Getting started

This takes you from nothing to a finished episode. You need a Mac running macOS 15 or later, an account, and a PDF of something you are reading. A journal article of ten to twenty pages is a good first choice: it makes a short episode in a few minutes.

1. Install

Make an account at podcaster.study. You are asked for your invite, then welcomed: what Podcaster does, how paying for an episode works, and three questions about what you study, so the hosts know how to pitch it. All three can be skipped and all three are changed later under Account.

That lands you in the web app, which on a computer offers the Mac app along the top (a phone or an iPad is not offered it): press Download, open the disk image, and drag Podcaster into Applications. Open it from Applications and a welcome window opens: what Podcaster makes, how it goes, signing in, and where the app lives from then on, which is a small ring-and-dot icon in the menu bar at the top right of the screen. That icon is the whole app; the welcome is the only window it opens.

You do not have to install anything, though. The web app does the same in a browser, on any computer or tablet, and your library is the same either way. The download is also in the web app's Account sheet, in case you send the banner away.

On an iPhone, open the web app in Safari. A strip at the top offers Show me how, which plays the few taps that put Podcaster on your home screen, where it opens full screen like an app and stays signed in.

The welcome asks you to sign in: with your email and a password, or with a Google account, which opens your browser and hands back to the app. While the app waits for the browser, Cancel stops waiting, and after five minutes without an answer it gives up and asks you to try again. The website also signs you in with Apple. An account with an authenticator is asked for its six digits next, the same as on the website.

An account that has not used an invite yet is asked for one, the code that looks like PODC-4K7P-9WQM. Podcaster is in development and invite only, so an account needs one before it can make anything; if you have not got a code, write to hello@podcaster.study. Signed up from an invite link, you are not asked: the link carried the code. An account that has not been welcomed on the website is asked the same questions here: the name the hosts use, what you study and the language episodes come in. Every one can be skipped.

The last page points at the icon in the menu bar and offers to open Podcaster when you log in. Open Podcaster closes the window and opens the panel from the icon. Show it again, under Settings > This Mac, brings the welcome back. A code that only carries credit goes under Settings instead; it puts credit on your account.

3. Drop a file

Drag the PDF onto the menu bar icon, or click the icon and drop it on the panel. Podcaster reads the file and shows the preview sheet: the title, the number of pages, the chapters it found, and the choices for the episode.

For a first episode leave everything as it is. The length is already set to fit the reading.

4. Make it

Click Make the podcast (Make it in the browser). The panel shows what is happening as a small journey: reading, writing, recording, editing, publishing. A short episode takes two to four minutes. The work happens on Podcaster's server, so you can close the panel or quit the app; a notification tells you when the episode is ready, and it is in your library the next time you look.

5. Listen

Click the icon. The new episode is at the top of your library with its cover. Press play. The chapter list on the right lets you jump to a section; the transcript follows the voices as they speak.

The study notes and the practice questions are in the episode's menu: Study notes opens the PDF, Practice questions opens the Word file.

In the browser, the arrow under an episode takes the whole thing at once: the audio, the study notes, the questions and the cover, in one zip named after the episode. On the Mac the files are already on your disk, and Show in Finder puts you in front of them.

What next