Pocket Casts podcast player adds standalone Apple Watch playback, more

Chance Miller | Jun 16 2020 - 12:35 pm PT

Pocket Casts has become the latest podcast player to add support for standalone alone Apple Watch playback. The app has been updated to version 7.9, bringing Apple Watch enhancements as well as new icons and theme options.

With today’s update, you can now stream Pocket Casts podcasts directly from your Apple Watch using cellular or Wi-Fi. You can also download podcasts directly from the Pocket Casts app on Apple Watch. This feature is limited to Pocket Casts Plus users, which is $0.99 per month or $10 per year:

If you’ve got a WiFi or cellular connection you can now view your subscribed podcasts, filters and files right on your watch. Even better you can download or stream them with just a few taps. Your Up Next and playback progress is of course synced automatically across all the platforms you use Pocket Casts on.

There are a couple of other visual changes with today’s Pocket Casts update. First, is a new theme called Radioactivity that redesigns the entire Pocket Casts app. If you prefer to simply customize the home screen icon for Pocket Casts, there are four new icons included in this update:

Pocket Casts also highlights other improvements in today’s update to version 7.9:

We’ve made huge improvements to our Trim Silence algorithm, making it more invisible than ever before. We’ve made many accessibility improvements to make our app much easier to use with VoiceOver and other accessibility technologies. Heck we even replaced Google’s Chromecast dialog with our own because we, like you, got sick of them not being able to dark theme their way out of a wet paper bag.

Pocket Casts is available on the App Store as a free download. Again, the Pocket Casts Plus subscription is $0.99 per month or $10 per year.

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