Podcast Duck

Keith Kurak

About this app

At last, a podcast player that's easy to use on both your phone and watch. Podcast Duck eschews complexity in favor of a streamlined experience for getting just the episodes you want to your WearOS device and making it dead simple and fun to play them while you're running or working out or otherwise just away from your phone.

Podcast Duck is not really intended to be your only podcast player. There's others that do more. This app is for that small number of really special shows that you want available at all times.

** Just the feeds, ma'am **

You probably already have plenty of places to search for new shows to listen to; you don't need another one. Just drop in the RSS or Apple Podcast links for your favorite shows and they'll be on Podcast Duck's list. Also, searching for new shows on your watch isn't fun, so we just cut that experience altogether (more on that in a bit).

** Want it on your watch? Tap the watch **

Podcast Duck doesn't auto-download a bunch of crap you don't want. If you want an episode on your watch, tap the watch icon next to the episode. If you want an episode on your phone, tap the phone icon. The downloads will show up on the watch or phone tab accordingly.

Also, note that they're _DOWNLOADS_. It sucks to think you've downloaded an episode to your watch only to find out it's either not there when you step away from your phone, or it's now streaming over LTE and destroying your battery life. Podcast Duck's solution to this is very simple: this duck does not stream!

You already have a million ways to stream shows, you don't need another. Instead, Podcast Duck downloads everything ahead of time for 100% offline use. If it's on the watch, it's on the watch!

** Super simple watch UX **

Watch apps should be bite-sized experiences. Nobody wants to tap through a half-dozen menus just to listen to a show. It's annoying and possibly dangerous if you're in the middle of a workout! On WearOS, Podcast duck has basically two screens: a list of shows that you told your phone to download to your watch, and the playback screen. Pick a show, play a show, that's it.

On the watch, Podcast Duck supports several nifty features to make listening on the go real smooth and chill:
- Skip ahead and back, both in app and in the WearOS media controls
- Variable speed playback. Double (or half) your playback speed!
- Adjust the volume with the crown
- Long-press on an episode to add it to a mini queue for continuous multi-episode playback