What's New in Podtastic — June 9, 2026

Podtastic 3.0 is live on iOS today, and on Android the moment Google Play approves it. This release exists because of honest user feedback. People told us processing felt slow and was draining their battery, and that pushed us back into the on-device AI models to see what we could pull out of them. The result is an app that processes your episodes three-to-five times faster, gives you a clear view of what your phone is actually working on, and stops trying to be too clever about your battery.

If you want the short version: open the app in the morning, your queue is ready, and there's now a switch you can flip if you'd rather it didn't touch your battery at all.

Episodes process much faster

The headline change in 3.0 is speed. We re-tuned the underlying on-device AI models that power Smart Topics, Smart Jump Ahead, and Smart Summaries, and the throughput improvement is three-to-five times what it was before.

For anyone subscribed to twenty or more shows, that's the difference between a queue that's always processing and a queue that actually finishes in the few minutes between you waking up and you wanting to listen. It also means less slowdown during background processing — the app stays responsive while your phone works through episodes in the background.

Episodes that don't need any on-device work (usually because we've already processed an identical audio file for another listener) now show as ready to play immediately, instead of briefly flashing a "processing" state and then catching up.

See your queue working through episodes

Faster processing is only half the experience. The other half is knowing what's actually happening.

3.0 adds a new processing-queue banner with a progress bar and an estimated time to clear, so you can glance at it and know your phone is working, and how long it has left.

The Library now highlights the episodes that are ready to play and floats freshly-processed shows to the top, so you don't have to scroll past a wall of spinners to find something to listen to.

Playlists got the same treatment. Each playlist now shows, at a glance, how many episodes are unplayed and ready to play. You can pick a playlist for the commute or the gym and know before you tap whether there's anything in it for you.

New Battery Saver mode

Battery was the other half of the feedback we got. Previously we tried to predict your battery state and quietly throttle processing. Some users wanted exactly that. Others wanted us to just stop touching their battery.

3.0 replaces the clever-but-invisible logic with a simple toggle. Open Settings, turn on Battery Saver, and Podtastic pauses on-device AI processing whenever you're running on battery. Plug in at night or at your desk, and the queue starts up again and works through your shows. By the time you unplug in the morning, Smart Topics, Smart Jump Ahead, and Smart Summaries are all ready to go.

The default behaviour, with Battery Saver off, keeps some protective behaviour when your battery is low. Battery Saver is the explicit, predictable version of that. Flip it on if you want certainty.

See replies to your feedback

Feedback is what made this release possible, so we built a way to keep the loop visible. The new My Feedback view, accessible from Settings, shows you every piece of feedback you've sent, and any replies we've written back. You no longer have to dig through email to remember what you reported or what we said about it.

It's a small change, but it's the one that keeps us honest. Every reply in there is a thread to a real change in the app.

Storage takes care of itself

3.0 quietly frees up storage on your device by clearing out older on-device AI models that have been superseded by newer ones. Over time those add up, and there's no reason to keep stale versions around.

You don't need to do anything to opt in. It happens in the background, and you'll just notice your device has a bit more free space than you thought.

Bug fixes

This release also clears a long list of issues that surfaced over the past few weeks. The most relevant ones:

• BBC podcast downloads now work correctly. If you've been unable to download a show from the BBC, give it another try in 3.0.
• Finished downloads no longer revert. Previously a few downloads would occasionally roll back to the unfinished state after they'd completed. That's fixed.
• The player no longer skips two episodes at once when you tap next. It now does what you asked it to do.
• On-device AI model downloads are more reliable, show real progress, and have a Retry option if a download interrupts.
• Signing out keeps your library and settings intact. Previously, signing out would wipe more than it should have. It now drops your session and leaves everything else where you put it.
• The "days of free access" banner no longer lingers after you upgrade, and tapping it now takes you to the upgrade page rather than going nowhere.
• The welcome setup import picker (OPML and Apple Podcasts) stays put when the keyboard appears, so you can actually finish importing without the picker dancing around.
• Launch crashes and freezes that could occur while episodes were processing in the background are fixed.

Plus the general performance work mentioned above: smoother Library scrolling and faster, more reliable launches.

If you read last week's release, 3.0 is the version where all the work we hinted at finally shows up at once. Thank you to everyone who sent the slow-and-battery-draining feedback. This release is what came out of it. Keep it coming.

Listen smarter with Podtastic

Want to feel the speed difference for yourself? Podtastic is a fully featured podcast player for iOS and Android, built around Pod-telligence (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 Jump Ahead — 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.