I realized one day as I was driving in my car that I started to get a little tired of always listening to music. Then I remembered that I could download podcasts on iTunes to listen to on my iPhone. So when I got home, I went into iTunes and downloaded a bunch of podcasts. Needless to say, after a week of getting my podcasts this way, I was left with wanting something better than what I was currently doing.
Ironically, as I was listening to a podcast on my iPhone, I heard about Instacast, and these guys that were talking about it were raving about how much they loved using it. So, it was at that point that I decided to give it a try myself. The more I used it, the more I started to fall in love and with many features being added over time, this has definitely been my go-to app for podcasts.
Subscribing to Podcasts
There a variety of ways to subscribe to podcasts using Instacast. The first way is to use the app itself to find the podcasts you want to download. When using Instacast, there are a few ways to look for them. They have a Popular section, Just Added and Genres and you can also search for a certain podcast by title, author or description.
Snapshot of adding podcasts and search
Let’s say you have already subscribed to a bunch of podcasts on iTunes and you want to have them play and transfer over into Instacast. It recognizes podcasts that are already in your iTunes on your iPhone and will transfer them to the app.
Adding a podcast from iTunes
Lastly, if you know the URL of the podcast that you want to put on Instacast, you can also input it in the app and download your podcast that way. Also, Instacast’s website has the Top 30 podcasts that you can download straight from there.
Managing Podcasts
When it comes to managing your podcasts, the app definitely doesn’t disappoint with the options that are given to you. First, you can choose to either have your podcasts cached to your iPhone, meaning that they are downloaded onto your device. The nice part about this is that you don’t need an Internet connection to play your podcasts. This also helps you save battery life.
Instacast also integrates with Dropbox. Let’s say you want to backup your podcasts, one of the ways to do this is to export to Dropbox. You can also import podcasts from Dropbox to Instacast as well. It works seamlessly as support for this is built right into the app itself.
Dropbox Import/Export
Most podcasts come with what are called “Show Notes.” Usually these are links to a variety of things that are talked about on the podcast itself. I know for me, a lot of times, there are some great things that are talked about and I want to read about that topic later. I can then save the show notes to Read It Later or Instapaper so that I can make sure to have it for later reading.
Save for later reading alternatives
A cool feature that was just added with the addition of iOS 5 is iCloud Sync. When you activate it within Instacast you can now sync it with another device that you use Instacast on. It syncs all your podcasts and where you left off on a particular track.
iCloud Sync
Playing Podcasts
There are a lot of choices when it comes to playing your podcasts. Like I had mentioned earlier, they can be cached to your device if you so choose. You can also decide to just stream them. In order to do this you need to make sure that you have an Internet connection. For me, I prefer to cache my podcasts just in case I don’t have a good connection.
Playback Options
You can play both video and audio podcasts with Instacast. They can be played in the background while you are multitasking on your iPhone. They can also be sped up and you can skip ahead a certain amount of time as well.
Conclusion
Overall, I really can’t find a complaint about this app. Usually I can dig with a fine tooth comb and find something that I don’t find appealing, but with Instacast, there is nothing really that I don’t like. It is built well and they keep adding great features to it to make it even better. On top of that, there’s an iPad app on the way as well.
If you are a fan of podcasts, or wanted to start listening or watching them more like I was, then this is a great app to use. Yes, you can use the Music app on your iPhone if you want, but that is so boring. Instacast comes packed with tons of features hat you won’t want use anything else for your podcasts viewing.