App Analysis: Google Podcast
A breakdown to what makes apps good or how they can improve
The Suspect
The app in question today is Google Podcast. I’ve used this app for about a month or two and I’ve found some pretty annoying flaws that I want to discuss, but to be fair I’ll also discuss the way to fix these “flaws” in the event you want to rival this app.
The Good
Google Podcast as you can imagine streams podcast. The UI (User Interface) is fairly clean and you can find any podcast under the sun. I decided to find all my podcast from Pocketcast and it was really easy from the main screen. I also like the suggestions which I assume aren’t just based on the podcast I added (I know google tracks everything on this here Pixel).
The Bad
So now the important part of all of this: the annoying negatives. Google Podcast is truly streaming. So it might seem like your podcast were downloaded to your device but go from signal to no signal and things just go silent. Because of this “misunderstanding” if signal is gone for ~5mins the app doesn’t remember where your placement was thus making you fast-forward through episodes to find your place or just starting over.
The final big paining is the activity life cycle. As your podcast is playing you get a nice widget in your notifications bar which is great! The issue comes with if you click said widget to get back into the app that running in the background. This new click opens a while new activity. So if your like me and want to just see the previous screen you were on (maybe you were reading show notes before a call came in) then you have to do some searching again. Now this flow makes since IF you stop the activity but the audio widget is still going but there is no reference point to return to.
Suggested Fixes
Streaming issue:
This isn’t a real issue for everyone but it does two things I’m not a fan of, it causes your battery to die faster and uses up data. What Google should do is temporarily download the episodes (like everyone else) and upon completion delete the episode. The way it works now is that Google creates more of a bookmark to the location of the streaming link.
Playback issue:
Since this is my biggest petpeeve I have thought through this the most. One could use Pref References to store the last location and upon app reload see if there is anything stored there. I also think that the DAO form is another way one should address this issue but I honestly don’t know that pattern well. Another idea would be to not allow users to kill the app without killing the widget like Spotify does. That way your app is always on pause and it’s easy to track the last screen. The last question here that I have for Google Devs is why podcast is a separate app? I know apple does it as well but I always thought Google Play Music was well built and designed so it would make since to store all my sounds in one place.
Conclusion
Google Podcast is a decent application but I’d honestly recommend something such as Pocketcast. These things I’ve brought up aren’t the end of the world but having my battery die faster and having to restart episodes upon being out of signal area when I thought they were downloaded are just annoyances that I don’t want to deal with.
Have you used the app? What do you think? Feel Free to let me know your thoughts.
If you like these let me know. I plan on doing more and even including my own apps.

