Introducing Sonarpad for iOS and Android: a light app to read documents, check news, subscribe to podcasts, listen to radio stations, and much more!

Hello!
First of all, congratulations on the app, both in the iOS and Windows versions. I have tested it on both platforms and really liked it, especially the many features for the small size of the app.
However, I noticed that the Portuguese translation in the IOS version has some errors:
1. In the podcasts window, the categories and countries are in Italian;
2. In the documents window, the button to write a new document is in Spanish.
3. In the project Gutenberg window, when importing a book, the button to import is in Spanish.
4. Still in the same Gutenberg window, when clicking to import a book, it says "Importando..." Which is not wrong, but in European Portuguese we tend to use "A importar...".
Another error I noticed, or maybe it's not an error, is that when I import the OPML file into the podcasts, it doesn't let me select the file. That is, the window to choose it opens, and it appears, but I can't select it because the voice over says the file title and says it is disabled.
Now, a question. Do you have plans to add more voice engines in the future? If so, which ones?
Continue the excellent work.
Best regards.

Hello.
Thank you very much for your quick response.
I just noticed two more small translation errors, this time in the settings:
1. Where it says "Velocidad de lectura," the correct term is "Velocidade."
2. “Tono” is in Spanish; the correct term is “Tom.”
And thank you again for the app—it’s been very useful, especially the text-to-speech and audiobook conversion features. I even considered subscribing to the Eleven Reader Ultra plan, but after seeing the negative user feedback and the issues with the app, I thought twice before going ahead with it.
As for voice systems, I have no doubt that sooner or later Google will release something like this for Chrome using Gemini technology and its wonderful voices, and we’ll be able to have voices just like the ones we have on Edge... Well, I might be talking nonsense, but dreaming is still free for now.

Hello. Can you add renaming podcasts? Thanks, Michal.

hello. Can you make it so that when I find a podcast, I go down to subscribe podcast and confirm the subscription, so that it stays on that podcast when it announces that the podcast is subscribed? When I confirm a podcast, it opens up and I have to go back and I have to search for podcasts again and I can't subscribe to another podcast right away. Thanks, Michal.

Hello. Can Sonarpad announce new episodes in subscribed podcasts and new articles in subscribed rss feeds? if not, can you add it? Thanks, Michal.

Considering that Google may take its suite time adding your app to the play store, have you considered adding it to either the Up to Down App Store or the Apptoide App Store?

At least, those are ones I can safely consider as Reputable alternatives these days.

PS. Not comparing app stores folks, just mentioning them for inclusion.

No problem!

In the Windows version of Sonarpad, you can sort podcasts into alphabetical order. On the iOS version, not sure about Android, you have to choose exactly where you want the podcast to go.

That’s fine if you know where everything is, but I like being able to sort things alphabetically. If I want a custom order, that’s easy enough to do on Windows. I usually just move something to the very top or very bottom, depending on where it needs to go in the podcast list.

The same thing could apply to favourites as well. I’ve finally managed to get my radio favourites sorted into alphabetical order, although I had to do it manually. Lucky for me, I don’t have many radio favourites at the moment.

I’m also curious about one of the buttons in the Podcasts section. Basically, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, past all the podcasts, you get import and export to OPML, and then there’s another button that says something along the lines of “import audio from iTunes / Apple devices.”

I know what that button is probably meant to do, but it is also showing up in the Podcasts section. So I’m guessing it imports podcasts from iTunes as well. It has been a while since I used iTunes for podcasts, so I could be wrong.

For anyone wondering, yes, iTunes is still a thing on Windows. Go figure. I used to use it for podcasts, but iTunes on Windows does not support podcast chapters, so I moved away from it. These days I’m using Sonarpad for podcasts, and some podcasts do have chapter support, which is great.

The iOS version of Sonarpad, however, does not seem to have chapter support, unless I’m missing something. So if there’s a section you want to hear, you have to remember the timestamp and use Siri to jump to it. Luckily, Siri does let you do that. Yes, even the dumb Siri can do that.

Speaking of scrolling, scrolling in Sonarpad on iOS is a pain. Just saying. A four-finger single tap near the bottom of the screen does not jump straight to the bottom. It feels like it only scrolls page by page.

Can you imagine trying to get to Turkey in a long list by doing a four-finger tap over and over until you finally reach the T section, and then slowly flicking right from there? Some of these controls are just weird. I don’t know if that is a Sonarpad issue or something else, but it definitely does not feel like normal iOS behaviour.

As far as I understand it, a four-finger single tap near the bottom of the screen should be the equivalent of Control End on Windows, and a four-finger tap near the top should be like Control Home. I think I’m getting that right. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong. Either way, the scrolling feels weird.

The Routes section is also useless for me at the moment because I’m in Australia, and Australia is not supported. Ideally, routes would pull from Google Maps or Apple Maps. I’d probably use Apple Maps because it is already there, but honestly, Apple Maps still feels a bit clunky to me. I haven’t used Google Maps in quite a while, but the last time I used it, it felt easier to use.

One other thing: I tried looking for Sonarpad in the App Store, but I couldn’t find it in Australia. Maybe that’s because I’m using the TestFlight version, but I don’t think that should matter. I was able to find Ramblio in the App Store even though I was also using the TestFlight version of Ramblio back when it was still in beta.

So I’m just curious whether Sonarpad is actually available in the Australian App Store or not.

Anyway, speaking of Ramblio, I think I’ve rambled on enough.

Hoping for more features on the MacOS app. Also the Windows version has not been updated for a while.

Perfect work, much appreciated.

I think Sonarpad may have a cache problem, or at least some kind of storage issue.

I have always preferred backing up my phone using my computer instead of relying only on iCloud. I do use both, but the computer backup is the one I trust more. Since installing Sonarpad, though, my backups have gone from just under 2 GB to well over 5 GB. My current backup is around 13.5 GB.

Now, if it works anything like the Windows version, podcasts are not really being streamed in the usual sense. On Windows, Sonarpad downloads the podcast into a cache folder and then plays it from there. That is fine, but the problem is that there does not seem to be an easy way to clear that cache.

On Windows, you can manually go to `%appdata%\Sonarpad`, find the podcast cache folder, and delete it. That is relatively safe, but not every computer user is going to know how to do that, and some people will not feel comfortable poking around in AppData folders. It is not the same as editing the Windows registry, obviously, but it still feels like something the average user should not have to do manually.

There really needs to be an easier way to clear Sonarpad’s cache on Windows, iOS, and possibly Mac as well. For podcasts, there could simply be a “Clear podcast cache” button in the podcast section of settings. But it would need to actually clear the cache properly. I have seen plenty of software where a button claims to do something, but when you test it, nothing actually happens.

This matters because if Sonarpad stores a lot of cached data, it can make phone backups much larger than expected. For anyone using the free 5 GB iCloud plan, that becomes a problem very quickly. I am on the free iCloud plan myself, and that is how I noticed this issue in the first place.

At the moment, my iCloud backups do not include Sonarpad for this reason. Please consider adding a proper cache-clearing option, especially for podcasts.