2023.10
2023-07-04
Happy 4th of July to all our American friends! *cue the dazzling fireworks and majestic screeches of the bald eagle*
In this update, we're unleashing Folders, a nifty way to wrangle your episodes into iOS-style (you guessed it) folders without disrupting your main queue.
After adding new episodes from your Inbox to the Queue, you can now wield your organizational prowess and stash them in different folders with names tailored to your fancy. This means you can finally tackle that epic binge of all 26 podcast episodes about World War II that have been piling up in your queue.
Our folders feature acts as a steadfast filter, akin to the power of our existing Categories and Shows filters. It shall stand unwavering, preserving the sacred order of your queue. Don't believe us? Give it a whirl!
To cap it all off, behold a timeless quote from the 1996 cinematic masterpiece Independence Day (we shall not acknowledge any lesser sequels): "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!"
2023.9
2023-06-21
“Bug fix:
Cheers! All Adam Carolla fans and Swedish listeners who reached out to us, we hear ya.
The issue affecting the shows under "Podcast One" and "Sveriges Radio" is now fixed!
A new feature is also coming up in our next update. Stay tuned!”
2023.8
2023-05-27
Bug fixes and performance enhancements (it ain’t much but it’s honest work):
- Sluggish navigation bar issue now resolved,
- Resolution to duplicating Podcasts under certain categories, and
- Resolution to the weird state where the app kind of freezes when subscribing to Podcasts from search(It was kinda rare though).
Added “Follow us on Twitter” link in Settings
New features and updates will be announced on Twitter (we’re actively working on cool stuff now so please stay tuned). Say hi to us there!
2023.7
2023-05-01
Performance enhancements and Bug Fixes are as follows:
- Resolution to the blocking issue, where we got stuck at Search UI and there was no way to go back to Queue,
- Category name in the navigation bar, just like every other screen,
- Resolution to episode action buttons being overlapped by the Category/Podcast floating action buttons,
- A little bit of UI modification to declutter the Episode Canonical state icon, also reduced the Description length to just 2 lines,
- Resolution to the Drag and drop of the first episode in the queue resulting in bizarre position interchanges, and
- Resolution to the inconsistent Episode count on the Category grid and Category detail Screen.
2023.6
2023-04-11
Resolution to a crash that happened while toggling the Queue filter from show to hide to reveal the whole Queue.
Resolution to the Queue Filter button not tappable anymore.
- More information around Clearing Inbox and Queue:
* Inbox and Queue can be cleared by long pressing the Queue and Inbox Tabs.
2023.5
2023-04-09
Fixes for the crashes when we tap on selected tab(Inbox/Queue) when the Queue/Inbox is empty,
Fixes the distortion of UI in Show/Category screens on Inbox and Queue, and
Increased the tap area for Delete mode in Inbox/Category grid screens.
2023.4
2023-04-07
New Features:
- Long press on Show/Category views of Queue and Inbox to activate Delete mode, to delete individual Show/Category episodes.
- Long press Tab(Queue/Inbox) to remove all episodes from Queue/Inbox respectively.
Bug Fixes:
- Got rid of the annoying Clear Inbox green button,
- Resolved the glitches in Animation while interacting with episodes, in Queue, Inbox, Library, and Podcast Details screen,
- Resolved the Export Logs not working issue,
- Resolved the issue where User stays on the Episode details screen after we remove it from Queue/Inbox, now app takes you back to previous screen.
- Resolved top episode in Queue starts at weird scroll position issue,
- Resolved the Inbox navigation not scrolling when app starts on Inbox itself,
- Resolved the sharing podcast via iMessage app issue, and
- Resolved Show/Category reordering issues.
Other minor UI and performance enhancements.
2023.3
2023-03-17
Added accessibility for Inbox and Queue,
Fixed pull to refresh for podcast episode listing,
Fixed grid item cell arrangement for plus devices,
Fixed duplicate shows and categories issues,
Minor UI Fixes.
