Castro Podcast Player

Castro is under new ownership. Please check our social media and blog for more info. We hope you're enjoying the more frequent updates and server improvements.

2024.4
- Fixes for certain sideloading links
- New medium sized widget
- New Castro plus app icons
- Several crash fixes
- Fixes for widget playback state
- Fixes around queuing items sorted by date and related user messaging

2024.4.1
- Additional crash fixes and widget fixes

Castro is under new ownership. Please check our social media and blog for more info. We hope you're enjoying the more frequent updates and server improvements.

This update contains:
- Fixes for certain sideloading links
- New medium sized widget
- New Castro plus app icons
- Several crash fixes
- Fixes for widget playback state
- Fixes around queuing items sorted by date and related user messaging

• Fixes for light/dark mode issues when the app wasn’t sure what theme it was on
• Fixes for minute/hour calculations
• Fixes for various visual issues around Castro Plus, text rendering, icon showing up randomly for plus users
• Playback author / Podcast name fix on notification
• Fixes shortcut domain
• Adds an interactive widget
• Visual fixes for the queue widgets
• Fix for sideloading bug where new files would not be recognized
• Fix for sideloading bug where youtube videos would download very slowly
• Add button to clear the queue
• Add ability to mark as played manually

- Fixed the CarPlay crash issue - Sorry about that commuters!
- Fixed the New Episode Management selection bug.
More exciting stuff coming soon!

New Feature: Auto-Add to Folder

- Automatically sort new podcast episodes into your designated folder with our latest feature.
- Navigate to Show Settings (exclusive to Plus subscribers) -> New Episodes. Choose between "Queue Next + Add to Folder" or "Queue Last + Add to Folder" and set your destination folder.
- Your new episodes will be auto-added to your (you've guessed it) chosen folder.

More stuff and bug fixes coming soon! Thank you for all your support, Castro-ers (can we call you that?)

Improved episode search: Now, after viewing episode details through the “Search episodes” bar, tapping the previous screen takes you back to your search results instead of the podcast Discover screen.

More updates coming soon! Stay tuned.

It ain't much but it's honest work:

- You can now have “empty” folders state. You can clear episodes inside a folder and re-use it in over and over and over and over….
- Added an option to remove episodes from folders but not from queue
- Fixed a text-wrapping issue that shows up when you pasted a URL or RSS feed to the search bar

New things have come to light!

- You can now create a new folder right from the Folders tab, whee!
- Switched the position of the delete and folder buttons in the Queue because muscle memory.
- Bug fix: fixed the Continuous Play behavior when you play episodes in a folder.

Happy 4th of July to all our American friends! *cue the dazzling fireworks and majestic screeches of the bald eagle*

In this update, we're unleashing Folders, a nifty way to wrangle your episodes into iOS-style (you guessed it) folders without disrupting your main queue.

After adding new episodes from your Inbox to the Queue, you can now wield your organizational prowess and stash them in different folders with names tailored to your fancy. This means you can finally tackle that epic binge of all 26 podcast episodes about World War II that have been piling up in your queue.

Our folders feature acts as a steadfast filter, akin to the power of our existing Categories and Shows filters. It shall stand unwavering, preserving the sacred order of your queue. Don't believe us? Give it a whirl!

To cap it all off, behold a timeless quote from the 1996 cinematic masterpiece Independence Day (we shall not acknowledge any lesser sequels): "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!"

“Bug fix: 
Cheers! All Adam Carolla fans and Swedish listeners who reached out to us, we hear ya. 
The issue affecting the shows under "Podcast One" and "Sveriges Radio" is now fixed!

A new feature is also coming up in our next update. Stay tuned!”

Bug fixes and performance enhancements (it ain’t much but it’s honest work):
- Sluggish navigation bar issue now resolved,
- Resolution to duplicating Podcasts under certain categories, and
- Resolution to the weird state where the app kind of freezes when subscribing to Podcasts from search(It was kinda rare though).


Added “Follow us on Twitter” link in Settings
New features and updates will be announced on Twitter (we’re actively working on cool stuff now so please stay tuned). Say hi to us there!

Performance enhancements and Bug Fixes are as follows:

- Resolution to the blocking issue, where we got stuck at Search UI and there was no way to go back to Queue,
- Category name in the navigation bar, just like every other screen,
- Resolution to episode action buttons being overlapped by the Category/Podcast floating action buttons,
- A little bit of UI modification to declutter the Episode Canonical state icon, also reduced the Description length to just 2 lines,
- Resolution to the Drag and drop of the first episode in the queue resulting in bizarre position interchanges, and
- Resolution to the inconsistent Episode count on the Category grid and Category detail Screen.

Resolution to a crash that happened while toggling the Queue filter from show to hide to reveal the whole Queue.
Resolution to the Queue Filter button not tappable anymore.

- More information around Clearing Inbox and Queue:
* Inbox and Queue can be cleared by long pressing the Queue and Inbox Tabs.

