What's New in Podtastic — May 2, 2026

This week we shipped Podtastic 2.1. The headline change is one a lot of you have been asking for: bring your existing subscriptions over from any other podcast app, in one go. We also closed out a stubborn Android startup crash and tightened how Play Next handles your queue.

Bring your existing subscriptions across in one tap

Podtastic on iOS now imports OPML files. If you've been using another podcast app for years and never switched because the thought of re-adding 40 subscriptions one by one was too painful, that friction is gone.

Export an OPML file from your current app (every major player supports it), open Podtastic, and your full library appears. Recently played, queue position, and per-episode listening progress don't transfer (no podcast app exposes that data via OPML), but the subscriptions themselves do, and that's the part that takes the most time to rebuild.

Android already supported OPML import. The two platforms are now at parity, which means moving your library between them is a clean round trip. We've documented the full process in our updated guide to importing podcast subscriptions via OPML.

A quieter Android startup

Some Android users saw the app close on them right after tapping the icon. The crash hit a narrow combination of conditions during launch, but if you were one of the unlucky few it was painful and unpredictable. Version 2.1 handles that combination quietly and recovers into the app properly instead of bailing out. If you'd been seeing the app close on you immediately after opening it, this fixes it.

We also tightened how Podtastic behaves during the first few seconds after launch more broadly, so the next time Android tweaks its rules (it always does), the app should weather it without a crash window.

Smarter Play Next on Android

Tapping "Play Next" on Android used to add a duplicate of the episode to the top of your queue when the episode was already queued elsewhere. Now it moves the existing entry to the top instead. Your queue stays clean, and Play Next does what its name says.

A small follow-on to that: when you delete an episode or start playing it, any pending background work for that episode wraps up cleanly rather than continuing to churn on something you no longer want. You won't notice it directly, but the app will feel a touch faster and your battery will thank you on busy listening days.

Smaller fixes

The mini player on Android no longer shows blank artwork when the queue has just become ready while the player is idle
Topic links shared from the app now include the correct transcript snippet, so whoever you sent it to sees the same passage you did regardless of which device they open it on
Toast notifications on iOS and Android now use a consistent icon colour palette across success, info, warning, and error states

What's coming next

We're working on bringing Smart Topics quality up across shows that have very long, rambling intros, plus a Smart Playback upgrade that makes the queue feel more like a curated mix and less like a chronological backlog. Both should land in the next couple of weeks.

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.