Where do most people listen to podcasts? In their car, while driving. This is exactly what PodMower was designed for. Thousands of details have been considered, and refinements made, to make listening to podcasts safe and enjoyable.
The interface is logically designed and thoughtfully laid-out. Buttons are large and separated. Controls are easy to access, and easy to hide.
But the design considerations go well beyond the interface, to things like automatic downloads and transitions between episodes (even in the background), using remote/Bluetooth controls, and automatically creating bookmarks to help you get back to your place.
Sliders and scrubbers are difficult with long audio, when driving, and when what's being said matters to you. If you mis-slide, you can't get back to where you were, and with scrubbers you have to deal with both position movements and release timing (possibly while driving!). For these reasons, PodMower has no position sliders or scrubbers. Instead, the app provides easy-to-control skip buttons: jump by specific amounts in either direction. Skip too far? Just skip back, and skip again with a smaller increment. You can customize the amount each button will skip.
An easy swipe to Driving Mode, and you never have to take your eyes off the road. Tap anywhere to play/pause, and swipe left/right to jump forwards/backwards by fixed amounts (that you can customize).
PodMower will keep track of your progress with automatically created bookmarks.
Events, such as episode transitions, interruptions (like phone calls), and app suspensions, get bookmarked. Just tapping Pause will create a bookmark, so you don't have to do anything special to create one. Then, if you customize any bookmarks (change their name, color, position and/or notes), they stick around, and you can export them as HTML/CSV/Text.
PodMower is free as in beer, and free as in free-to-use-without-being-tracked-or-advertised-to. Really? No In-App Purchases? Nope. No Banner Ads? Nope. No tracking and selling your behavior to someone? Nope.
How do you make money then? Well, if you love PodMower, I hope you'll try out my other apps: Book Mower Audiobook Player, and if you like mixing your podcasts and audiobooks, Bookmobile Audiobook and Podcast Player. They cost money, but not a lot, and they're awesome!
You can adjust the playback speed just a little, or a lot. PodMower remembers what you like for each podcast.
PodMower works great with remote controls, like Bluetooth or Apple headphones. With any audio, you can play/pause remotely, skip forward or backward by amounts you configure, and create bookmarks even while the app is backgrounded.
Tired of the same ol' opening theme song and advertisements? (I'm looking at you SquareSpace and Audible). PodMower can be set to skip a specified number of seconds at the beginning (and end) of each episode of a podcast. Every podcast can be configured uniquely.
A little bedtime listening? Use the sleep timer. Shake-to-add-time and it bookmarks when the timer started and ended, so you can pick up where you dozed off.
You can find new podcasts from within PodMower. The most popular podcasts from iTunes are listed, and you can search the entire iTunes catalog.
Mix and match episodes from different podcasts.
Forget where you were after you coming back from a long break? Auto-rewind will skip back 30 seconds (or whatever you want) after a set period.
The app's color scheme adjusts to the podcast artwork, and you can easily replace the artwork with a high definition version you find on the web. You can even change the artwork for each episode.
Change episode titles, skip button times, Driving Mode options, auto-download options, play-order, sort-order, skip rules, and much, much more.