the background.
Fix for issue where new episodes would not arrive in the inbox if you had restored from a backup. Fixed podcasts that were returning error 5009. Discover screen no longer gets stuck with search results and errors on top of each other. Fixes a crash during background completion of downloads on older devices.
If you like what we're doing with Castro, please leave a review and tell a friend about it! There's a shortcut from settings in Castro to get to the app store review page. 2.1.2 Oct 5, 2016.
Fixed an issue where two refreshes could happen at once and episodes could get duplicated. Cleans up duplicate episodes. Fixes issue where some downloads would always fail after restoring the Castro 2 database from an iPhone backup. If the app is not in memory and gets launched from pressing play on control centre, it no longer pauses after 0.5s. Reduces memory usage when updating feeds. Downloads from orf.at now work again. Search requires 2+ letters to be typed before initiating the search.
Fixes an issue that could cause duplicate podcasts if you opened a share link to an episode you had previously unsubscribed to. NEW. Adds 'Support This Podcast' button to now playing screen for podcasts that include payment links in their show notes. Adds haptic feedback to more player buttons. FIXED. Fixes an issue where Castro could interrupt Siri and resume playing behind it.
Fixes a crash that could happen when restoring from backup. Informs the user properly if there's an error with a backup file. The downloader now gets episodes serially in order to avoid an iOS downloader bug when downloading multiple episodes in parallel. This appeared in Castro as “Error -3003”. Fixes an issue where a new episode’s progress could get set to the previously played episode’s progress, and then automatically archive from the queue. Fixes an issue where scrubber could jump when starting to move it.
Changes “Archive this Episode?” notification to active with. ChadAHall, I love this app I love everything about this app. The design—I love how compact the episodes are in the queue. So many other podcast apps are bloated design-wise, where you can only see 3 or so episodes at a time. I don’t want to be inundated with info. I just wanna see the titles. I love the drag and drop (in particular the ability to move multiple items at once.) The inbox is brilliant.
There some podcasts with multiple formats of which I only like one. This allows me to archive the others without having them dumped in my queue and downloaded. But my hands down favorite features are the archive & history. There are some podcasts that I don’t listen to on a regular basis but like to check in on every so often. This allows me to follow them so that I don’t forget about them but to go find an episode when I want to.
And of course history. I’m usually on the go when listening and don’t have time to note episodes I really enjoy. With the history I can do back and see what I heard. Sometimes the impact of an episode doesn’t hit for a week or more.
With history I can still go find them. Simple but essential. And the dates they were listened to on is saved as well! —just an impressive level of care. Fingers crossed for smart speed/silence skipping, a speed between 2x & 3x and custom playback settings for individual shows — nobody should listen to Song Exploder at 2x. Developer Response, Thanks for the kind works Chad! As you've probably seen by now, we now have silence skipping and per-podcast settings in Castro 3.
All the best, ?. ChadAHall, I love this app I love everything about this app. The design—I love how compact the episodes are in the queue. So many other podcast apps are bloated design-wise, where you can only see 3 or so episodes at a time. I don’t want to be inundated with info.
I just wanna see the titles. I love the drag and drop (in particular the ability to move multiple items at once.) The inbox is brilliant. There some podcasts with multiple formats of which I only like one.
This allows me to archive the others without having them dumped in my queue and downloaded. But my hands down favorite features are the archive & history. There are some podcasts that I don’t listen to on a regular basis but like to check in on every so often. This allows me to follow them so that I don’t forget about them but to go find an episode when I want to. And of course history.
I’m usually on the go when listening and don’t have time to note episodes I really enjoy. With the history I can do back and see what I heard. Sometimes the impact of an episode doesn’t hit for a week or more.
With history I can still go find them. Simple but essential. And the dates they were listened to on is saved as well! —just an impressive level of care. Fingers crossed for smart speed/silence skipping, a speed between 2x & 3x and custom playback settings for individual shows — nobody should listen to Song Exploder at 2x. Developer Response, Thanks for the kind works Chad! As you've probably seen by now, we now have silence skipping and per-podcast settings in Castro 3.
All the best, ?. ThomasElla, Still no trim silences? UPDATE: Lowering my review to two stars.
The fact that there's still not trim silences is kind of unbelievable. It feels at this point like the developers are just folding their arms and pouting and putting their feet down because they're tired of the requests, but I've listened to their podcasts and I know they understand that this is easily the biggest, most requested missing feature. It just baffles me that they would rather dedicate so much development time to other features than just buckle down and add this one that is absolutely standard in today's podcast player market.
