Introducing Anytime podcast app and seeking VoiceOver feedback

I'm using an SE 2020 iPhone running iOS 17.7 and am seeing a battery drain that although I can't prove it I believe is due to anytime. For example, between 5 and 6:00 this evening I was listening to a podcast, and I didn't notice it until later but my battery was at 54% at the beginning of the hour and was at only 9% at the end of the hour.

When listening to a podcast I open the app to where I'm in my list of podcasts, then I select one by double tapping on it and then double tapping the episode I want to listen to. I then lock my screen, and I unlock it again to skip any announcements or commercials throughout the episode that I don't want to hear.

Oh and after noticing the tremendous battery drain between 5 and 6:00 today I went into my battery settings and went down to look at what percentage of my battery each app had used in the past 24 hours and anytime was at 38%. I listened to another podcast earlier in the day so it wasn't all in that one hour but it just seems like my battery drains a whole lot faster on the days I use anytime than it does on days I don't.

Downloading this immediately - even before leaving feedback, though, I just have to mention how grateful I am as an assistive technology user that you are here on these forums seeking feedback from the users.
Thank you and please continue the great work. It's rare to see and I for one appreciate it.

Hi all,

This may or may not be app related and it definitely isn't a voiceover thing, but I'm subscribed to 2 podcast feeds in anytime and when I open either feed and start swiping I can't get past the filter episodes button down to the list of podcast episodes. I know there are new episodes that I haven't listened to so can anybody help me with this problem?

Thanks, as far as I can tell anytime is the only app this is happening with.

I just reinstalled the app and it's back to normal.

Hi Ben,

I could be wrong but I have a feeling it was something I did to cause the problem I had although I don't know what it was. I will post here again if it happens again though.

Hi Ben, I honestly thought i'd download this app and then go right back to downcast but no, for a free app, it's pretty awesome!

There's only one issue so far, I can't seam to find the time scrubber, or anything like that once I play a podcast, is this a bug a feature or a voiceover thing?

DO you intend on adding things like, volume boost, and speed controls?

I'm looking forward to the background refreshes for the app.

I honestly do think i'm going to keep this app around and I might even delete downcast. I do have a question though, how do you intend on paying for the app yearly when it's free on our end?

Once this is a bit more pollished, i'd pay for this app, no questions asked.

Hi Ben, thanks for the response.

I honestly think it would be much easier on us if that player window just popped up by default, as far as I understand it every other podcast player does this and it makes sense, I'd never have thought to go back a page or two to find the play/pause stuff because if I play a podcast; I expect to be shown controls to do with that podcast.

If this is how the ap will be, because designing it another way will be tricky or something; i'll probably end up going back to downcast as it's a bit simpler for me to use.

Brad,

As far as fast forwarding and rewinding a podcast with anytime, what I do is to keep my screen locked while I'm listening to the podcast and then when I want to fast forward I hit the button on the side of my phone to unlock the screen and start swiping to the right and there is a go back, a pause, and a forward button on that screen. Btw the back button goes back 10 seconds and the forward button skips 30 seconds at a time.I just recently found the other part of the player that Ben was referring to but I learned the way I do things before I found that.

Hth.

Yeah, fair enough. I do like the podcast app so will do that :)

I've done so, it would be nice if the full screen toggle was for all podcasts, playing, and unplayed.

Also, there doesn't seam to be a continuous play option, that would be very useful.

I really do like this app, I went back to downcast for a little bit but honestly this one is much easier to use.

Oh, also, there seam to be 2 back buttons on the settings screen.

You also can’t sort podcasts by the newest episodes, so if one of your podcasts releases something new, you’ll have to scroll through the feeds, which are only arranged in alphabetical order.

I’m currently subscribed to 46 podcasts, most of which are audio dramas, so checking each feed individually for updates just isn’t practical.

At the moment, I check for new episodes in another app first and then download them using Anytime Player.

What's the advantage of downloading podcast episodes versus just listening to them from the main podcast screen?

Thanks Ben. I don't suppose there's any way of sharing a podcast episode with a friend if I downloaded it?

The person I have in mind is an elderly gentleman who if he has an iPhone at all he's never talked about downloading apps so I kind of doubt he knows how, and he and I follow the same baseball team and occasionally there's an episode on the team's podcast feed that I think he'd be interested in.

You can't share directly with the Anytime Player, but you *can* share using Apple Podcasts.

I'm not entirely sure about how sharing works with other podcasting apps. However, I do know that when you share via Apple Podcasts, it defaults to the web player if the recipient doesn't have the Apple Podcasts app installed or is using a different platform.

I'll check into what you told me and see if I can figure it out.

Hi Ben, I just want to tell you that you have an amazing app going hear, and it reminds me a lot of the Apple podcasts app, but more simplified. I like the fact that I can stream and don't have to download episodes. quick question for you, do you plan on adding rotor support?

HI Ben, I enabled the full screen setting but I think it disappeared on me. I played a new podcast and I think voiceover mentioned something about full screen but I wasn't really listening and then it showed up for a couple of secconds and then disappeared back to the podcast episode list.

I really do think continuous play would be a great feature, if you're listening to an audio drama for example, you don't want to find ep one, then two and so on,, at least i don't.

