I am a fairly voracious podcast consumer, and whenever I am driving anywhere, showering, working on some code or visual designs, I am usually listening to something. I used to use Overcast but stopped using it as I found the creator highly annoying in their political attacks on more than half of the U.S. population, views on social media, etc. So I migrated to Apple’s Podcast offering – and I enjoy that application experience very much.
While I am in the car using CarPlay, in the shower, etc. there are times during certain podcasts where I want to skip ahead. For Apple Podcasts (or any playing media), I have made a ShortCut with the action of Seek 3 Minutes Forward, and I can invoke it using Siri. “Siri Seek”. It’s great but it is an arbitrary value.
Now, Overcast does supply supported actions of its own – and I use, “Siri next chapter” – and if I am listening to Overcast, it does just that – seeks to a few seconds before the next chapter marker. Perfect except that I would rather be using Podcasts as my audio source driver.
Perhaps Apple will add some more actions to the Podcasts application in the future.
Update:
It wasn’t worth the little effort I put in. Almost no Podcasts support chaptering – so when it’s attempted while using CarPlay, Siri simply responds with, “Something went wrong.” And then stops the Podcast from continuing after she speaks. This breaks the experience without the ability to fail gracefully. I then have to navigate or hit the Play interface button, or request Siri to play (again).
Since the Podcast I wanted to skip chapters is likely to drop off of my rotation, I am not sure I want to have two clients on my phone – each with their own library off content. I can just ditch the Overcast client ad deal with the fact that I can skip multiple times (“Siri seek”) regardless of which content is playing. And be done with it. Its a little unfortunate, but I think it’s the right way to proceed.
BTW – Diggnation has been back and I gave the latest a listen – it’s great. I wish it was Apple focused, but the technology content is wonderful and even though the hosts are wildly wealthy and can afford expensive things (and talk about it a little) – they don’t come across as trying to flex about any of it. That’s refreshing right there.