I had been using this for 5 years but over the last year it has gone downhill. Ads take over the screen and audio. They also are extremely intrusive and make using the app difficult. The ads are also very low quality often in Mandarin with no obvious way to close them. I tried to stick with it while they figured out the ads but its been a year and it has only gotten worse. Now the last few months there seem to be more bugs than fixes with each update. When I select an episode to play it immediately skips it and plays the next. It can take quite a few tries for it to finally work. This has been happening the last five months or so. For the last two months the app’s audio will just cut out (except for ads of course) forcing you to close the app multiple times for it to work again. And recently the app no longer remembers what part of an episode you are at and starts the podcast from the beginning. I’ve reported bugs in the past but the answer is always the same “please record the app not functioning correctly and send the video file to us”. I’m not your debugger or beta tester. I don’t record my phone screen all day so I can capture the 5 seconds this app stops working. This has gone on for too long. I’m moving on.

This app has been wonderful for years running with virtually no issues plus it’s a fairly intuitive (easy) layout. Unfortunately recent updates have really disappointed! Ads are more often & recently becoming very intrusive-claiming the screen while you’re in the middle of interacting with the app. This has really taken away from the experience! Now today as I open the app an ad immediately took over. After finally finding it’s close button I think “well, at least the ad is out of the way” thinking I won’t have to deal with another for awhile. BUT swear-to-God another ad pops up just seconds later! I understand ads help pay the developers but this is too much. Recent updates also ended the ability for the app to play in the background. Why would a developer allow their good app to fall to this level? Podcast apps are in great supply & I’m starting to try out others. Just check out all the recent bad reviews this app has received. DO NOT download this app. There are better alternatives. This used to be a 1st class app but now it’s just another bloated glitchy waste. :( Edit (2 months later): checked back to see if developer responses meant things would improve-NOPE! They haven’t fixed anything. Judging from all the negative reviews this app is simply unusable. I’ve found another app that works fine & deleting this app.

I tried this app out (long term, like 5 months) because one of my top podcasts endorsed it. I liked the layout better than apple podcasts. There were issues with the badges that each podcast gets (for new episodes)…I repeatedly tried to turn them off and they always came back, whether I wanted them or not. But the issue I absolutely could not get over is the (intermittent) problem of pausing on bluetooth. Sometimes it just simply wouldn’t pause at all, then I had to go find my phone (while working) to pause when someone was trying to talk to me. Other times it was even worse, where it would pause but it would play my itunes at the same time. The music was usually louder than a podcast. So here I am trying to listen to someone talk at work, trying to pause a podcast, and even louder music plays. I contacted them twice on this issue and all they could say is swipe my itunes app away. That is not convenient because I listen to it in the car 3xs a day. An audiobook app had the exact same issue, and it was fixed at their next app update. This app has consistently had this issue, and they don’t care to fix it. So I quit it, which is very inconvenient after you’ve listened to hundreds of podcasts, because you have to manually update your other app on each episode you’ve already listened to, unless you want to accidently relisten to them all. Yes I tried several bluetooth devices.