Podcast Guru 2.3.3
This release focuses on keeping your subscriptions reliably up to date and making transcripts interactive, plus genre filtering for your Latest tab, a more useful home screen widget, readiness for the newest Android versions and several crash fixes throughout the app.
⭐ Podcasts That Keep Updating
Your podcasts now keep showing new episodes, even when a feed contains unusual items. Some podcasts include episodes without an audio file, such as bonus posts or transcript-only entries. These items could stop a podcast from updating, and you were never told that new episodes were being missed. Podcast Guru now skips those entries and finishes updating normally. If you subscribe to shows like “Our Big Dumb Mouth” or “That Larry Show,” you’ll now see all of their episodes.
🆕 New Features
Manage Your VIP Subscription From Settings
If you subscribed to VIP through Google Play, a new “Your VIP subscription” section now appears at the top of Settings. You can manage or cancel your subscription in two taps without digging through the Play Store. The section appears only for Google Play subscriptions and shows or hides automatically based on your current subscription status.
Genre Filters in Your Latest Tab
You can now filter your Latest tab by genre tags such as Comedy, News or True Crime, so it’s easier to find what you’re in the mood for. It works the same way as filtering in your Library, and your choice is remembered the next time you open the app. If nothing matches the filter you picked, you’ll see a message telling you so.
Publication Time on Episode Details
Episodes now show the time they were published alongside the date, for example “Mar 19, 2020 · 4:37 PM.” This is especially handy for daily shows, news podcasts and any podcast that releases more than one episode in a day. The time follows your regional settings, including 24-hour clocks.
Choose Your Artwork Size
A new option in Visual Settings lets you choose how many columns of podcast artwork appear on screen. Pick large artwork (usually two columns) or normal size (three to four columns) for your Library, Featured and shortcut picker screens. Normal stays the default, so nothing changes unless you want it to, and your choice applies right away.
Tap a Transcript Line to Jump There
You can now tap any line in a transcript to jump straight to that moment in the episode. It’s an easy way to replay a passage you want to hear again or skip ahead to a topic you spot further down. This works with every transcript format Podcast Guru supports.
Jump to the Top or Bottom of a Transcript
New buttons take you to the beginning or end of a transcript in one tap. When you’re deep in a long transcript, you no longer need to scroll all the way back to review the start or all the way down to reach the end.
Widget Shows Your Most Recent Episode
Your home screen widget now shows the episode you played most recently instead of sitting empty. Tap it to pick up right where you left off, without opening the app and hunting for your place.
🎧 Playback Reliability
Live Streams Play Smoothly With Trim Silence On
Live streams could stop playing or start glitching after seven to ten seconds if you had Trim Silence turned on. Podcast Guru now switches off Trim Silence automatically for live streams, just as it already did with playback speed. Your Trim Silence setting still applies exactly as before to regular and downloaded episodes.
📥 Downloads
Downloads Work Again for Episodes With Broken Tracker Links
Some episodes refused to download because their links still pointed through Chartable, a tracking service that has shut down. Podcast Guru now removes the broken tracking part of the link and tries the download again. This fixes episodes from podcasts like “Did You Get My Text? with Meredith and Patton” and any other show affected by the Chartable shutdown.
📡 Feeds & Subscriptions
Subscriptions Follow Podcasts to Their New Home
When a podcast moves to a new host, for example from Stitcher to Buzzsprout, its old address can stop working. Before, you’d stop getting new episodes, and the old address would show a broken webpage. Podcast Guru now detects these moves and updates your subscription automatically, so new episodes keep arriving without you having to unsubscribe and subscribe again.
Podcasts on Custom Server Ports Load Correctly
If you follow a podcast hosted on a server that uses a non-standard port, such as 8443 or 8080, the app could lose the port number from the address and fail to load the show. These podcasts now load as expected.
More Dependable Refreshing During Network Trouble
If your connection dropped or a podcast’s server was temporarily unavailable while checking for new episodes, the app could behave unpredictably. Podcast Guru now handles these situations gracefully, so refreshing your feeds is more reliable.
New Episodes Stay Within Four Weeks
If you left the app running in the background for several weeks, the window for what counts as a “new” episode slowly grew, so episodes from five, six or even seven weeks ago could show up as new. The app also gradually slowed down. The window now stays fixed at four weeks, so the right episodes are marked as new and the app stays responsive.