Not to mention they still don't save playback settings per podcast or support chapter markers. It's a wonderful, unique app in a lot of ways, but it's missing crucial features that hold it back. It's kind of heartbreaking. ORIGINAL: I want to love Castro, but to me, trim silences should be considered a standard feature in a modern podcast app. I've tried to get into Castro so many times now because they add such cool stuff with their big updates and the general hook of treating podcasts like an email inbox, but it's been months and trim silences, a long-requested feature, is still nowhere to be seen. (As well, I want Castro to remember playback speed settings for each podcast.) So yet again, back to boring old Overcast for me.
Developer Response, Sorry that it took us a while, but we now have chapter markers, trim silences and per-podcast settings in Castro 3. I hope you're enjoying the new features! ThomasElla, Still no trim silences? UPDATE: Lowering my review to two stars.
The fact that there's still not trim silences is kind of unbelievable. It feels at this point like the developers are just folding their arms and pouting and putting their feet down because they're tired of the requests, but I've listened to their podcasts and I know they understand that this is easily the biggest, most requested missing feature. It just baffles me that they would rather dedicate so much development time to other features than just buckle down and add this one that is absolutely standard in today's podcast player market. Not to mention they still don't save playback settings per podcast or support chapter markers. It's a wonderful, unique app in a lot of ways, but it's missing crucial features that hold it back. It's kind of heartbreaking.
ORIGINAL: I want to love Castro, but to me, trim silences should be considered a standard feature in a modern podcast app. I've tried to get into Castro so many times now because they add such cool stuff with their big updates and the general hook of treating podcasts like an email inbox, but it's been months and trim silences, a long-requested feature, is still nowhere to be seen. (As well, I want Castro to remember playback speed settings for each podcast.) So yet again, back to boring old Overcast for me.
Developer Response, Sorry that it took us a while, but we now have chapter markers, trim silences and per-podcast settings in Castro 3. I hope you're enjoying the new features!
Castro lets you track lots of podcasts at once without getting overwhelmed. Here’s how it works: 1) New episodes land in the INBOX.
Read the descriptions, queue the good ones and archive the rest. 2) The QUEUE is a central playlist for organizing your next few hours of listening. Queued episodes are downloaded automatically. 3) Press Play. Castro plays your queue in order from top to bottom. Reorder or archive queued episodes anytime.
4) In the ARCHIVE you can find the back catalogue of all shows you subscribe to, browse your listening history, and easily access your starred episodes. This flow lets you expand your listening habits without getting overwhelmed. With Castro, subscribing to a podcast doesn’t mean making a commitment to listen to every episode. You don’t have to choose a few shows and miss the rest. OTHER FEATURES. Drag and drop support helps you triage and reorder your queue.
Castro sports an elegant dark mode (requires Castro Plus) and well-thought out sleep timer, offering the best in night time podcast listening. Our servers constantly scan for new episodes across every podcast, so your phone doesn’t have to, saving battery life and data usage.
Queued episodes are automatically downloaded, so you can focus on deciding what you want to hear and let Castro manage the details. Beautifully rendered full screen show notes. Episode notifications include a short summary of the episode to help you decide if it interests you.
You can play, queue or archive the episode directly from the notification without opening the app. CarPlay support. Watch app to control playback and select another episode from your queue. Full play history. Star episodes to easily find your favorite episodes later. CASTRO PLUS Castro Plus is an optional subscription to unlock a range of advanced features. There are quarterly and yearly payment options, and both include a one week trial.
+ Trim Silence — With this option on, the app will analyze audio as it plays to detect silent parts and accelerate those parts. Get through more episodes faster. + Enhance Voices improves the listening experience for many podcasts and makes it easier to hear in loud environments.
Under the hood, Enhance Voices applies a dynamic compressor and a peak limiter to increase volume just where it’s needed. Sideloading allows import of audio files directly, just by dropping them in iCloud Drive. + Mono-Mix — Mixes a stereo podcast to mono, which makes it easier to hear podcasts that pan some guests on left/right channels. + Chapter Support: Skipping & Pre-selection. + Chapter and episode artwork. + Episode Limit lets users specify what number of episodes of each podcast to keep. + Set a start position for episodes of each podcast.
+ Customize settings per-podcast: Episode Limit, Trim Silence, Enhance Voices, Mono Mix, Skip Intros, Playback Speed. Castro Plus costs $8.99 per year or $2.99 per quarter. Prices are in US dollars and may vary in countries other than the US.
Castro Plus is charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. It will renew on the day before the current subscription period ends. You can cancel auto-renewal any time from the Castro settings screen. You can switch between the two subscription periods after you pick one, but your trial period will end immediately if you do, so it's best to wait till your free week is over before changing. Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period.
Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable. Privacy Policy & Terms of Use: http://supertop.co/castro/privacy.