2023.2
2023-03-13
Resolution to a crash being faced by some of our users, when they visit the Show or Category pages either in the Queue or in the Inbox sections of the app.
2023.1
2023-03-06
Castro has been revamped
Queue:
The Redesigned Queue now features 3 tabs of episode classification.
Episodes: This section of the Queue hosts all of the episodes added to the Queue
Shows: This section displays the grid of all of the episodes, whose episodes are present in the app, tapping any of the episodes here takes us to a new podcast details screen, as described down below.
Categories: This section shows all of the Categories, whose episodes belong to the Queue. Tapping any of the Categories takes us to a new Category details screen, as described down below.
Queue Filtering:
We can now filter the queued episodes based on a Podcast or a Category, from their respective tabs as explained above. Such as if we go to a Podcast and select the Play all Queued episode button we add a filter for that Podcast, same for the Category.
Once we activate any filter, the Queue is configured as if the filtered episodes are the only ones added to the queue. It will start playing those episodes only.
A new filtered version of the Queue will be introduced to us, a button, an indication for the active filter, and all the episodes satisfying the active filter.
We can toggle between the filtered and the non-filtered state, by simply tapping the filter button; we can even get rid of the filter altogether, by tapping and holding over the filter button.
The player will continue playing the current playing episode, until the end. And after that, the filtered episodes start playing next in line. Vice-versa for the full Queue.
Once all the filtered episodes complete playing, the filter gets removed and normal queued episodes start playing.
Inbox:
Similar to the Queue, the new Inbox screen now hosts 4 tabs
Top Picks: The latest Episodes of the Podcast the user needs to have listened to. Episodes start showing up here when you have listened to enough episodes in the app. Pretty much similar behavior from the previous version.
All: All the episodes of newly subscribed podcasts, and newly released episodes of the subscribed podcasts. Pretty much similar behavior from the previous version.
Shows and Categories: Similar to the Queue section.
Library:
The redesigned Library has 4 different segments.
Search: We can search subscribed Podcasts here.
Starred:
Further, it shows a screen with 3 different categories
All: List of all the episodes which we have marked as starred
Shows: All the Podcasts, whose episodes are in the list of Starred. It will also show the badge count of episodes.
Category: All the podcast categories, whose episodes are marked as starred. It will also show the badge count of all podcasts of related categories.
History:
Similar to the Starred feature, we move to the next screen by tapping this tab
All: List of all the episodes that user have listened to
Shows: All the Podcasts, whose episodes are in History. It will also show the badge count of episodes.
Category: All the podcast categories, whose episodes are added to the History. It will also show the badge count of all podcasts of related categories.
Sideloads: List of all sideload episodes.
List of all Subscribed Podcasts
Theme: The appearance section of the App’s settings now has a new look
Display Mode: Can be used to switch between Light and Dark mode.
Automatic: Automatically uses the device settings.
Accent Color: Castro now supports changing the Accent color, which we can use to kinda personalize the App as per our choices
Podcast(Show) Details Screen:
Now we can see the information related to the Podcast here
It now has several dynamic tabs that list all of its episodes, these can be seen as filters and help get to know the actual role of the Podcast in our Castro App.
This screen pops up extra options at the bottom, based on the source of origin for this screen which helps us perform actions over the episodes in context.
Category Details Screen: Similar to the Show Details screen, this screen hosts similar information related to the selected Category.
2022.1
2022-02-01
- Fixes issue where wrong podcast artwork could show in episode lists
- Fixes issue where artwork would flash between different podcasts in episode lists
- Fixes issue where playing/pausing could cause episode artwork to flash
- Fixes issue where reordering episodes in the queue could cause artworks to flash
- Fixes issue where play suggestion in the iOS Now Playing widget on the Lock Screen and Control Centre were missing artwork
- Speeds up YouTube downloads when using the Sideload to Castro extension
2021.8
2021-12-07
Introduces a more efficient image caching system to address an issue where Castro could sometimes take up far too much disk space even when no episodes were downloaded.
