I was an early adopter of podcasts, and some of my earliest subscriptions go way back to 2005, when I got my first iPod. While my love affair with iTunes and iPods continued much longer, I switched to Pocket Casts on Android somewhere around 2012. The ability to grab podcasts on the go, easily find new shows, store them offline, or stream them over Wi-Fi — it was all a no-brainer. It helped that the app avoided feature creep while adding all the essentials like jumping forward or back or skipping silent sections, which earned it a lot of love in the Android community and a spot on our 15 best Android apps list.
Pocket Casts was my constant companion throughout university and my long daily commute. Fast forward a couple of years, though, and I started gravitating towards Google Podcasts as my podcast client of choice. My usage patterns had shifted; I was spending a lot more time on my desk, and I needed a podcast client that had an easy-to-use, non-paywalled web client. Unfortunately, like all good things at Google, the company recently announced that the app is on death row and will be deprecated early next year.
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