What's New in Podtastic — April 10, 2026

Quite a lot landed this week. The big one: new episode notifications now reach you much faster, so you're not catching episodes hours after they go live. Per-podcast notification controls arrived too, the Play tab got a proper rebuild, and there's a new way to force-process any episode on demand.

New episodes notify you the moment they publish

Until now, Podtastic checked podcast feeds on a schedule. That worked, but it meant new episodes sometimes sat quietly for hours before you heard about them. This week we shipped a three-layer system that changes that.

Podcast feeds are now refreshed on a cadence that matches how often each show actually publishes — daily shows get checked more often than weekly ones. Behind the scenes, when we detect a new episode, a silent wake-up gets sent to your phone so it pulls the latest feed immediately. The result is that new episodes from shows you follow land in your library almost as soon as they go live, and the notification for them arrives right after.

If you follow daily shows — news, sports, interviews — this is the change you'll feel most.

"Process now" episode action

If you're impatient about an episode being ready with smart topics and chapters, there's a new action on every episode menu: Process now. Tap it and we'll immediately kick off analysis on that episode instead of waiting for the background queue. Useful when you've just downloaded a long episode you want to sample before committing to the full listen.

Smart topics stay consistent across episodes

One subtle but important fix: when multiple copies of the same episode exist (which happens when shows update their audio or re-encode files), smart topics now stay consistent across all versions. Previously you might see different topic summaries for what was effectively the same episode. Now they line up.

Smaller fixes

Fixed the AI summary badge so it stays tight against episode titles and the expand icon has a bit more room to breathe
The AI summary sheet now only opens when you tap the expand icon, not when you tap the badge itself, which was confusing
Discover search on iOS now properly resets between searches and doesn't lose the keyboard focus
Cold-start recommendations now show something sensible for users who haven't yet built up enough listening history

What's coming next

We're working on making the queue smarter about what to play next when you finish an episode — not just the next in line but the one you're actually most likely to want in that moment. More on that soon.

Listen smarter with Podtastic

Want to try these improvements yourself? Podtastic is a fully featured podcast player for iOS and Android, built around Pod-telligence — a set of AI features that helps you get more out of every show:

Smart Summaries — AI summaries of every podcast and episode so you know what's coming before you hit play
Smart Topics — key topics surfaced across your favourite shows so you can jump straight to what matters
Smart Playback — your queue fills itself based on what you actually listen to
Jump Ahead — automatically tightens gaps and pacing so episodes flow naturally

Join the waitlist at podtastic.app to get early access.