Google Podcasts update brings sleep timer and improved resuming playback on different devices

Who doesn’t love passing the time with a good Podcast? On the train, at work, or while relaxing on the weekend, podcasts have become a great way to learn something new, enjoy your favourite content, or catch up on the happenings around the world.

In case it weren’t obvious, many of us are fans of podcasts at Ausdroid, and we’ve tried most of the major podcast apps available on the Play Store.

Google Podcasts has come onto the scene relatively recently. At first, it seemed a little feature poor, but that is being addressed. The latest update brings a sleep timer for evening listening and improved functionality when resuming playback on another device.

Let’s start with the feature improvement for playback resumption. When I started using Google Podcasts, the playback resumption was there and for the most part pretty good but at times flaky in terms of where it resumed. Since the update, I have chopped and changed between multiple devices. Each time the playback has resumed where I left off every time. The only other podcast app that I have had this level of success with is Pocket Casts – one of the most popular and capable podcast apps on Android (and iOS too).

The update also brings a really useful sleep timer to the app. The time allows users to set a timer between 5 minutes and 105 minutes when your podcast will stop automatically. I regularly use this as a countdown timer when I know I need to do something, or at bed time to help me go off.

With continued development and of course, their ability to integrate with other Google products, Google Podcasts could soon be challenging for the top dog in the Play Store Podcasts war.