I’ve used Overcast since Marco Arment launched it in 2014. I wrote here that my listening experience would be far worse without it, and I meant that. So you can appreciate my own surprise in telling you this: For the past couple of weeks I’ve been beta testing a new podcast app called Tripod, and it’s starting to feel like home.
Tripod comes from Ben Rice McCarthy, the developer behind Obscura and one half of Indigo, and the subject of one of my first indie developer spotlights. Ben was a longtime Overcast user, too. They write that their playlist kept getting longer, and that the tools for managing it never clicked for them. So they built their own podcast app, and they did it in 31 days. (In that same Overcast piece, I said I wasn’t going to build a podcast app, because launching one today is hard as hell. Ben is braver than I am.)
The name “Tripod” is short for “podcast triage,” which is the app’s central thesis. New episodes land in an inbox, where you decide whether to keep or ignore each one. Shows you never skip can bypass the inbox entirely. Whatever you keep goes into your queue, and Tripod builds extra queues for you without being asked: one for short episodes (ahem), and one for each genre you listen to. There’s also a queue called Someday, for episodes you do want to hear, just not… yet. And the whole interface recolors itself to match the artwork of whatever you’re listening to. I’d say that the interface’s approach to using color from cover art is reminiscent of what Apple would do if it made a podcast app, but Apple does make a podcast app, and it’s not as good as Tripod.
I’m impressed by what Ben built, and by how quickly they built it. During the beta, new builds showed up nearly every day. Ben doesn’t drive, but testers demanded CarPlay, so now Tripod has CarPlay. Tripod also digs promo codes out of the show notes of recent episodes and lets you copy them with a tap. I spent 16 years selling podcast ads, and I’ve never once seen a third-party podcast app make it easier to follow up on podcast ads.
Tripod launches today for iPhone and iPhone Duo, with Apple Watch and CarPlay support. (It even runs on the HomeView.) Ben says iPad and Mac versions should be ready soon. It costs $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year, and through the end of November the annual plan is $14.99. The monthly plan comes with a one-week free trial, and the annual plan with two weeks. I encourage you to check it out. I’ve spent a dozen years as a hardcore Overcast enthusiast, and Ben’s new app has me feeling like the distracted dude in that one meme.
