Welcome to YourPods 2.0.2! We've packed this update with a beautifully refined interface, deeper Apple ecosystem integration, and robust under-the-hood improvements to make your listening experience smoother—and more private—than ever.

Design & Discovery

+Refined Home Screen: We’ve streamlined the app header to give you more screen real estate. Plus, "Recently Updated" now features a swipeable, horizontal layout so you can effortlessly browse up to 12 of your newest episodes at a glance.

+Richer Metadata: Dive deeper into your favorite shows. The podcast detail view now supports full expandable descriptions, clickable links, and new Podcast 2.0 metadata badges (Explicit, Serial, Publisher, Funding, Value 4 Value, and Live indicators).

+Transcript Support: Follow along with your favorite hosts. We've added full support for plain text and HTML transcripts, complete with tap-to-seek functionality to jump right to the moment you want to hear.

+Improved Chapter Support: Podlove chapter compatibility improvements, along with additional chapter and transcript formats support..

Playback & Control

+"End of Episode" Sleep Timer: Drift off without losing your place. You can now set your sleep timer to stop playback precisely when the current episode finishes, rather than auto-advancing to the next track.

+Expanded Siri Commands: Control your audio entirely hands-free. Just ask Siri to "Set sleep timer," "Cancel sleep timer," or "What's playing" directly from your iPhone, AirPods, or CarPlay.

+Share the Exact Moment: Easily share episodes, podcasts, or your specific playback position straight from the player via Messages, Mail, or social media.

+Clearer Queue Management: We've renamed our auto-queue settings to be crystal clear ("Add to Queue" and "Play Next") and added a "Remove All" option in Up Next to clear your queue in a single tap.

Apple Ecosystem & Sync

+Optimized Apple Watch Battery: Take control of your battery life. You can now configure the sync interval for on-wrist playback (up to 2 minutes), drastically improving battery efficiency during long, phone-free workouts.

+Seamless Password AutoFill: Logging into your self-hosted server or private premium feeds is now frictionless with full iOS AutoFill support for iCloud Keychain, 1Password, and other password managers.

+Robust Self-Hosting Sync: For our gPodder and Nextcloud users, we’ve added session-based authentication, complete device registration, and a smart conflict-resolution sheet to seamlessly handle server URL rewrites.

Polish & Performance

+Smarter Auto-Queue: Up Next is now smarter than ever. It perfectly respects your global defaults and strictly ignores episodes you've already played or dismissed.

+Flawless Background Playback: Resolved an issue that could cause auto-advance to stall in the background, ensuring uninterrupted listening.

+Watch Resumption: Tapping play on your Apple Watch now perfectly resumes exactly where you left off on your iPhone.

+Self-Healing Database: Added auto-recovery tools to gracefully rebuild your library and re-sync from your server in the rare event of data corruption.

+Plus, we've squashed bugs related to sync conflicts, non-square artwork rendering, and UI tab bar displays to keep YourPods feeling premium and native.

Welcome to YourPods 2.0.1! Following our massive 2.0 release, we’ve packed this update with highly requested features to make listening even smoother, particularly in the car, on the go, and with your headphones. Here is what's new in this release:

+Full Siri Support
Keep your hands on the wheel and your phone in your pocket. You can now use Siri to play, pause, skip, and manage YourPods effortlessly using just your voice.

+Customizable Headphone Controls
Make your AirPods work for you. Head to Settings → Headphone Controls to map your double-tap (Next Track) and triple-tap (Previous Track) actions. Choose between skipping forward/back by your exact custom durations, jumping to the next episode, or restarting the current track.

+Smarter Bluetooth & Car Displays
Your car dashboard, Bluetooth speakers, and headphones with displays just got an upgrade. We now parse the RSS feed so the "Artist" field properly shows the Podcast Creator, and the "Album" field displays the Podcast Name. You always know exactly what you're listening to at a glance.

+Upgraded Private Feeds
• Premium/Patreon feeds are now much easier to manage. Password-protected feeds display a distinct padlock badge on their artwork in your Library and episode lists.
• You can now edit feed credentials (username/password) directly from Podcast Settings. (Note: We've added UI to clarify that your credentials are mathematically encrypted and stored securely on-device. They are never synced to any external server).

+Advanced Queue Removal
You now have total control over what happens when you swipe to remove an episode from Up Next. Choose whether swiping to remove simply removes the episode, removes and marks it as played, or have the app always ask you. First-time removers will be prompted to choose their preference, which can be changed anytime in Settings → Queue Management.

Thank you for supporting an independent, ad & subscription-free app (forever)! If you are enjoying YourPods, leaving a quick App Store review is the single best way to help us grow.

YourPods 2.0 is a complete rewrite, with over 50 reliability fixes — every line of code rebuilt natively in Swift for iOS, watchOS, and CarPlay. Faster, more reliable, and deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem. Enhanced streaming robustness and improved sync and conflict management.

-Apple Watch App Standalone watchOS companion with full queue browsing, on-watch playback (local and streaming), remote iPhone control, library browsing, on-watch downloads, and background queue refresh. Your queue syncs instantly between phone and watch.

