I'm addicted to listening to podcasts in the car. So much so that when I throw a package in the car, dock my phone and discover that "The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith" is interviewing the directors of the latest Pixar movie for three hours, I seriously consider driving 100 miles to deliver whatever it is personally instead of dropping it off at a FedEx 3 miles away. However, certain podcatcher apps are better for car use than others.
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A great one for the car offers three things:
- Support for Android Auto and CarPlay.
- If your car doesn't support Android Auto or CarPlay, it should have a clean interface that you can suss with just a glance; one that's no more distracting than your car's air conditioning controls.
- Support for multiple players, with syncing between them, so you can walk into the house and continue listening on your PC or tablet right where you left off.
My recommendation for podcatchers is Pocket Casts, by Shiftyjelly. It ticks all of those boxes, with apps that run on all platforms, plus the Web, and syncs seamlessly between them. And its developers update Pocket Casts ruthlessly.
It's $3.99 and delivers the best overall package, but a couple of others have everything on my list and they do a certain thing better.
Marco Arment's Overcast ($4.99) for iOS offers unique playback features. Many podcatchers can speed up playback; Overcast does it so naturally and effectively that I doubt I've enabled it. And its Voice Boost function normalizes volume between LOUD SPORTS SHOWS and quiet public radio.
On the Android side, I love BeyondPod ($4.99) despite its sometimes clunky interface. It has the most powerful "disc jockey" of any podcatcher I've ever used. Once you've set it up to your liking, you'll rarely need to reorder a playlist manually.
Cars.com contributor Andy Ihnatko is a nationally known tech writer.
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