Pocket Casts - Podcast App

I've used this app for years and have liked it a lot, but lately it's been glitching more and more. It marked unplayed a bunch of episodes from my most heavy rotation podcasts, so I have no idea which episodes I've already heard. More seriously, it recently stopped being able to find the episode notes from most of my podcasts older than a couple months, making them unsearchable as well as not displaying the notes. Hope these issues are resolved.

(Android 15) app is extremely unresponsive, episodes from various podcasts take ages to load, while other apps load content in the blink of an eye. The search function for finding podcasts is also garbage. Half the time it will show only episodes and not podcasts, even when doing a search like "serial", where I know there is a podcast of that name.

I'll come back in a year to try again. Tried to bring over my 85 entry opml file. Success, but no subscriptions. Ran the import again and they showed up. Two larger podcasts don't have all their episodes listed - this is covered in a FAQ entry and requires me to contact support to fix. One of these caused the browser tab to hang, although it worked in another browser. Refreshes had a strange error message, and this went away. Another podcast, 2x/day BBC News, stopped updates 3 days ago.

Looks like it's time to switch. I've had frustration with pocket casts over the years, but I stuck with it because it's familiar and reliable. I now have ads, which can only be disabled with a subscription. I paid for pocket casts, so suddenly forcing ads seems pretty sleazy. There are a lot of better alternatives. Thanks for the push to switch!

Another user that's been using this app for close to if not over a decade. I've paid for the app before because it was a great app. now that they've implemented unremovable ads for those who've paid this is a 1-star app. I've seen responses that if we subscribe to their monthly subscription it'll remove the ad. I think that's a slap in the face of those that have supported Pocket Casts by purchasing in the early days. stay away. find a different app.