Fixes for the crashes when we tap on selected tab(Inbox/Queue) when the Queue/Inbox is empty,
Fixes the distortion of UI in Show/Category screens on Inbox and Queue, and
Increased the tap area for Delete mode in Inbox/Category grid screens.

New Features:
- Long press on Show/Category views of Queue and Inbox to activate Delete mode, to delete individual Show/Category episodes.
- Long press Tab(Queue/Inbox) to remove all episodes from Queue/Inbox respectively.

Bug Fixes:
- Got rid of the annoying Clear Inbox green button,
- Resolved the glitches in Animation while interacting with episodes, in Queue, Inbox, Library, and Podcast Details screen,
- Resolved the Export Logs not working issue,
- Resolved the issue where User stays on the Episode details screen after we remove it from Queue/Inbox, now app takes you back to previous screen.
- Resolved top episode in Queue starts at weird scroll position issue,
- Resolved the Inbox navigation not scrolling when app starts on Inbox itself,
- Resolved the sharing podcast via iMessage app issue, and
- Resolved Show/Category reordering issues.

Other minor UI and performance enhancements.

Added accessibility for Inbox and Queue,
Fixed pull to refresh for podcast episode listing,
Fixed grid item cell arrangement for plus devices,
Fixed duplicate shows and categories issues,
Minor UI Fixes.

Resolution to a crash being faced by some of our users, when they visit the Show or Category pages either in the Queue or in the Inbox sections of the app.

Castro has been revamped
Queue:
The Redesigned Queue now features 3 tabs of episode classification.
Episodes: This section of the Queue hosts all of the episodes added to the Queue
Shows: This section displays the grid of all of the episodes, whose episodes are present in the app, tapping any of the episodes here takes us to a new podcast details screen, as described down below.
Categories: This section shows all of the Categories, whose episodes belong to the Queue. Tapping any of the Categories takes us to a new Category details screen, as described down below.

Queue Filtering:
We can now filter the queued episodes based on a Podcast or a Category, from their respective tabs as explained above. Such as if we go to a Podcast and select the Play all Queued episode button we add a filter for that Podcast, same for the Category.
Once we activate any filter, the Queue is configured as if the filtered episodes are the only ones added to the queue. It will start playing those episodes only.
A new filtered version of the Queue will be introduced to us, a button, an indication for the active filter, and all the episodes satisfying the active filter.
We can toggle between the filtered and the non-filtered state, by simply tapping the filter button; we can even get rid of the filter altogether, by tapping and holding over the filter button.
The player will continue playing the current playing episode, until the end. And after that, the filtered episodes start playing next in line. Vice-versa for the full Queue.
Once all the filtered episodes complete playing, the filter gets removed and normal queued episodes start playing.

Inbox:
Similar to the Queue, the new Inbox screen now hosts 4 tabs
Top Picks: The latest Episodes of the Podcast the user needs to have listened to. Episodes start showing up here when you have listened to enough episodes in the app. Pretty much similar behavior from the previous version.
All: All the episodes of newly subscribed podcasts, and newly released episodes of the subscribed podcasts. Pretty much similar behavior from the previous version.
Shows and Categories: Similar to the Queue section.

Library:
The redesigned Library has 4 different segments.
Search: We can search subscribed Podcasts here.
Starred:
Further, it shows a screen with 3 different categories
All: List of all the episodes which we have marked as starred
Shows: All the Podcasts, whose episodes are in the list of Starred. It will also show the badge count of episodes.
Category: All the podcast categories, whose episodes are marked as starred. It will also show the badge count of all podcasts of related categories.
History:
Similar to the Starred feature, we move to the next screen by tapping this tab
All: List of all the episodes that user have listened to
Shows: All the Podcasts, whose episodes are in History. It will also show the badge count of episodes.
Category: All the podcast categories, whose episodes are added to the History. It will also show the badge count of all podcasts of related categories.
Sideloads: List of all sideload episodes.
List of all Subscribed Podcasts

Theme: The appearance section of the App’s settings now has a new look
Display Mode: Can be used to switch between Light and Dark mode.
Automatic: Automatically uses the device settings.
Accent Color: Castro now supports changing the Accent color, which we can use to kinda personalize the App as per our choices

Podcast(Show) Details Screen:
Now we can see the information related to the Podcast here
It now has several dynamic tabs that list all of its episodes, these can be seen as filters and help get to know the actual role of the Podcast in our Castro App.
This screen pops up extra options at the bottom, based on the source of origin for this screen which helps us perform actions over the episodes in context.
Category Details Screen: Similar to the Show Details screen, this screen hosts similar information related to the selected Category.

- Fixes issue where wrong podcast artwork could show in episode lists
- Fixes issue where artwork would flash between different podcasts in episode lists
- Fixes issue where playing/pausing could cause episode artwork to flash
- Fixes issue where reordering episodes in the queue could cause artworks to flash
- Fixes issue where play suggestion in the iOS Now Playing widget on the Lock Screen and Control Centre were missing artwork
- Speeds up YouTube downloads when using the Sideload to Castro extension

Introduces a more efficient image caching system to address an issue where Castro could sometimes take up far too much disk space even when no episodes were downloaded.

