Description of App
Castro is a beautiful, full-featured podcast player that makes it easy to track and manage lots of podcasts at the same time. Only listen to the episodes you want and easily skip the rest, queue up hours of podcasts at a time and enjoy a seamless listening experience with carplay compatibility, chapter support, trim silence and much, much more!
HOW IT WORKS
1. New episodes land in the NEW tab. Read their descriptions, add episodes you like to your QUEUE, and clear the rest.
2. Press play to listen to episodes from your QUEUE in order. Queued episodes are downloaded automatically.
3. Re-order your QUEUE to plan your next few hours of listening at any time. Browse your LIBRARY to review the back catalogue, quickly access starred shows, and see your listening history.
Subscribing to a podcast is no longer a commitment to listen to every episode. You don’t have to manage a huge list of subscriptions or choose a few shows and miss the rest.
WHY OUR USERS LOVE CASTRO
• Drag and drop podcasts to plan your listening with Castro’s unique queue
• An elegant dark mode and thoughtfully designed sleep timer offer the best in night time podcast listening.
• CarPlay support makes it easy to pick up where you left off while driving.
• Apple Watch app to control playback and select another episode from your queue.
• Episode notifications include a summary of the episode to help you decide if it interests you. Play, queue or clear the episode directly from the notification without opening the app.
CASTRO PLUS
Castro Plus is an optional paid subscription available for $18.99/year (includes a one-week trial). Plus unlocks a range of advanced features:
• Trim Silence — With this option on, the app will analyze audio as it plays to detect silent parts and accelerate those parts. Get through more episodes faster.
• Enhance Voices improves the listening experience for many podcasts and makes it easier to hear in loud environments. Under the hood, Enhance Voices applies a dynamic compressor to increase volume just where it’s needed.
• Sideloading: Import audio files directly, just by dropping them in iCloud Drive
• Mono-Mix — Mixes a stereo podcast to mono, which makes it easier to hear podcasts that pan some guests on left/right channels.
• Chapter Support: Artwork, Skipping & Pre-selection.
• Custom settings per-podcast: Episode Limit, Trim Silence, Enhance Voices, Mono Mix, Skip Intros, Playback Speed.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
“Castro 3 is an incredible app.”
— The Sweet Setup
“Castro 3 is everything Castro already was, but better.”
— MacStories
Castro 3 Is a Great Modern Podcast App”
— Beautiful Pixels
“Unlike other podcatchers, Castro's primary virtue is its simplicity and ease of use. The app combines sleek visual design with crystal clear audio.”
— Tom’s Guide
CASTRO PLUS SUBSCRIPTION TERMS
Castro Plus costs $18.99 per year. Prices are in US dollars and may vary in countries other than the US.
Castro Plus is charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. It will renew on the day before the current subscription period ends. You can cancel auto-renewal any time from the Castro settings screen.
You can switch between the two subscription periods after you pick one, but your trial period will end immediately if you do, so it's best to wait till your free week is over before changing.
Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable.
Privacy Policy & Terms of Use: https://castro.fm/privacy-policy
Comments
Is it as it says?
Is the selection as various as the description says?
Promo codes?
Just curious are the devs offering promo codes
Interesting
Not quite sure the point of this app for most of the podcasts on this app can be found on Apple iTunes podcast app. There are some that aren't though, like the linguistics podcast from Slate. Maybe in a future update, they'll add moer. If they do, I hpe they'er not found on Apple iTunes.
Castro, what am I doing wrong?
The first thing I noticed with Castro is standard flicks don't work, you have to move your finger around on the screen. Yes, I admit it I confess, I am a Flickr. Perhaps that's my problem :-) LOL I click on Discover and nothing happens. No matter what I do the only thing checked is the queue button. I know I'm not a smart guy, but there's something I must be doing wrong because I can't do a thing with the app any help for this old man would be greatly appreciated. I must say, the fun of having an iPhone is learning so I am not at all discouraged. The more I'm challenged the more I have the opportunity to learn, I love it. Thanks for any help any if you can give me, I appreciate
Works Fine Over Here
Tappig the Discover Tab, and just touching anywheer no the screen is working fine over here. There is a search field at the top wheer you can type stuff. The podcast categories aer underneat that.
castro
I downloaded castro, but it doesn't seem to work with voice over. Any hints please? Cheers Michael
Castro with VoiceOver
It took a little while to get going with Castro but I searched for podcasts I knew and subscribed and it seems to work. The problem I'm having is I can't move the playhead or waveform under VoiceOver. Any suggestions?
IOS 16
Does anyone know whether Castro actually works now with IOS 16? With overcast being very sluggish with voiceover, I'm thinking of returning back to castro.
Re: iOS 16
As far as I can tell, it seems to work perfectly with iOS 16.1 on my iPhone 11.
IOS 16
Thank you. I shall return to using this app as over cast still has a lot of lag when using it with voiceover.
Latest Version of Castro Is No Longer Fully Accessible
After the latest update the inbox and queue views are no longer reliable with VoiceOver on IOS. The inbox now has category filters which are not labeled well in that if one attempts to select a category VO does not provide feedback. I also find that one cannot read the counters that are listed along with categories since there is no way to determine which counter belongs to which category.
It is quite strange because it seems that the new features are bolted on without any consideration to VoiceOver accessibility. Finally, descriptions bleed into other entries which makes it heard to determine which podcast episode the notes belong to.
In the Queue view the only view that partially works is "all episodes." Again it is impossible to tell which view is selected via VoiceOver.
The developer and support group seem to have both gone silent. There used to be an active twitter feed, and support channel. I have reported all these issues including a screen capture of a VO session where I demonstrate the problems.
No response to my reports.
I wonder if others have tried Castro after the updates and experienced any of the same issues, or other issues?
Re: Latest Version of Castro Is No Longer Fully Accessible
How incredibly disappointing to have waited for so long for an update to this app, only to discover that it hardly introduces any new features and takes a huge step back in terms of accessibility.
The developers behind this once good app have become unresponsive to user feedback and bug reports, so it might be time to consider exploring other alternatives, especially given the app's steep annual subscription fee of $20, which doesn't seem to offer much value.
castro accessibility
the latest update to castro addresses voiceover issues.
*updated* For me Castro seems to be working again.
Rather than duplicate comments, I am adding an update to my original comment on this. At the time of updating at the end of May 2023, Castro is not what I thought and attempting to remove the filter options with VoiceOver doesn’t work. Just my view then, go with another option. I am currently using Downcast. My original comment below.
Thanks to a quick update recently, it seems like the people at Castro have fixed things. That’s how it seems from here anyway. So downcast your a very close second again but I am really happy with how downcast works. Castro is back thankfully, and with that the ease of cueing and removing what I don’t want. Good that its fixed but I’m corshious about the future updates.
Castro Now Partially Accessible
I agree that there has been major improvement to the accessibility of the inbox and queue.
**** Open issues.
* The program crashes or more specifically takes me out of the program when I begin navigating around in the inbox to find what episodes are available. The program does not close but I am refocused back to the Home Screen and have to use the app switcher to get back into Castro.
If I select the "all" category in the inbox it appears that all episodes are selected. However the selection doesn't hold and the normal navigation controls for VoiceOver don't always permit one to see the entire list of available episodes.
* In the queue, I cannot seem to move an episode up in queue. The action is still available in VoiceOver but it appears not to execute any change in the queue order.