I really do like this app so if you had a donate button; i'd use it no questions asked.

Hi Ben,, there seams to be two edit boxes on the search podcasts screen.

I understand not knowing about the roter, downcast doesn't use it and i'm fine with that, but continuous play is so common in every app I know about, it's just nice to have whatever eposode you're on play the next one in the podcast, is there a reason you didn't add it in the beginning? is it that you don't use that feature?

If that feature got added, I'd honestly recommend this app over all others I've used.

I really like it, it's so simple to use and that's great! importing/exporting is in settings, and there's no need to wonder where those features are like there is in downcast, I still can't really remember how to import an OPML file on that app, it's doable, I did it a couple days ago but this anytime one, it's so easy!

Yeah, a donation link, using debit cards, or paypal, (not everyone has nor wants to have a paypal account,) would be very useful.

Although having said that, voice vista, a map app for the blind, has a donate/support button and they're stil up with no issues. Personally I do think if you can do it,, that a support button inside the app would be better as it would allow you to just click this, put in your amount, probably pay using apple pay, and you're good to go, it's easier than loading up a website and putting in all your details.

Hi, so I'm bumping this thread back up to the top because I've discovered a podcast that causes the app to crash.

It doesn't crash on the smaller episodes, just on episodes that go for more than 2 hours long.

I'm on an iPhone 12 using the latest iOS.

Here is the link.

https://www.omnycontent.com/d/playlist/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/d49247d1-94a1-4e8e-bdd1-af4600179d73/a3cc5127-fb55-41fa-a342-af4600179d81/podcast.rss

Hi ben, unfortunately for me, it crashes straight away.

So I can't play that episode at all.

I'm not sure if it's only that podcast, or if it will happen to any other podcast that has long episodes.

There are podcasts out there that are much longer.

I haven't listened to this podcast for some time, so I thought I'd see what's going on with them.

I certainly wasn't expecting it to crash like that.

Luckily for me it works fine on windows.

I haven't tried it with the native podcast app, that one is normally pretty stable.

I'm using an iPhone SE 2020, and I think it's been twice since I started using Anytime I'll click on the podcast and swipe down to see if there are any new episodes but I can't get past the filter button.

I solve the problem by uninstalling and reinstalling the app but that means that I also have to re-add the podcasts I listen to. Has anybody else experienced this and is there a way to expand that window again when it does happen? To be clear the main window stays the same size, it's just once I double click on a podcast that this happens.

Hi Ben,

If you can tell me how to do a screen capture I'll try it but I'm not promising anything, I'm not sure how to do a lot of the advanced stuff with this technology.

I forgot that I had reported this problem before a couple of months ago until I looked back on applevis, the problem just recently cropped up again for the first time after I reported it the first time and if I remember right I saw that I asked about it near the end of December last year, so approximately a month and a half to 2 months ago.

I don't know if I knew when I reported the problem the first time if I knew if it was just with one podcast or all of them, but since my first report I have added a few more podcasts and this problem is with all of the podcasts at one time when it does happen.

Ben,

If this happens again I certainly will try the screen shot but if I'm able to get it how would I then send it?

I will try turning the phone off and back on first to see if that fixes the problem, I didn't think of doing that.

To do this do the following:

1. take the screenshot.

2. Go to your photos app.

3. swipe right until you here something like, saved today and double tap on that.

4. Swipe right until you hear something like, photo 1 of 1 and swipe right again to the shair button and double tap on that.

5. Swipe right until you hear your email app of choice, mine is outlook, double tap on that,, for me I hear, one atachement has been aded.

6. ad the email given above into the to field, then add a subject, some text in the body of the email, press send and you're done.

I hope this helps.

I'll try that; it still may be a bit challenging for me though because I usually don't use the phone for e-mail. I have my account in the native mail app though so at least that's a start.

I just got the update, there's a button, the first you come across, in the settings that isn't labeled.

I'd still really like continuous play, every other podcast app has this and honestly for me at least, I need it to be able to put on a podcast and sleep or just relax.

I like this podcast app, I really do, but this is one of those things that makes me go back to other podcast apps.

I'm looking forward to it. Now I know it's coming; I won't move to another app because I know what to expect in the future.

I’ve been using Downcast for a few months and so far its completely accessible so I’m curious what you like more about this player than Downcast?

It's very minimalist in its design, which is good, it's free, it's very snappy, when it opens it's ready to go, you can import and export OPML files much easier than in other appps, I just really like the design.

Do you want to know the funny thing? I hardly listen to podcasts, I've got over 100 in the app but hardly listen to them, I'm not sure why, perhaps I'm waiting until I move out, or until auto play next episode is added, either way, I will listen to them and recommend you check this podcast app out to at least see what you think.

I don't know about others but I've never used any add to cue option.

If I'm playing a podcast, i'd expect the next episode in a podcast to play so from what I'm understanding, if I don't use the add to cue part of the app, that's what will happen anyway?

I'll be able to play a podcast from an episode and just have the next one play in order?

That sounds like exactly what i want.

Thanks again for making this.

Is the queue something that was added in the last update? I'll admit I haven't had the app open since doing the update. And either way how do I use the queue and where do I find it?

I actually prefer it when podcasts *don't* play continuously. Is there any plan to include a way to turn that off?