Downcast App Reviews

Don’t bother buying this. It’s not worked for the last two iterations. It will open but immediatly crash. There have always been problems syncing with the cloud, but now I can’t even access podcasts on my computer. You know it’s bad when this makes me think about reverting to the native Apple podcast app.

It take upwards of 1 minute to react to key strokes and over 2 minutes to select anything. I can’t use this app at all any more.

Isn’t this why developers have access to the latest OS months before release? The fact that we’re 1 month in to El Capitan’s release and this app is still unusable is inexcusable.

El Capitain broke this app. Hangs when pausing, fast forwarding, right clicking on anything, etc. 1-2 minute delays on every UI interaction. My one-star review is just for this version. Love the app. Please update it.

This app used to be a good podcatcher but is utterly unusable in El Capitan. It crashes constantly, lists multiple versions of the same podcast and doesn’t download properly. All this for $8! I’ve emailed and tweeted them and only gotten lame responses in return. Clearly a product on its last legs. Don’t purchase and get burned. Look at Overcast or another podcatching option. Lame, lame, lame.

Ever since updating to El Capitan, Downcast crashes every time I open it. If it were free, I wouldn’t complain, just hope for an update sometime, but given its $7.99 price tag, I expect the developers to deal with OS major upgrade issues before they occur.

I have been using this app for so long on all of my apple devices but it has never worked on El Capitan… fix and I’ll give it the stars it use to be worthy of. At this moment, November 18, 2015 it is completely worthless.

Tip for the developer: If you can’t reliably sync over iCloud, at least provide the option for us to restore older iCloud data for when sync goes completely awry and totally wipes out months of subscription data with no recourse. This happening once was too often. Now it’s happened twice and I’m out. Nice program but if I can’t count on sync not totally burning me, what’s the point?

This was my most used app in the Yosemite days. Syncing between iPhone, iPad and Desktop app was incredible. Unfortunately the desktop app simply doesn’t work in El Capitan. Please release a fix soon!

I love Downcast for iOS, but this app is not the same. On El Capitan it freezes constantly and crashes. It is almost unusable. iCloud syncing routinely fails to sync data between iOS and OS X. I’d expect more from a free app, let alone an app that cost me $8.

A bit complicated, but offers almost all of the features other apps do on both Mac & iOS. Syncing of played podcasts is wonderful.

Downcast for iOS is the only way to go, it’s my all-time favorite. Downcast for Mac however is not as good and keeps corrupting my iCloud sync data. Ditch it and stick to using it on your iOS device if you can.

This app used to work great now all it does is crash on start. The iPad and iPhone version work awesome.

I have the iOS version and have used it for years and I’m now using the OS X version and it’s working perfectly! All my podcasts, many of which I pay for all work perfectly. I’m thrilled. Not sure what problems others have had, but I’m running a year old iMac and the latest OS with no problems at all. I would highly recommend this app, love all the options available, makes it really easy for me to manage all my podcasts.

The Downcast iOS apps are amazing. They sync very well, I rarely (if ever) experience a crash on the iOS versions. In contrast, the Mac app is completely unstable in El Capitan. The menus are horrendously slow, i subscribe to a very reasonable 19 podcasts, and trying to switch between each on my top of the line MacBook Pro is like I’m using a PowerBook from 2003. Constant rainbow wheels and eventual crashing. I will continue supporting this company because the iOS apps are so well done (I can’t say that enough times). But unfortunately I have to recommend saving your money on this one. I’m going to be requesting a refund for the first time ever.

ARRRRRGH! The iOS version is (mostly) very usable, but the Mac OS version just crashes, crashes, crashes, and crashes. It can barely stay running for even 5 seconds most of the time now. Downloads multiple copies of the same podcast, crashes every time it tries to play, tries to check for new podcasts, tries to download things, or just feels like it. The previous version had actually been moderately stable, but this one is back to disaster land. The following two comments from my reviews of previous versions, unfortunately, still hold- so, I guess this speaks poorly of the progress thats been made in the past couple years. "Every time I see that Downcast has been automatically updated, I dread launching it. Will this be one of those updates that manages to break everything so that its crashy and unusable? Or will this one manage to fix some of the problems introduced in the last update? This latest update seems, once AGAIN, to be of the former type" "In a review of a previous broken update, I wrote: "I guess the only encouraging thing is that the developers keeps trying (i.e., its not abandonware), but I would definitely still not have paid for the Mac OS version if I knew how buggy it was, even after this many updates." Im not so sure about this any more-- if I hadnt bought in to the original version, I certainly would be looking elsewhere, since the updates just arent getting very far very fast." "All in all, progress is frustratingly slow and up and down. The last version felt like a usable beta, but now this scrolling issue makes it mostly unusable again. Im still waiting to see if it eventually improves the point where its usable enough to justify the ten bucks I shelled out for it..."

IOS verison is fine but the Mac verison is terrible. I get continuous errors when trying to download podcasts resulting inthe app crashing and restarting making it completely unusable. I have written tot he support twice and have yet to receive the courtesy of a resposne. Apple should delist this app from the store until it is a viable product.

Overall I really do like this app but one bug spoils the entire experience It seems like about once a month something in sync goes a little screwy and it deletes all my stored podcasts on both my iOS and Mac apps. I have to go in an redownload them. Really annoying if you have lik 30 podcasts queued up for listening. I want to love this app and have been using it for quite a while but Im really starting to doubt that it will ever stop doing this. Might be time to switch to Overcast.

Oh yes! Downcast (version 2.9.8 Build 5606) is back to functioning on an up-to-date Mac. (Mine is a Mid-2015 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.11.2.) Dowcast for Mac has yet to crash on me since installing it 24 hours ago, which is a zilllion-fold decrease over how often the last verison used to crash. Downcast now updates podcasts with ease, plays back without skipping or hanging issues, and even syncs via iCloud Drive with Downcast for iOS on my iPhone. I’m back to playing podcasts just as frequently on my mac as I used to be back when OS X Yosemite was new. Thanks, Downcast.

I drive a lot for work and am at a desk the rest of the time. Downcast is easy to use and works across my desktop mac and iOS devices. Recent versions have seen significant improvement in icloud syncing and general application speed. Syncing settings across devices is a real time saver. The internal podcast search works well and it is easy to manually add podcasts, with user/pass support. Well worth the price, especially if you are a multidevice person.