Overcast overhauls its Apple Watch app

A new update to popular podcast player Overcast includes a major overhaul of its Apple Watch app. The Apple Watch support is notable at a time when third-party app development for the platform is not necessarily in a great spot, though the Watch itself continues to grow in popularity.

Overcast’s update reorganizes the app UI from top to bottom, adding some features that otherwise were only able to be accessed through the phone version. The main screen has large buttons for settings and syncing above a scrolling list of your shows and access to the “now playing” screen.

That screen now includes a button on the bottom right that takes you to more detailed info on the podcast and lets you adjust its playback speed, as well as giving you the ability to skip directly through chapters on podcasts that have them.

Release notes for the new iOS version of Overcast, which is dubbed 2021.1, note a couple of extra changes without going into details. Other than the new Watch app, Overcast now has “improved Siri support” and “tons of under-the-hood improvements and bug fixes.”

Overcast is available for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and now M1-powered Macs because of their support for running iOS apps. The app is free but ad-supported, with an optional $9.99 subscription that can remove the ads.

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