Reviews for Himalaya: Stories and Courses

I wanted to like this app. For a while it was the best damn podcast catcher out there. But the updates have ruined it. Notifications cannot be turned off. Ever. The setting to turn them off flips itself back on. It literally wo t let you turn off recomendations. That setting also forces itself on. Additionally, the playback sucks now too. A steadily worsening problem is podcasts skipping back 1-3 mins, randomly. Even more damning, episodes will often refuse to play entirely, even on wi fi.

Really good but managing the actual pod cast episodes is clunky. It would be a lot better and I would completely switch if it was easier. I don't want to have to click on each episode, swiping or holding and selecting would be better. If there is a way to do it then it in not intuitive. Other than that I really do like the app and the recomended podcasts section is the best and most accurate I have seen

There's so much missing here. I don't need saved playlists. I'm not going back and re-listening to hour long episodes in a particular order. I just need a single playlist of queued, downloaded tracks to continuously listen without having to find the next when one ends. Don't redownload an episode I've heard, it should remove from playlist after playing. Where are settings for aux/Bluetooth controls/disconnect? Nothing is sorted anywhere by any attribute. Seeing newest first would be ideal.

I do like the app and UI but for some reason my podcasts (all of them) are skipping back 20 seconds or so at least once or twice every commute (usually between 30 and 45 minutes). That is kind of annoying. Also, I just got a new phone and it did that for me on iPhone as well as on my new Pixel 3XL. The iPhone native app that I used before switching to Himalaya didn't do that.

I love the way this app is laid out. It also has a dark background making it a lot easier on the eyes. I do have to force stop it to make it close so that I can download an episode for offline use. It will sometimes say it needs internet access to download even though it has it. It does appear to feature self-help and famous people podcasts, but other podcasts can be searched. It would be nice to see the occasional audio drama featured.

Ok app. Scratching my head with some of the recommendations. Can't turn off the bubble that shows when a new episode has posted. Half of the new episodes are nothing but a commercial for a new podcast. I recently updated to the most recent version. Now when I pause a podcast and then resume, a random episode begins playing and I have to stop and go back to the episode list and find the episode I was listening to. Going to go back to iheart soon, as much as I don't like them better than himalaya

The Himalaya built-in timer to stop playing does not work consistently, sometimes it will run through the whole night waking me up, even though I had set up the timer to stop after 1 hour or so. It also would not stop with an external sleep timer. Once the phone screen is timed out and locked, the timer would not work. I emailed Himalaya support as instructed, but no response whatsoever, very disappointed.

Would be great if worked right. I finally gave up on this app and wrote some feedback to them awhile ago but didn't hear anything back. When listening through a Bluetooth device(headphones, car, etc ) if you pause it for a few seconds then play it again it will not stay playing. You have to kill the app to get it to play through the episode.

As of this moment, after using this app for roughly 3 years, I'm switching to another podcatcher. The app constantly messes up (such as needing an internet connection to play a previously downloaded episode), doesn't actually get a lot of podcasts others do, keeps trying to stay on when I close the app, refuses to let me see more than 15 shows (I follow 181, even if they didn't update I like re-listening)

I found out about this app from a commercial break during Harmontown, and I'm really liking it so far. Though, it would be nice if I could change the auto play from top-to-bottom to bottom-to-top. I know I can change the order of newest to oldest, but that requires moving to the right page. Yeah, I know that sounds lazy, but it would make things easier. It would also be nice to access the sleep timer from the Notification UI. Anyway, overall a great podcast app!

With each update the app is becoming worse. When you go to the homepage of a subscribed show, there's no way to tell if you have already downloaded a certain episode. And to download a show you have to click three times. Plus there's no way to change the order of the downloaded episodes. I have a few episodes left in the app and after finishing those I will delete this app. And FYI, this app is owned by the chinese, just like tiktok.

Everything is laid out well, easy to access a lot of features. My only peeve is that the sleep timer won't work on the "after current episode ends" setting. So sometimes I wake up and had supposedly listened to three more episodes. This is only a minor inconvenience to me because my phone is left charging overnight but it may become an issue for others using the app on transit or without easy access to charging.

I like the user interface, but it is designed to be a streaming app, and does not allow downloads to be stored anywhere but on the phone's internal memory. Because of that, this app isn't going to work for me. Streaming expects continuous connection, horsepower and unlimited data. I have spotty reception, an older phone with limited internal memory and a 128GB SD card. Just walking around my house will cause dropouts became of my WiFi, much less driving in marginal areas.

I downloaded the app because a few of the podcasts I listen to were sponsored by it. For them, I'm going to give this app a solid chance, however there are a few things that really do not work for me: - there is no option to sort the podcasts (oldest to newest, etc...) - it seems to automatically play downloads newest to oldest, which is inconvenient when listen to something that's episodic. - it will automatically play the next newest episode, even if it's not downloaded.

Great app, super smooth UI, easy to use. There are two reasons I alwaays uninstalll and go back to Castbbox. 1. The only auto-download option is 3 episodes. Most of my podcasts are current events driven such that I almost never need 3. 2. The speed adjuster only increases in elements of .25. I'd love to have .1 adjustment. Keep up the great work! Thanks

Stuck in download hell Nice looking, user friendly app but it's far perfect. This player definitely has potential but it's missing some key features. There's no way download progress bar. Only a tiny circle that you have to go into the app to see. Not to mention downloading takes FOREVER. Which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if the automatic download feature actually worked. I unintalled when it took 10 minutes to download 90% then failed. I'm going back to Castbox.

Love the ease of finding any podcast I'm looking for. I like the ability to create lists and to find others' lists. However, it is very quirky and frustrating at times. Glitches when playing. Sometimes it just goes blank for minutes at a time. (Even if connected through wi-fi.) Now it refuses to even load. And there have been no updates or changes. Emailed Support this morning with no response yet. Should I not expect a same-day response?

I love a lot of the podcasts here, but I have some complaints. It's very difficult/confusing to add private podcasts (like NoSleep subscriptions), when an episode of a podcast is longer than 45 minutes the app seems to pause and skip or shut down completely, and I don't like that you can't add an episode to play next without making a playlist. If I could find a better app I would switch but I'm running into similar issues with most other apps. Podcasting is the one area that Apple wins.

I've tried just about all of the free podcast players on Google and this one ranks right at the top. Beautiful UI, seamless playback, and a seemingly unending catalog of podcasts. The only thing I could ask for is the ability to import rss feeds by URL, a sound equalizer, and for it to have more social integration. (Update: I keep having issues with podcasts not updating. I've had to email them twice and both times it was fixed. But its frustrating and I won't be using this from now on.)

Inadequate app compared to the Chinese version. I had the Chinese version, but because of current regulations in the US, a lot of features were made unavailable and I had to switch to the international version. There is no genre options to choose from, so browsing is difficult. If I want to listen to anything that's not on their front page, I'd have to specifically search for it. I've added titles to my library, but there are no recommendations based on my preference afterward.