🎬 Video Playback
Smoother Fullscreen Video Controls
When you watch a video fullscreen and swipe to bring up the status and navigation bars, they now appear and hide smoothly.
Simpler Picture-in-Picture Menu
On Android 12 and newer, the Picture-in-Picture menu option is now hidden, because your phone switches to Picture-in-Picture automatically when you leave the app during playback. On Android 9 through 11, the option stays in the menu, since those versions still need you to tap it.
🧭 Navigation & Interface
Widget Opens Straight to Now Playing
Tapping the widget to open Now Playing now takes you directly to your episode instead of briefly flashing the main screen first. The back button now behaves as expected when you arrive this way, and your episode starts playing more reliably.
Centered Widget Titles
Episode titles on the home screen widget are now properly centered, so they look tidier and are easier to read.
A Tidier Now Playing Menu
The three-dot menu on the Now Playing screen no longer lists “Skip to End” and “Sleep Timer,” since both already have their own buttons on that screen. The menu is now shorter and easier to scan.
News Has Moved to Email
The News section has been retired. You won’t see “News” in the navigation drawer anymore, and the News notification toggle is gone from Settings. If News was the last screen you had open, you’ll now land on your podcasts instead. We’ll share Podcast Guru news by email from now on, which frees up room for upcoming features like Bookmarks.
Links Open Just Once
Tapping a link to a podcast or episode, for example from another app, could open the same screen twice. The right screen now opens once, so jumping between shows from links feels smoother.
Less Flickering While You Browse
Your podcast lists were sometimes redrawn even when nothing had changed, which caused flickering and slower transitions. You’ll now notice steadier screens and quicker browsing, especially on the Latest screen and with large libraries.
Genre Filters Match What You Can Play
Genre filters on the Latest screen now show tags only for episodes you can actually play. You’ll no longer see tags that belong only to episodes that aren’t downloaded or that are finished and hidden.
Offline Genre Filters Match Your Downloads
When you’re offline, the genre filters in your Library now show only the categories of podcasts you’ve downloaded. That makes it easier to browse what you can listen to when you have no connection.
Mini Player No Longer Covers Search Results
If you searched while an episode was playing, the mini player could hide the last few results. You can now scroll to see every result.
“No Podcasts Found” Message Stays Put
If a search returned no podcasts and you switched to the episode results and back, the “no podcasts found” message would vanish. It now stays visible, and it has a refreshed look that matches other empty screens in the app.
Subscription Checkmark Shows Correctly
When you subscribed to your first podcast and granted notification permission, the subscription checkmark could disappear even though you were still subscribed. The checkmark now reflects your subscription correctly.
Correct Play and Pause Icon
On an episode’s details screen, the play button could show the play icon while the episode was already playing. It now always shows the right icon, whether that’s play, pause or stop.
Consistent Menu Text
Menu entries in your Library and elsewhere mixed all capitals with regular text. They now share one consistent, easy-to-read style.
Minute Values Display Properly
Minute values could appear incorrectly in some parts of the app, particularly in languages where word order follows different grammar rules. They now display correctly in every language.
📱 Platform Updates
Ready for Android 15 and Newer
Podcast Guru now uses the latest Android screen layout, so content no longer overlaps the status bar, navigation bar or gesture indicator on newer devices. The status bar on the Up Next screen now matches your light or dark theme.
Support for Android 17
Podcast Guru has been updated for Android 17, so the app works properly on the newest devices as they arrive.
🐛 Crash Fixes & Stability
We tracked down and fixed these crashes reported by listeners, and checked related parts of the app for similar problems.
- Viewing Podchaser ratings — the app could close unexpectedly while loading episode ratings from Podchaser, and this is now fixed.
- Pressing play or pause while switching screens — tapping play or pause while quickly moving between screens could crash the app, and playback now carries on smoothly.
🔧 Under the Hood
- Faster loading — your episodes, playlists and playback progress now load at the same time instead of waiting on each other, so lists open faster and playback stays smooth even while downloads, Android Auto or widgets are busy.
- Widget updates — the widget now loads artwork more dependably, finishes its updates reliably and uses less memory.
- Shared iTunes links — links to podcasts that Apple’s directory can’t find are now handled cleanly, which makes podcast loading more dependable.
Ready to try it? Update to Podcast Guru 2.3.3 from the Google Play Store.