As the year comes to a close, the Pocket Casts team has taken a moment to reflect on some of the projects we loved working on this year.
And because podcasts are at the heart of everything we do, we’ve also shared our favorite shows that we listened to in 2024!
Ashita – Android Developer
It was great to support Transcripts in Pocket Casts. Starting with transcripts provided by podcasters, I’m looking forward to the future opportunities this foundation may create, which could take the user experience to another level.
Ashita’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Brandon – iOS Developer
I really enjoyed creating this year’s Playback! We have a lot of fun animations and great data from 2024. I always enjoy seeing my own annual recaps and reliving some of my favorite shows.
Brandon’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Daniele – iOS Team Lead
I’m proud to have worked on the Podcast Ratings project, not only because it was one of my first projects after joining the team, but also because it’s a feature our users requested. Knowing that we’re delivering something exciting and valuable to people around the world makes me really happy.
Daniele’s favorite podcast of 2024:
David – Product Designer
Playback is always one of my favorites. It’s one of those projects where there’s a lot of freedom to play with different concepts and ideas; I really enjoyed collecting inspiration, working on different visual directions, and having fun with the UI animations.
David’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Dom – Product Designer
As a new member of the team, I loved working on the Pocket Casts Plus Referrals project. It was rewarding to work on something that helps spread the value of Pocket Casts. I also had a great time collaborating with David and the engineering team to enhance the experience with fun animations.
Dom’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Duda – Android Developer
I don’t have a specific project in mind, but I love the fact that we’re always striving to deliver the features that users really want, and we’re constantly thinking about improvements. Some great examples are recent additions like Shuffle and Transcripts, fine-tuning our auto-download settings, and many others.
Duda’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Ellie – Head of Pocket Casts
It’s tough to choose just one favorite project from this year! I really enjoyed our collaboration with Slumber Studios. Their podcasts have greatly improved my sleep, and I’m thrilled we could include their premium content in our Plus subscription. Another highlight was working closely with the server team to enhance our parsing speed. Adopting Podping and Websub technologies not only improved user experience but also helped advance the industry by supporting Podcasting 2.0 initiatives.
Ellie’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Emmeline – Podcast Curator & Podcaster Liaison
There’s so much to love about my job, this year and every year! I get to collaborate with incredible podcasters, networks, and marketers on highlighting awesome shows to Pocket Casts users. One of my favourite things is working with people and organisations that I’ve admired for years – this year, I had the opportunity to work with NASA’s audio team on a Network Highlight. It was such a thrill to tell my dad, a lifelong space enthusiast, that I was speaking with NASA!
Em’s favourite podcast of 2024:
Leandro – iOS Developer
What I enjoyed most this year was fixing database issues that not only resolved the problems but also significantly improved the app’s performance for everyone. This work was especially rewarding because it involved close collaboration with our users, allowing us to gather valuable feedback and deliver meaningful improvements.
Leandro’s favourite podcast of 2024:
Matías – Web Developer
A project I loved to work on earlier this year was adding Preselect Chapters support for the Web Player. It had some interesting UI/UX implementation challenges and I had to dig deep into how the core of the playback system works in order to implement skipping/jumping through different parts of the audio stream. I also had to dig and learn into how the chapters information is stored in our platform and the different sources we have for them, and I even had the opportunity to experiment with a backend service to perform chapters extraction from audio media files. That was a lot of fun!
Matías’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Matthew – Server Developer
Working on the server component to the Ratings feature was a very rewarding experience. There were some technically challenging aspects to getting it right, and the enthusiasm from our users was really motivating. It was really satisfying to deliver something so often requested.
Matthew’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Michał – Android Developer
I’m happy to have added the “Advanced episode artwork settings” feature on Android this year. Although it was outside the original project scope, it provides a well-balanced solution for deciding where artwork should be displayed. I appreciate that, at Pocket Casts, we have the freedom to make these minor tweaks when we see an opportunity.
Michał’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Nauris – Web Developer
As the newest member of the team, I’ve focused on enhancing our codebase and building a solid foundation for the future. It’s been an exciting journey so far, and I can’t wait to contribute to what we have planned for the Pocket Casts web experience.
Nauris’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Sérgio – iOS Developer
Transcripts was my favourite feature to implement this year. It involved a lot of exploration and testing with the multiple transcript formats available. We’re exploring ways we could grow this feature, so keep an eye out for further developments!
Sérgio’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Philip – Android Team Lead
This year, I enjoyed perfecting every little detail in the app. If something looked a pixel off or a colour didn’t feel quite right, I couldn’t resist giving it a nudge! Each tweak, no matter how small, brings us closer to making Pocket Casts a beautiful experience for everyone, including myself!
Philip’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Simon – Server Developer
There are two projects that come to mind that I’ve really enjoyed working on this year as part of the server team. One, a major infrastructure change of containerising a legacy service and making it eminently more scalable and resilient. And two, a major version update for a backend database with zero downtime. I know, I know, seriously dull to most but surely there are people out there that will appreciate it.
Simon’s favorite podcast of 2024:
Pocket Casts Blog 