What's new in Podtastic — July 11, 2026

Version 5.1 shipped this week across iOS and Android, and it's mostly quiet-life improvements — the sort of thing you notice when the friction disappears. Here's what changed.

Multilingual podcasts now transcribe properly

If you've ever subscribed to a Spanish, French, or German-language show and had Smart Summaries return something that looked like nonsense, this fixes it. Podtastic now routes every episode to the right transcription model based on the podcast's feed language, so a Spanish-language show gets transcribed by a Spanish-language model, not the English one guessing.

The old behaviour would sometimes block non-English podcasts entirely with a "language not supported" state. That's gone. Feed language is now a hint the app uses to pick the right tool for the job, never a wall.

For UK listeners subscribed to English-language shows only, nothing changes. For anyone with a mixed-language library, everything just works.

Settings sync across your devices

Set your playback speed, Smart Skip preferences, and per-podcast overrides once, and they'll follow you to your other Podtastic-signed-in devices. Three things sync:

• Per-podcast overrides. If you've set a specific playback speed for a specific show, that sticks across devices.
• Global settings. Sleep timer, Skip Silence toggle, Enhance Voices, and default playback speed sync as a snapshot.
• Wipe-on-account-switch. If you sign out of one account and into a different one, your settings clean up properly instead of leaking between users.

The first device you install on gets a one-time restore prompt asking whether you want to bring your old settings over. Existing devices don't get prompted again — no more "restore your settings?" pop-ups on a device you've been using for a year.

"Continue with free" now available if your subscription expires

Previously, if your paid plan lapsed, Podtastic showed a full-screen "your subscription has expired" banner that you couldn't get past without renewing. This was frustrating for anyone who wanted to keep using the app on the free tier while they figured out billing.

Now there's a "Continue with Free" button on both iOS and Android that drops you cleanly into the free-tier experience. You keep your library, your subscriptions, and your listening history. You just lose access to premium features until you re-subscribe. Renew when you want.

Smart Skip rating survey — more precise feedback

When Smart Skip fires and the app asks whether it got the skip right, there's now a "Skipped too late" option in the follow-up survey. Previously the choices didn't cover the case where the skip was correct in principle but landed a few seconds after it should have.

We also relabelled the survey wording from "Jump" to "Skip" throughout, matching the current Smart Skip naming — no more mixed vocabulary between the feature name and the survey.

Episodes stop flip-flopping when they can't be processed

Some episodes genuinely can't be processed on the server — the audio is malformed, the show is members-only, or the source has died. The app now surfaces that clearly instead of retrying forever behind the scenes.

If an episode can't be processed, you'll see a stable "device only" or "server not available" state on it, and Podtastic will fall back to on-device processing where possible. No more episodes that appear "processing" for hours before quietly settling into nothing.

Other polish

A handful of smaller improvements shipped alongside the headliners:

• Broader audio format support. Some independent podcast hosts serve MP3s as application/octet-stream instead of audio/mp3, and Podtastic's fetcher now sniffs the file bytes instead of trusting the header. Result: more episodes play first time on more feeds.
• Members-only feed detection. Patreon, Substack, Supercast, and SupportingCast tokenised feeds now surface as "device only" in the UI so you know they're playable but not shared across users. No behavioural change; just clearer status.
• iOS settings restore. Established devices no longer get the "restore your settings from another device?" prompt. That prompt is now reserved for actual first-installs.

Coming next

We're working on a few things for the next drop, including improvements to Smart Topics for long-form interviews and some overdue polish to the discovery flow. If you spot anything odd in 5.1, get in touch — feedback links straight to the team.

Listen smarter with Podtastic

Want to try these improvements yourself? Podtastic is a fully featured podcast player for iOS and Android, built around Smart Features (the AI features) and Audio Enhancements (deterministic DSP tuned for spoken-word audio):

• 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
• Smart Skip — auto-skips commonly-skipped sections of an episode (intros, recaps, asides), powered by AI topic detection plus aggregated listening data; a single tap on any control surface jumps you to the next Smart Topic on demand
• Skip Silence — auto-removes silences from speech so episodes flow without dragging
• Enhance Voices — a gentle EQ and compression preset that keeps voices clear in any room

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