2021.7
2021-08-12
2021.7
- Fix for crash when dragging and dropping episodes from Library to Inbox, apologies that this slipped through in the last update
2021.6 FIXES
- Gets YouTube working with the Sideload extension again
- Fixes an issue where episodes could stay download even after manually clearing from the queue if they’d been previously played and then requeued
- Fixes “pocasts” typo in Promoted Content Settings
- Episodes that are cleared from your Queue by the Episode Limit feature now respect the “Delete Episodes” setting in Downloads instead of always having their download immediately deleted
- Same goes for episodes that you manually move from Queue to Inbox
- Fixes issue where an episode could get pushed to the top of History after being on the top of the Queue even if you didn’t play it any further
- Improved error messages when something goes wrong with feed URLs pasted into the search bar in Discover
- Fix for showing the incorrect error message when trying to preview a podcast in Discover that doesn’t load correctly
2021.6
2021-08-08
QUICK FIX RELEASE
- Gets YouTube working with the Sideload extension again
- Fixes an issue where episodes could stay download even after manually clearing from the queue if they’d been previously played and then requeued
- Fixes “pocasts” typo in Promoted Content Settings
- Episodes that are cleared from your Queue by the Episode Limit feature now respect the “Delete Episodes” setting in Downloads instead of always having their download immediately deleted
- Same goes for episodes that you manually move from Queue to Inbox
- Fixes issue where an episode could get pushed to the top of History after being on the top of the Queue even if you didn’t play it any further
- Improved error messages when something goes wrong with feed URLs pasted into the search bar in Discover
- Fix for showing the incorrect error message when trying to preview a podcast in Discover that doesn’t load correctly
2021.5
2021-06-24
DOWNLOAD STARRED EPISODES
There’s a new option in Download settings to keep Starred episodes downloaded on your device. Whether there’s episodes you keep coming back to or others you want to keep around for later without clogging up your Queue, this feature means you can have access to them instantly.
OTHER CHANGES
- Episodes you manually clear from the Queue get deleted immediately rather than sticking around for 1-7 days like episodes that have left the Queue because you played through to the end.
- Custom artwork loaded from YouTube channels now shows in the widgets and on the Lock Screen and Control Centre, as well as where it previously did on episode lists and the Now Playing screen in the app.
FIXES
- Sideloading from YouTube had broken again, this fixes it.
- Deselecting chapters could previously lead to a crash, not any more.
- Toggling download settings on an Apple Silicon Mac could previously lead to a crash, that’s fixed too.
- Episodes published with *.mpga file extensions won’t fail to download any more.
- Clearing old listened episodes shouldn’t slow down launch time any more.
2021.4
2021-06-06
SIDELOADS
- Fixes an issue that was preventing Sideloads from YouTube through the share extension from working
- Sideloads from YouTube now show the channel artwork in episode lists and on the player screen in Castro instead of the default Sideloads icon
PROMOTED CONTENT
- The player screen now has a banner at the bottom promoting podcasts from our advertisers
- Castro Plus subscribers can hide it and it will be hidden by default
BUG FIXES
- Fixes an issue with refresh that could prevent new episodes from showing until after multiple attempts
- Fixes an issue that could prevent new episodes from appearing until after a restore from backup
- Fixes an issue that could prevent pull to refresh in a podcast from getting the latest episode
- Fixes an issue where unwarranted error messages could show after pulling to refresh on Queue or Library tabs
- Fixes an issue that could cause episodes that you're finished with to be left with a few seconds or minutes left in your Library instead of reset to the beginning in case you want to relisten
OTHER
- Adds an option to Reset Castro in User Data settings if you want to just start fresh
- Refinements to the player screen transition with a smoother parallax effect and progressive fading of content
2021.3
2021-04-14
NOTIFICATION IMPROVEMENTS
- Apologies for an issue where some users stopped receiving notifications. This update resolves an issue we had server-side where push notification tokens were getting inadvertently cleared. On startup the app will send your push token to our serversagain if we don’t have it so that push notifications can be sent reliably again.
