Review: Podsnatcher

If there’s one genre of app choices that hasn’t been highly represented in the app catalog as of late it’s podcast catchers.  Until now, the amazing DrPodder has reigned supreme among podcatchers since its start in the early days of Homebrew.  So, needless to say, the bar is set pretty high for this longtime podcast listener.  The mighty DrPodder hasn’t lost its crown in my book yet, but PodSnatcher by developer Wahvee is on its way to changing that.

Upon opening PodSnatcher for the first time, the app greets us with a speedy, graphically pleasant interface and the first of four canned podcast feeds.  Instead of opening up in list view a la DrPodder, we’re presented with the first podcast in your selected feeds. A list view is nowhere to be found in the app and you’re forced to ‘flick’ through each podcast until you get to the one you want to listen to.  This is fine if you have a small number of feeds in your catalog but hardcore podcast listeners, on the other hand, may find this a bit annoying in that you have to flick through each feed until you find the one you’re looking for.

The app itself is quite fast in virtually all aspects of navigation considering its shiny front end.  Unfortunately, whatever the app gains in speed and pizazz it falls short when you’re ready to load it up with your feeds and get to the business of enjoying your podcasts. I was quite disappointed to find no way to search for feeds to add to my catalog.  The menu context in PodSnatcher gives you the option to Add/Remove Podcasts but the only way to add a feed in this version is via URL. That’s it.

The option to import or export your feeds is non-existent in this version. I found myself in front of my computer, searching for my podcast feeds, and having to manually add them to the app.  If you happen to find a feed to add via your phone’s browser, you can copy the URL from the browser and metatap+V (no option to paste via the menu) the URL in PodSnatcher to keep you from typing the address one-agonizing-character-at-a-time.  This method may be too complicated for some people and why the developer chose not to add a search or import feature in an app already in a 1.0.2 release version is beyond me.

That being said, once you get around to manually adding your feeds to the app, the experience in using it to listen to your podcasts is actually pretty decent.  The main podcast window consists of a split screen, with the top half reserved for the album art and feed navigation, and the bottom half used for listing and browsing the individual recordings.  You have the option of either downloading the individual podcast to local storage or streaming the app directly to the player.

I’ll admit the streaming capabilities of the app may rival those of DrPodder.  The streams started almost instantaneously on launch and ran uninterrupted throughout on a solid data connection.  All of this is helped by PodSnatcher’s ability to cache the stream. You can fast forward, rewind or move the progress bar to any point in the recording. A timer keeps your place and it’s able to remember your spot when you leave the app to come back to it later.

The auto-hide feature of the player’s control panel may be a bit frustrating to some users.  It made it a bit of a challenge to hit the play/forward/back buttons consistently without hiding/unhiding the controls.  Although this adds to the ‘pizazz’ I wrote about earlier it isn’t really necessary.  The text can be a bit hard to make out on some feeds due to the color scheme of the overall app. The included Quick Guide is a big help to get you started, it has bluetooth support for wireless audio streaming, and you can filter your lists by Unheard, Listened to, or Downloaded.

Interested? Go here to download PodSnatcher directly to your device!