Reviews for Offline Podcast App: Player FM

Update: Their banner ads sometimes tap themselves! Now it pauses my podcast to play their own ads???!!! I'm now shopping for a new podcast app! Original review: Love this! I've been using it for years. Full featured for free. Thank you! I'd like to support the devs with a few bucks but I don't need the premium features and I don't like the subscription model. The app didn't recognize the downloads after transferring the data to a new sd card. Minor inconvenience.

I've always found this app very easy to use. You can tell it to download your favorite podcasts automatically and it also deletes them, after you listen. (No more deleting old episodes manually!) Customer service is extremely helpful if there's anything you can't find. And I like being able to customize the listening speed for different pods. (Normal speed for music pods. 1.3 or 1.5 for news, often. I sometimes listen to a French podcast at 0.8 so I can understand it more easily.)

I'm a heavy listener to podcasts and recently switched from iOS to Android. In an effort to find a podcast app in the Android Play Store that was comparable with the features I liked, I've been testing dozens of different podcast players. Some of the features that are most important to me in addition to having podcasts that I listen to are: clean, simple and intuitive interface, unobtrusive ads (with the ability to buy and not have to sign up for a subscription), easy navigation, ability to down

Generally good, it's the least annoying podcast app that I've found, and it has a solid amount of useful features. The one star off is because the app will randomly skip episodes (sometimes to the next on my list, sometimes to the most recent ep) when I shake or drop my phone. It's not reproducible, I can shake the hell out of my phone and nothing will happen, but it will randomly happen while driving or walking, always when the phone is moving, even if slightly. Annoying but livable.

On Pixel 4a, Android 12, you cannot search for episodes within a podcast. You can expose the search box, but the keyboard doesn't activate, so there's no way to enter any text to find. Also, some podcasts are not updating frequently enough. In some cases not showing episodes that were published many hours earlier and visible on other platforms. Is there a way to force a refresh?

Until this recent update to include in-app purchases and the mention of ads
soon to be included, this was my favorite app for podcasts on Android.
While I appreciate that the developers need to make money, I'm disappointed
that simple, *previously free* features such as pausing between episodes(in
particular a feature I used a lot as I listen to podcasts before sleeping)
seem to now be gated behind paying at least $0.99/month. I would've
appreciated more of a heads-up regarding the change, and may be finding
myself "downgrading" my podcast listening methods to meet my preferences
for free.

I downloaded this app because some of the podcasts I wanted to hear are on it and not on Spotify. The app is ok. It plays podcasts. I would rate it higher but I can't stand the way it sometimes skips around randomly, if I start playing an episode in one podcast it jumps to a completely different podcast when that episode is over. Or sometimes it jumps to the episode at the end of the list. Can't figure out how to make it just play straight through.

Player FM is a pretty great podcast player. There's an array of customization options, from how your subscribed podcasts are displayed, themes, and episode queueing, among others. Two things I wish I could change is (1) how dates are displayed, which is in weeks (annoying!) instead of the exact date; and (2) how episodes are/aren't displayed in playlists, i.e., played episodes aren't visible, which I don't like because I create many playlists with podcast episodes that I've played before.

So this was my first podcast app ever, and it served me well for years, but now that they have on screen adds, the system they are using for the adds has skyrocketed the app's battery consumption. I have it playing while plugged in to charge, and it's eating battery faster than it can charge. I've seen this app system do the same to other apps. Can't keep using if it's killing my phone.

I loved this at first because of the ultimate customizing to listening. Faster, slower (in minute amounts), skip silence, etc. But it's gone so downhill over the last couple years. Won't play down the list you chose, won't always play the episode you chose, stops randomly--in four minutes, it randomly stopped four times. And every time I open it now, even to press play after it's decided to stop, I have to exit an ad for them twice. Every time. Looking for a new app, this isn't worth it anymore.

I just changed my previous 5 star rating, which was based on the user interface and ease of use. Lately the podcasts keep pausing and gibberish comes through the speaker - even after closing the app. Also, I rarely have my mobile data turned on, and the one day that I had it on this month, this app used 191 MB! It was only on for a few hours! Based on my settings of using only Wi-Fi, that number should be zero. Please fix this. Until then, I'll find another app to use.

I'm going to have to delete the app. In the last few weeks, my podcasts pause playing and I get a "chittering" sound, like talking at high speed. I have to then hit play again. It's too much of a distraction while I'm driving. I've tried every setting and nothing stops it from continuously happening.

I'm a paid subscriber and this app does what I need (mostly): allows me to download and listen offline and easily import and subscribe to podcasts that aren't on the platform yet. 1 big issue: when I try to organize my play later feed: (I subscribe to A LOT of podcasts and I like to manually order them.) It never stays in the order I put it in. I just spent 20 minutes rearranging 6 podcast episodes and finally gave up, no matter how many times I put them in order, they'd move. So annoying!

I have used the free option for years to listen to my favorite podcasts and to search for new ones. While it's true, the number of ads to upgrade has dramatically increased in the last year, it wasn't anything to care about. Now, however, like others have noted, the audio frequently stops and a high speed jiberish disclaimer-like reading is played. I then have to go back and press play to start listening again only to be interrupted two or three more times. This sucks.

Been using the free player for over a decade across multiple phones. Used to love it as the free version met most of my needs. However, the app quality has dropped tremendously over the last few months. I got used to the constant ads to upgrade every time I opened the app, but now it consistently loses my place in my podcast when I pause or switch headsets. I can't even scroll in the UI in some podcasts any even though the episode is downloaded. Now I'm on the hunt for a new podcast app.

I've been using the free version for years with only minor issues, but recently it started pausing every time the ad at the top refreshes & playing 2-3 seconds of really fast talking (like at the end of some ads, only sped up so much I can't understand it). I have to unlock my phone and manually restart. It's super random, sometimes multiple times in a minute, other times I get maybe 10-15 minutes. Sent a message, no reply yet. Might be time to find a new app. 🫤

stopped working correctly as soon as it took my money for another year of premium. Doesn't automatically download episodes on wifi - I have to do it manually. This usually means I'm stuck listening to week-old episodes during my commute. Also, even though I just renewed my subscription for a year, I get a pop up telling me to subscribe every single time I open the app. I'll be looking for a new player. UPDATE: I found a new podcast app (open-source), and omg, it is SOOO much better!

Don't know if it's an issue with latest update, but there's roughly a 50-75% chance the app will not remember when episodes were paused, or just start them from the beginning for no reason. Has gone from an app that can occasionally run slow but still a stable platform to being borderline unusable. The usual popup on starting that tries to get you to pay for this feel like a joke now. A real shame.

This was the best podcast player I could find several years ago. It had banner ads and some other quirks, but for the most part, it was the only thing I could find that came close to what I was looking for. Now, however, the number of ads and other things I have to close every single time I open the app is almost unbearable. And then they have another pop-up asking for a review 😒. Consider paying for premium, but it's too high and subscription. Update, It got even worse. Found AntennaPod. Bye👋

App has gone downhill. Constant pop ups to subscribe. Not sure if there was an update recently but it started downloading/streaming podcasts without my knowledge (has always been set to only stream or download on wifi) causing a huge spike in my data usage that I didn't notice until I got a huge bill. Now the player controls are covered by the Android navigation buttons and I can't remove them. If you want me to pay for it, this isn't the way. Might be time for a new podcast player