2021.7
- Fix for crash when dragging and dropping episodes from Library to Inbox, apologies that this slipped through in the last update

2021.6 FIXES
- Gets YouTube working with the Sideload extension again
- Fixes an issue where episodes could stay download even after manually clearing from the queue if they’d been previously played and then requeued
- Fixes “pocasts” typo in Promoted Content Settings
- Episodes that are cleared from your Queue by the Episode Limit feature now respect the “Delete Episodes” setting in Downloads instead of always having their download immediately deleted
- Same goes for episodes that you manually move from Queue to Inbox
- Fixes issue where an episode could get pushed to the top of History after being on the top of the Queue even if you didn’t play it any further
- Improved error messages when something goes wrong with feed URLs pasted into the search bar in Discover
- Fix for showing the incorrect error message when trying to preview a podcast in Discover that doesn’t load correctly

QUICK FIX RELEASE
- Gets YouTube working with the Sideload extension again
- Fixes an issue where episodes could stay download even after manually clearing from the queue if they’d been previously played and then requeued
- Fixes “pocasts” typo in Promoted Content Settings
- Episodes that are cleared from your Queue by the Episode Limit feature now respect the “Delete Episodes” setting in Downloads instead of always having their download immediately deleted
- Same goes for episodes that you manually move from Queue to Inbox
- Fixes issue where an episode could get pushed to the top of History after being on the top of the Queue even if you didn’t play it any further
- Improved error messages when something goes wrong with feed URLs pasted into the search bar in Discover
- Fix for showing the incorrect error message when trying to preview a podcast in Discover that doesn’t load correctly

DOWNLOAD STARRED EPISODES
There’s a new option in Download settings to keep Starred episodes downloaded on your device. Whether there’s episodes you keep coming back to or others you want to keep around for later without clogging up your Queue, this feature means you can have access to them instantly.

OTHER CHANGES
- Episodes you manually clear from the Queue get deleted immediately rather than sticking around for 1-7 days like episodes that have left the Queue because you played through to the end.
- Custom artwork loaded from YouTube channels now shows in the widgets and on the Lock Screen and Control Centre, as well as where it previously did on episode lists and the Now Playing screen in the app.

FIXES
- Sideloading from YouTube had broken again, this fixes it.
- Deselecting chapters could previously lead to a crash, not any more.
- Toggling download settings on an Apple Silicon Mac could previously lead to a crash, that’s fixed too.
- Episodes published with *.mpga file extensions won’t fail to download any more.
- Clearing old listened episodes shouldn’t slow down launch time any more.

SIDELOADS
- Fixes an issue that was preventing Sideloads from YouTube through the share extension from working
- Sideloads from YouTube now show the channel artwork in episode lists and on the player screen in Castro instead of the default Sideloads icon

PROMOTED CONTENT
- The player screen now has a banner at the bottom promoting podcasts from our advertisers
- Castro Plus subscribers can hide it and it will be hidden by default

BUG FIXES
- Fixes an issue with refresh that could prevent new episodes from showing until after multiple attempts
- Fixes an issue that could prevent new episodes from appearing until after a restore from backup
- Fixes an issue that could prevent pull to refresh in a podcast from getting the latest episode
- Fixes an issue where unwarranted error messages could show after pulling to refresh on Queue or Library tabs
- Fixes an issue that could cause episodes that you're finished with to be left with a few seconds or minutes left in your Library instead of reset to the beginning in case you want to relisten

OTHER
- Adds an option to Reset Castro in User Data settings if you want to just start fresh
- Refinements to the player screen transition with a smoother parallax effect and progressive fading of content

NOTIFICATION IMPROVEMENTS
- Apologies for an issue where some users stopped receiving notifications. This update resolves an issue we had server-side where push notification tokens were getting inadvertently cleared. On startup the app will send your push token to our serversagain if we don’t have it so that push notifications can be sent reliably again.
- The Push Notifications screen has an option to send a test notification to verify that we are able to send notifications from our server to your device
- The Push Notifications screen will display in the footer the timestamp of when you last received a new episode push notification (if you’ve received one since installing the update)

LOCK SCREEN/CONTROL CENTER
- This build fixes an issue where playback didn’t start as expected after tapping podcast artwork in the Now Playing suggestions on the Lock Screen and in Control Center
- We fixed a potential issue where the play/pause state on the Lock Screen/Notification Center could be out of sync with the app and require multiple taps to play/pause
- This should also improve the reliability of controlling playback from CarPlay
- Please contact us through the support screen and send logs if you continue to encounter playback issues

WHAT ELSE
- The Support section in Settings includes an option to “Copy Anonymous Account Identifier” which can be helpful when contacting support with issues
- Added logging to diagnose a potential issue where episodes aren’t getting auto-queued as expected. Please contact us if new episodes aren’t showing up in your Queue as expected