Castro Podcasts updated with sideloading support, chapter pre-selection feature – Info Mac

Castro, one of the more popular third-party podcast players for iOS, has been updated today with a pair of new features. With today’s update, Castro now supports sideloading podcast files, as well as chapter pre-selecting…

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First and foremost, Castro 3.1 adds the ability to sideload any audio files using iCloud Drive. This means that you can add any DRM-free file to the Castro folder in iCloud Drive and have it appear directly in the Castro application.

As Supertop Software – the developer of Castro – explains, this is useful for adding things such as bonus episodes, audiobooks, and more directly to your queue in the Castro application:

Import any audio to Castro! Drop audio files into your iCloud Drive/Castro/Sideloads folder on your Mac, or using the iOS Files app, and they’ll appear in your inbox (or queue, depending on how you set it up).

This lets you use Castro’s queueing and player features with any audio you have. It’s great for bonus episodes from kickstarters, DRM-free Audiobooks from the library, draft episodes of your own podcasts that you want to play through before releasing.

You can use the share sheet to “Copy to Castro” files from other locations in Castro and it’ll import them to that iCloud Drive folder then they’ll appear in Sideloads.

Also included in today’s Castro is a new feature Supertop refers to as “Chapter Pre-Selection.” This feature allows you to view the chapters of a podcast episode, and manually check which ones you want to listen to. This means you can skip over a topic you aren’t interested in, without having to manually move between chapters:

You can now toggle on or off each chapter of an episode in the player — use this to have Castro play the parts you want and skip the rest.

Open the chapter skip screen by playing an episode with chapters and then tapping the chapter title bar in the player. Each chapter has a checkmark beside it that you can tap to toggle it off. As the episode plays, it’ll jump past unselected chapters.

Castro is a free download on the App Store. Sideloading support is a Castro Plus feature, which is available as an in-app purchase. Be sure to check out our roundup of the best podcast players for iOS for help in deciding which app fits your needs best.

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