Instead of taking years to build your Podcasts library, Google has made the task simpler and more efficient. Google Podcasts come in very useful when one is stuck in traffic and wants to spend time productively. You can hear about your favorite sport, or get workout tips.
They are also useful for people who can multitask and listen to a podcast while doing a mechanical activity. But earlier finding the podcasts as per your interests wasn’t so easy as Zack Reneau-Wedeen, Product Manager of Google Podcasts reports.
You could get podcasts on various topics from friends depending on their interests. And then you had to sort out what suits you from there. But now Google Podcasts have been remodeled. It’s easier and faster to find your favorite podcasts.
To simplify I can say that Podcasts have become more like YouTube. Also to bring in more listeners to its fold Google has extended Google Podcasts now to iOS for the first time. And it will also provide support for subscriptions on Google Podcasts for the web on iOS.
Features
Coming back to the Podcast’s similarity with YouTube, Google has organized the app into three tabs. These are Home, Explore and Activity.
The Home tab provides you with a feed of new episodes and grants you swift access to the subscribed shows. It’s like the YouTube home page. Once the episode is selected it shows a bit of detail about it like people talking on it and the topics presented. You can always switch to Google search for more information.
The Explore tab displays recommendations related to your interested. So it lists out shows and episodes categorically which makes it very user friendly. You have categories of comedy, sports, and news, music, and others. The recommendations can be further personalized using the Explore tab settings.
The Activity tab displays the history, episodes queued up, and downloads. Just like on YouTube you can enable automatic downloading. And likewise, also request a push notification when a new episode is released. The Activity tab in a way, helps to track what all you have accessed.
Listening to Google Podcasts also comes with this great feature. Your listening progress now will be synced across devices. So irrespective of the platform you are using you can just re-start from where you stopped and continue. Be it an iOS, or an Android device or a laptop accessing Google Podcasts has become way smoother.
Availability
Google Podcasts are made available on iOS from today and it will also reach the Android devices within this week.