-CarPlay Dashboard Full CarPlay integration with three tabs — Library, Up Next, and Recently Updated. Custom Now Playing controls: Trim Silence toggle, Speed Up/Down, and Chapter navigation. Artwork thumbnails on every list. Playback state syncs in real-time with your phone.

-Dynamic Island & Lock Screen Live Activity support with real-time playback progress, episode title, artwork, and interactive controls on the Dynamic Island and lock screen.

-Podcasting 2.0 Support
Chapters — navigate by chapter with images, timestamps, and tap-to-seek. Auto-extracted from show notes when no Podcasting 2.0 chapter URL is provided.
Transcripts — live transcript viewer that auto-scrolls to the current segment with tap-to-seek on any line.
Smart "Recently Updated" Feed Home screen grid showing your newest unplayed episodes across all subscriptions. Episodes disappear the moment you play, queue, or dismiss them — always fresh, never stale.

-Per-Podcast Settings Customize each podcast independently: playback speed, skip intro/outro duration, auto-queue mode (off / append / priority), and auto-download. Falls back to global defaults.

-Sleep Timer Set a countdown to stop playback — perfect for nighttime listening. Accessible from the mini player overflow menu.

-Listening Stats Track your listening habits with a dedicated stats view — total time listened, episodes completed, and per-podcast breakdowns.

-OPML Import & Export Bring your subscriptions from any podcast app. Export your list to share or back up.

-Siri — Hands-Free Everything 10 voice commands that work from the lock screen, AirPods, and CarPlay — no need to open the app:
"Play YourPods" / "Resume YourPods" / "Pause" / "Stop"
"Skip forward" / "Rewind" / "Next episode"
"Play latest episode" / "Play [podcast name]"
"Set playback speed to 1.5x"

HUGE thank you to our TestFlight testers!!
Password-Protected Feeds
- You can now subscribe to RSS feeds that require authentication (e.g. Patreon private feeds, premium podcasts).
- When adding a podcast, toggle "Authentication Required" to enter a username and password.
- Credentials are stored securely on-device using the platform keychain — they are never sent to your gPodder server.
- Feeds with `user:pass@host` URL-embedded credentials are also supported automatically.

Local Only Accounts & Sync Account Fixes
- Local-to-Sync conversion — You can now switch a Local Account to a Sync Account (and vice versa) directly from the account settings toggle without having to delete and recreate.
- Auto queue improvements.
- Resolve cross device sync conflicts.
- Increased Playback stability in low network conditions, enhanced AppleWatch Syncing
- Battery drain "hot phone" bugs fixed

Bluetooth & Tesla Metadata (AVRCP)
- Podcast author now shows on Bluetooth displays — Previously, the "Artist" line was blank on car dashboards, Bluetooth speakers, and headphones with displays. It now shows the podcast creator name (parsed from `itunes:author` in the RSS feed).

Last Synced Indicator
- Settings now shows when your last sync occurred — A "Last synced: X minutes ago" label appears above the Push/Pull buttons (sync accounts only).

-   Unified Search: Search and add any podcast using Apple's podcast search, with optional support for PodcastIndex (requires personal API key).
-   Episode Chapters & Transcripts: skip around to chaptered parts of episodes (Podcast/feed metadata required).
-   Queue Redesign:  Distinguished "Now Playing" and "Up Next" sections with visible episode lengths.
-   Sync Conflict Management: Smart conflict resolution with options to keep your device's state or overwrite the server.
-   Audio Engine 2.0: Rewritten audio handling to resolve Bluetooth dropouts and improve stability.
-   CarPlay & WatchOS Polish: Smoother UI updates, reliable progress bars, and performance optimizations.
-   Privacy First Listening Stats: Calculate listening state form server history on device.

What's New in Version 1.2.2 --> Smart Transcripts, Expanded Siri & Shortcuts; Performance & Caching Improvements

Smart Transcripts
-Follow along with your favorite shows like never before.
-Live Tracking: The transcript auto-scrolls in sync with the audio.
-Search: Find exactly what you're looking for within an episode.
-Tap to Seek: Tap any paragraph to jump the audio directly to that spot.
-Offline Ready: Transcripts are now cached locally, so they load instantly even without a connection.

+Expanded Siri & Shortcuts
Control YourPods with your voice, now more useful and available everywhere.
"Hey Siri, Play [Podcast Name]": Launch playback instantly.
"Hey Siri, Play My Queue": Resume your personal queue.
"Hey Siri, Play Latest": Start the newest episodes from your subscriptions.
Shortcuts App Integration: Build custom automations using our new "Play Queue" and "Play Latest" actions.
Watch Support: "Play Queue" and "Play Latest" commands now available directly from your wrist.

+Performance & Caching
Instant Chapters: Chapter data is now cached to your device, making chapter lists load instantly for downloaded or previously played episodes.
Reliability: Fixed an issue where the transcript button could appear unavailable on slow connections.
Smart Persistence: The app now remembers transcript availability even after a restart, so you don't have to wait for feeds to refresh.

