Podcatcher
Consumer and social
podcast player
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
12 positive, 17 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 10 critical, out of 39 comments about the project. Thread score +0.12.
Execution: 2 for, 6 againstIdea: 3 for, 1 againstDesign: 3 for, 0 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 2 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Good design of website and app
From 2 comments
Just want to say, I love the design of your website!
hoofedear on HNThe app looks really good! Based on the title I thought it’d be something you made most as a testbed for Racket so I was surprised to see the app itself actually looks great :D I…
jonathanyc on HN
Interesting use of Racket
From 2 comments
Well done; will test and possibly switch. But, for me more importantly, using Racket for this is more really nice. Thanks for that.
anonzzzies on HNRacket has been on my bucket list of languages to learn. Seems really intriguing
sghiassy on HN
Objections
Discover/search backend returns 502 errors and crashes
From 4 comments
I’m getting an error going to the Discover tab and also when hitting “search” after typing a search term (newlines added): ``` string::1: bytes->jsexpr: bad input starting…
philsnow on HNDoesn't work! Clicking discover just shows a messagebox with a stack trace[1] - so I have no way of adding a podcast to try out the app. [1] Error string::1: bytes->jsexpr: bad…
Humphrey on HNA botched deploy that I didn't notice ended up crashing the server, which then failed to recover when the systemd unit tried to restart it (it couldn't bind the port and ran out…
Bogdanp on HNSorry about that! Looks like the server got OOMKilled at one point and failed to recover. It should be back up now and I'll work on a fix.
Bogdanp on HN
Subscribing is slow
From 2 comments
feedback: it's slow (clicking on subscribe, etc)
Hadriel on HNThanks for the feedback. Subscribing in particular is slow, especially for podcasts with lots of episodes, because it tries to save all the episode metadata locally, to avoid…
Bogdanp on HN
Privacy concern over diagnostics tracking
From 2 comments
> It's also free, has no ads or tracking, and it's local-first except for the podcast directory and sync. The app privacy label says it tracks diagnostics.
sneak on HNThe app store labels are somewhat broad, but that refers to the error tracking that the app does. When an unhandled exception occurs in the app, that error is sent to Sentry.
Bogdanp on HN
Private feeds not supported because server must fetch feed
From 2 comments
Can it handle feeds that aren't available on the public internet? I have a personal feed that I can connect to over TailScale. But I've found that most podcast clients have a…
jonathonlacher on HNYup, unfortunately Podcatcher works the same way and that explains why you'd be getting that error, since the server can't access your feed. That's certainly something that it…
Bogdanp on HN
Requests
Per-podcast download settings
From 2 comments
I don't know if this is a good place for feature requests, but the only thing keeping me from switching to this at at the moment is download settings per podcast. For example,…
freeplay on HNThanks! That makes a lot of sense. It actually only downloads at most 2 episodes per podcast at a time, but that's still not great for your use case. I do plan to add per-podcast…
Bogdanp on HN
Compress voices / volume normalization feature
From 2 comments
"Boost voices" is a cool feature a lot of apps have, but what is really needed is a "compress voices" feature. So many podcasters speak loudly 75% of the time, but then trail off…
strunz on HNThat's a great point! Shouldn't be hard to add.
Bogdanp on HN
CarPlay support
From 2 comments
Does it work with CarPlay?
criddell on HNNot yet, but it's on the list!
Bogdanp on HN
Regex title filtering for downloads
From 1 comment
I support a number of podcast creators on Patreon, and apparently they’ll (at some stage) allow creators to have multiple RSS feeds. Until then, I’d love to be able to regex…
KristijanM13 on HN
Podcast 2.0 features like boosts and streaming sats
From 1 comment
Any plans to implement podcast 2.0 features like boosts or sat streaming?
astound473 on HN
Questions
How Racket runs on iOS
From 1 comment
For those of unfamiliar with Racket, could you go over what it takes to run a Racket app on iOS?
oidar on HN
Whether the app uses native APIs for networking and performance
From 1 comment
> Database management > syncing with the backend server Do features like these, when implemented in Racket, consume more resources (battery, CPU, etc.) than if they were…
jbhoot on HN
Whether feeds not on the public internet are supported
From 1 comment
Can it handle feeds that aren't available on the public internet? I have a personal feed that I can connect to over TailScale. But I've found that most podcast clients have a…
jonathonlacher on HN
Alternatives named
Overcast
From 2 comments
You don't need two apps – Overcast does all of this.
mplewis on HNThis is great! I just switched over from Overcast. Very nice and simple interface, no clutter, and not a ton of unnecessary features. Love it.
baggachipz on HN
Pocket Casts
From 1 comment
I support a number of podcast creators on Patreon, and apparently they’ll (at some stage) allow creators to have multiple RSS feeds. Until then, I’d love to be able to regex…
KristijanM13 on HN
Apple Podcasts
From 1 comment
I did not use this app yet, but I want to share my issue with the current native podcast player in iOS. Some podcasts are news related and require hearing the latest episode.…
nashashmi on HN
Castamatic
From 1 comment
Yeah, based on Bitcoin lightning (which is quite different from normal bitcoin) meaning no transaction costs and very low energy use. Basically it happens off-chain until someone…
teekert on HN
Fountain
From 1 comment
Yeah, based on Bitcoin lightning (which is quite different from normal bitcoin) meaning no transaction costs and very low energy use. Basically it happens off-chain until someone…
teekert on HN