- The Push Notifications screen has an option to send a test notification to verify that we are able to send notifications from our server to your device
- The Push Notifications screen will display in the footer the timestamp of when you last received a new episode push notification (if you’ve received one since installing the update)
LOCK SCREEN/CONTROL CENTER
- This build fixes an issue where playback didn’t start as expected after tapping podcast artwork in the Now Playing suggestions on the Lock Screen and in Control Center
- We fixed a potential issue where the play/pause state on the Lock Screen/Notification Center could be out of sync with the app and require multiple taps to play/pause
- This should also improve the reliability of controlling playback from CarPlay
- Please contact us through the support screen and send logs if you continue to encounter playback issues
WHAT ELSE
- The Support section in Settings includes an option to “Copy Anonymous Account Identifier” which can be helpful when contacting support with issues
- Added logging to diagnose a potential issue where episodes aren’t getting auto-queued as expected. Please contact us if new episodes aren’t showing up in your Queue as expected
2021.2
2021-03-25
- Suggestions from Castro will now show in the Now Playing widget on the Lock Screen and in Control Center when no other media is playing
- Improvements to Siri support for upcoming OS update
- After pushing on Show Notes from the Now Playing screen (by swiping right on the big artwork) you can now perform episode actions on that screen and push on the podcast screen by tapping the mini-artwork in the navigation bar
2021.1
2021-02-08
BUG FIX RELEASE
- Fixes issues where playback would be jumpy on certain podcast episodes, specifically those with sample rate lower of 32kHz or lower
- Fixes issue where app could get stuck in a state of showing error messages on every refresh
- Improves reliability of podcast redirects getting picked up properly
- Improves reliability of restoring from backup
- Fixes a crash that could happen when restoring from backup
- Fixes the selection highlight colour when selecting text in show notes
- Fixes an issue where attempting to install a shortcut from the Shortcuts Gallery or import from Apple Podcasts would present an error
2020.16
2020-12-20
PLAYERS GONNA PLAY?
This version of Castro should be much faster and more reliable at resuming playback after interruptions like phone calls, alarms, timers, Siri, etc. I also fixed a bug that could get the play/pause buttons stuck in the wrong state and requiring multiple taps.
I’m hesitant to declare Mission Accomplished but fingers crossed it should be much better. Please let us know if you still run into any issues related to this.
NEW WIDGET CONFIGURATION
You can choose between displaying episode summaries or durations and dates in medium and large widgets. Tap and hold on a widget and choose “Edit Widget” (or “Edit Castro” if it’s in a stack) to adjust this setting.
CASTRO PLUS FAMILY PLAN
We now have a dedicated Family Plan where 2-6 members of a family can share a Castro Plus subscription among them using Family Sharing on iOS 14 for a small premium over the cost of a regular annual plan.
NEW APP ICON OPTIONS
New “Blueprint” icon options for Castro Plus subscribers… and another bonus set for subscribers to the Launched podcast.
VOICEOVER IMPROVEMENTS
- Buttons for categories are now read correctly in Discover.
- Unsubscribe is now included as an action on podcast cells in Library.
- On the categories list the percentage match is read out as part of each category instead of as a separate element.
- Podcast summaries are now read out for the highlighted podcast in Discover search results, charts, and curated lists.
- Promoted shows in Inbox and Discover can now be opened and subscribed to.
- Episode summary explicitly mentions if it is downloaded to your device.
- Episode titles are read before podcast names in Inbox and Queue.
- Includes actions to move to next or last in the Queue.
- Adds new actions to quickly move an episode one spot up or down the Queue.
- Inbox tab is now labelled correctly instead of as “New Tab”.
- Podcast name is omitted from episode cell summaries if you’ve explicitly filtered to that podcast in Inbox or navigated to it in Library.
CUSTOM ARTWORK
Castro Plus is no longer required for showing custom episode and chapter artwork on the Now Playing screen.