+Bug Fixes
Fixed a crash that could occur when a transcript failed to download.
Resolved an issue with the "Unavailable" transcript dialog showing incorrectly.

Chapters: Easily skip to the parts you want with full chapter support.
Priority Queue: Use the new "Queue New" options to prioritize episodes and play them next.
Smarter Sync: Improved background downloads and sync reliability for a seamless experience across devices.
CarPlay Support: New UI. Browse your library, see what's playing, and control playback safely while you drive.
Dynamic Island & Live Activities: See episode progress and controls at a glance on your Lock Screen or Dynamic Island.

Added Apple Watch support, improved CarPlay, sync, and player support. We also squashed some bugs.
-Apple Watch App: Full standalone playback, offline downloads, and remote control for the iPhone app.
-CarPlay Overhaul: Fixed sync issues, removed duplicate titles, and ensured completed episodes clear automatically.
-Queue Management: Added drag-and-drop reordering (via long-press) and "Move to Top/Bottom" actions.
-Sync Stability: Fixed persistent "New" badges and improved gPodder error handling.
-Playback Performance: Optimized queue switching speed and resolved audio seek issues.

Details:
Apple Watch Support (WatchOS Companion App)
-Full WatchOS app with episode queue, playback controls, and downloaded episode support
-Remote player view — control iPhone playback directly from your Watch
-Episode queue sync — your device queue automatically syncs to the Watch
-Download to Watch — download episodes for offline playback directly on the Watch
-Swipe actions for quick queue management
-Mark as Played / Remove from Queue actions per episode
-Local or streaming playback with clear status indicators

CarPlay Improvements
-Fixed duplicate podcast title in the Now Playing screen
-Completed episodes auto-remove from CarPlay queue
-Better server sync — played episodes sync to gPodder server from CarPlay

Misc Bug Fixes
-Fixed "Mark as Played" functionality — badges now properly update across all screens
-Fixed "New" badge persistence — badges correctly clear when episodes are played or marked as played
-Improved error handling — better notifications for login and sync failures with gPodder server
-Audio seek fixes on WatchOS player
-Long-press actions now work correctly on Watch queue items

Technical Improvements
-Improved Watch Connectivity session handling
-Better queue synchronization between iPhone ↔ Watch

CarPlay improvements. Episode listening position and audio scrubbing greatly improved. Syncing is more immediate and consistent. Auto queue new episodes per podcast. You can now have icons, text, or text + icons (via improved settings menu).

Enhanced CarPlay Support
-Seamless Resume: Episodes now correctly resume from your last position instead of restarting, whether played from the phone or CarPlay.
-Reliable Playback: Fixed issues where episodes would get stuck loading (spinning wheel).
-Queue Integration: Your "Up Next" queue is now fully accessible and playable directly from CarPlay.

Robust Cloud Syncing (via GPodder)
-Smart Sync: Playback position now syncs immediately when you pause, leave the app, or switch to the background, ensuring your other devices are always up to date.
-Configurable Interval: Added a new setting to control how often playback progress syncs while listening (default is every 30 seconds).

Offline Listening
-Downloads: You can now download episodes to your device.
-Smart Playback: The player automatically prefers downloaded files over streaming to save data and ensure playback without buffering.

Queue Management
-Auto-Queue: Option to automatically add new episodes from your subscribed podcasts to your queue.
-Bulk Add: "Add all new episodes" feature in the library to quickly build your playlist.

User Interface
-Text Labels: Replaced icon-only buttons with labelled buttons for better clarity and accessibility.
-Refined Settings: Cleaned up the settings menu with new options for sync control.
-Duplicate Removal: Improved logic to prevent duplicate podcasts from appearing in your library.

System Integration
-Siri Support: Initial groundwork for Siri shortcuts and voice commands.
-Background Audio: Improved reliability of background playback controls and lock screen integration.

Apple CarPlay Support! Fully integrated CarPlay experience allowing you to browse your library, access your queue, and resume playback safely while driving.

New Features
-Auto-Queue: Never miss an episode from your favorites. You can now enable "Auto-Queue" for specific podcasts. When you refresh your library, new episodes from these podcasts will be automatically added to your listening queue.
-Multi-Select Episodes: Managing your backlog is easier than ever. Enter "Selection Mode" in any podcast view to select multiple episodes at once and bulk-add them to your queue.
-Selective "Add All New": The "Queue All New" button in your Library now gives you control. Choose to add everything or pick specific podcasts to queue up.

Improvements
-Enhanced Lock Screen Controls: Added native 30-second skip forward and 15-second rewind buttons to the iOS Lock Screen, Control Center, and CarPlay.
-Mini Player Upgrade: The in-app mini player now features dedicated skip forward and backward buttons for quick navigation.
-Better Duration Support: Fixed issues where the system playback bar (lock screen) wouldn't correctly show the episode duration.
-Feed performance: crunch large feeds faster and cache everything for offline use.