Products · Broad category
Podcast apps
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2014–2025), in 13 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Apps default to latest episodes, making it hard to start from the beginningUnreviewed
20142026- Apps assume podcasts are only browsed by latest episodes, hard to start from the beginning2025-12-26
- Podcast apps make it hard to discover episodes featuring a specific person2023-02-14
- Podcasts shared as iTunes-only links are unlistenable on mobile for most people2019-07-16
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 13 complaints
- Apps assume podcasts are only browsed by latest episodes, hard to start from the beginning2025-12-26
- Podcast players treat audiobooks as single files, making multi-file books almost unusable2025-04-16
- Podcast apps make it hard to discover episodes featuring a specific person2023-02-14
- Can't find a remembered moment from podcasts already listened to2022-09-22
- After an update the UI changed so much the user was lost and had to relearn it while driving2022-03-01
- Primary Episodes tab isn't the default view, chronological lists need 2-3 clicks2020-05-22
- Podcasts shared as iTunes-only links are unlistenable on mobile for most people2019-07-16
- Bookmarking and navigating episodes takes too many clicks and is unintuitive2019-07-16
- Unwanted crossover episodes are hard to remove from the play queue while driving2019-02-21
- Skip button jumps a fixed number of seconds with no context about what's skipped2016-04-08
- Hard to find content and hard to subscribe, even knowing the show name2015-07-28
- Non-technical users fail almost always at finding and subscribing to podcasts2014-07-28
- Hard to manage download, streaming, and playlist settings across shows and episodes2014-07-16