Listening

Click the menu bar icon, or open podcaster.study/app in the browser: the panel opens on your library, newest episode first, with the player for whatever is playing. The two are the same library and the same player.

The player

Play and pause, a slider through the episode, and the chapters: the list beside the player names the sections of the episode, and a click jumps to one. The transcript follows the voices as they speak, so you can read along or find the place where a term was explained.

Playback keeps going when the panel closes. On the Mac the keyboard's play and pause keys and the Now Playing controls in Control Centre work as for any other audio; in the browser the tab keeps playing while you look at another one.

The library

A finished episode waits at the top of your library with a Collect button and its figure. Collecting drops it into the library and opens its files. Left a week, it is collected for you. Every episode you have collected is in your library, with its cover, length and the date, and a green tick once you have listened to the end. A series is one entry, a tile like any episode, and opens as a page of its episodes. Once the library holds more than a few episodes a row above it offers a search, which narrows by title, subject and language, and the order: newest first, by title, or by subject, where the subjects are tiles, each with its newest cover, that open to their episodes. The library is tied to your account: the same episodes appear wherever you sign in. The cover shows the picture on its own; rest the pointer on it and its band comes up, with the title, the mark and, for a series, which episode it is. A click on the cover in the player shows it large, with the same band under the pointer; a click, or Escape, puts it back.

Telling us what you thought

The player has a thumb up and a thumb down for the episode playing, and pressing the one already on takes it back. Nothing you press is shown to anybody else.

A thumb down asks what could be better. What you write goes to the settings that made that episode, which is how they get better. If the episode was not what you asked for, the same screen offers the credit for that one episode back. Somebody reads every one of those and writes to you either way; nothing is decided by the machine. You can ask within fourteen days of collecting it, once per episode. For a series it is that episode's share of what the reading cost, not the whole reading.

From an episode's menu you can open the study notes and the practice questions, show the episode's files, or delete the episode from your library. On the Mac the files come down the first time you open them and stay there, so an episode you have played once plays without a connection. Signing out of the Mac app removes those copies from the Mac; they come down again after you sign in. In the browser the arrow under an episode downloads the audio, the notes, the questions and the cover in one zip.

Series

A series made from a book plays its episodes in order. Each episode has its own chapters, notes and questions; the cover is shared, and the badge on its band says which episode you are on.