OOPS
Fixed an issue where private feeds like Dithering would fail to open when using Castro’s URL scheme for opening RSS Feeds.
2020.15
2020-11-25
WIDGETS IMPROVEMENTS
- In medium and large widgets you can now choose whether tapping an episode plays it immediately or just jumps to the episode details screen. Tap and hold on a widget and choose “Edit Widget” (or “Edit Castro” if it’s in a stack) to adjust this setting.
- Layout fix for text wrapping issue in small and medium widgets if you have a large system font size.
DELAYED EPISODE DELETION
Episodes now aren’t deleted until 24 hours after they leave the queue instead of immediately. You can revert to the old behaviour or extend this to 7 days in settings.
2020.14
2020-11-15
2020.14
- Fixes a bug that could cause Castro widgets to disappear from your homescreen.
- Private feeds are now marked properly as so and sharing is disabled on them.
2020.13
Widgets!
You can now add small, medium and large Queue widgets to your home screen. You'll get a short-list of episodes at the top of the Queue, as well as stats displaying total episode count as well as duration. There are both light and dark mode options which change automatically with your system setting.
Ghost Icons
We've added a set of white icons for Castro Plus users! Enjoy!
Secret stuff!
There is some good stuff coming, and we've hidden it in this build for when ... some things happen.
Per-episode speed settings persistence
If you have per-podcast speed settings for a particular show but you want to over-ride that setting, we used to let you do that, but if the app quit the over-ride would go away. No more! We'll remember what settings you adjusted for an episode even if you've quit Castro and relaunched.
2020.13
2020-11-12
Widgets!
You can now add small, medium and large Queue widgets to your home screen. You'll get a short-list of episodes at the top of the Queue, as well as stats displaying total episode count as well as duration. There are both light and dark mode options which change automatically with your system setting.
Ghost Icons
We've added a set of white icons for Castro Plus users! Enjoy!
Secret stuff!
There is some good stuff coming, and we've hidden it in this build for when ... some things happen.
Per-episode speed settings persistence
If you have per-podcast speed settings for a particular show but you want to over-ride that setting, we used to let you do that, but if the app quit the over-ride would go away. No more! We'll remember what settings you adjusted for an episode even if you've quit Castro and relaunched.
2020.12
2020-10-05
QUICK BUG FIXES
Fixes a crash that could happen when performing actions on new episode notifications. Also fixes another issue that could prevent actions taken on new episode notifications from sticking (e.g. you might clear an episode from a notification only to see it pop back into Inbox later).
NEW SHARE MENU
On iOS 14 sharing from the Now Playing screen now uses a pop-out menus instead of an action sheet. Pro-tip: tap and hold on the share button then move your touch to the appropriate share option before releasing to bring up the share sheet in one smooth gesture.
TAP AND HOLD TO SEARCH
Noticed that the Twitter app does this and it seemed smart so: tap and hold on the Discover tab icon to jump to the tab and immediately into search. The same works on the Library tab for filtering your subscriptions.
IN OTHER NEWS
We've had a hell of a last few weeks with a medical emergency and a car accident that destroyed a laptop (separate incidents). Everyone is fine now, but... it's been a bit wild over here. Widgets are coming, just a bit delayed.
2020.11
2020-09-28
My fellow Castroids,
We're hard at work getting widgets ready, in the mean time...
This version brings a brand new push notification system. Get your notified about your episodes the moment they're released! iOS 14 restored reliability to local notifications, but these new server side notifications will be even snappier.
We’ve also added “Next in Queue” to the “Adjust Queue Position” shortcut. Next in Queue maintains what’s currently being listened to, but puts the episode up next. This is the way “Top of Queue” used to work, but now Top of Queue will over ride what is currently playing. This will hopefully unlock more options for you all.
The Shortcuts Gallery has been expanded into categories, with some fancy new Shortcuts for you to try out!
Issues where certain YouTube videos could not be Sideloaded have been addressed.
Enjoy!
Oisín & Jesse