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I listen to a lot of podcasts - A lot of stuff from twit, cnet, smodcast and npr. I sync my phone about once every two weeks or so which for a lot of my daily podcasts is not good. For twit there's a decent mediafly app that is specifically for twit but it seems buggy - when you go back to listening to a podcast after stopping for a while it goes back in time and will skip back anywhere from 30 or so seconds to about 20 mins and you then have to scrub to find out where you were. There is also a standalone mediafly app that is supposed to be for alternate podcast locations but it doesn't seem to do a good job handling the RSS and misses quite a bit plus it has some of the same bugs as the twit version. Also as with any background audio api (aside from the iTunes app) they never properly are able to display the right info on the lock screen - some times it shows the title of the app, sometimes it shows the last thing you were playing in itunes (even though it doesn't play that and plays what you want it to), sometimes it's blank - and it never shows the artwork.

Right now I've resorted to subscribing via iTunes on mac, then on my iPhone go to the podcast, get more episodes and them download from there. It works but it sucks if I'm away from wifi when I want to do that as there is still the 20 meg limit. I'd settle for a single download limit going away and a button to download all new episodes being wifi only

What I would like ideally is to press one button that will download all of the latest versions of my podcasts to the itunes app - this isnt likely to happen.

Failing that I'd like to have an app that lets me do the same thing, download the latest episodes with a single button, delete older episodes automatically, play nicely in the background, and have a good browser/management interface.

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  • What you mean 20 meg limit " via iTunes on mac "? If you meant iOS iTunes on iPhone, then the limit exists but it can be jailbroken! Maybe that's enough to solve your issues. ;)
    – cregox
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 14:02
  • edited to make that more clear, and unless there's a button in the native iTunes app on iPhone that says Get All Latest Episodes then it won't solve all my issues. I don't really have a problem with the 20meg limit if i would be downloading 10 podcasts but if I just want to download one, thats when it becomes an issue
    – dstarh
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 14:25
  • Hmm... not sure how I missed that question in related questions search. Thanks!!!
    – scc
    Commented Oct 10, 2011 at 0:15

4 Answers 4

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You could try Podcaster which does over-the-air podcast streaming.

Check out the features

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  • Hrm the only substantive reviews are negative and about all the bugs, not a good sign
    – dstarh
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 4:09
  • Well if you don't want to spend the $2 to check it out that's your choice obviously. It does claim to do much of what you want and it has been updated several times since most of those negative reviews were written, check the version number on them. Also see this review from MacWorld macworld.com/appguide/app.html?id=565792&expand=true
    – conorgriffin
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 9:29
  • I'll have to buy it and check it out... 2 dollars is worth getting rid of this headache - though once i buy something and get it working the way i want apple will probably solve this issue and do it the right way
    – dstarh
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 14:27
  • I downloaded this and it does exactly what i want - now if only apple would let developers supply song/album art info for background music it would be great. Only shows "Podcaster" when you're in lock mode, instead it could easily supply an image and some text
    – dstarh
    Commented Mar 14, 2011 at 19:26
  • Glad it worked for you
    – conorgriffin
    Commented Mar 14, 2011 at 20:21
5

Instacast let's you subscribe to podcasts, synchronize over wifi and 3G and allows you to cache (download) or stream episodes.

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2

Vemedio's Instacast app will do the trick. It's incredibly well-designed and allows you to add subscriptions from within the app and you can tweak the settings to allow downloading over 3G.

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2

I've been using Downcast recently and it's great! I can subscribe (either via search or directly with the RSS URL) and the app automatically downloads new episodes however I've configured it - via Wifi only, ever 4 hours, or with geofencing. It handles automatic playlist building so that I don't have to switch files while I'm driving.

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