Make the controls bigger
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The effect of the migration of the iOS appto the Liquid Glass design language has been to make the controls smaller, leaving the app harder to use.
I personally don’t welcome the floating menus, finding them harder to see, but if we have to have them because they are the platform standard, can there be an option to make them bigger? They do not respect the option to enlarge the font in the by app accessibility settings in the control panel.
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Thank you for your feedback on this. I’ve forwarded this along to our team so it can be taken into consideration as we refine the design going forward.
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Yeah I want to agree with this. The developers of the app so painfully obviously DO NOT USE the app because there is no way someone who does use it would make the controls vanish when it’s in use! It now needs a double tap to bring up the control menu that used to be there by default. And the podcast logo takes up 70% of the screen!
This is an AUDIO medium and the controls should be MASSIVE. I don’t want to see the artwork! Or the AI transcript! It’s so insane to make the art huge and the controls literally vanish. Just please go back to what made it the best podcast app of all time. Please use the thing before you mess about with it.
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I was not clear when I mentioned iOS that I was thinking of the iPad version.
The topic “Feature request: Native iPad design for tab bar in liquid glass” of 19 June appears to be making the same request.
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The newest update is terrible, and this is the biggest issue. The little floating oval has incredibly small controls, to the point that I can’t control it from that screen.
Also, the scrolling of the podcast episode title is really annoying. It’s fine if it’s static and cuts off the end – I’m already listening to that episode. -
Thanks for the continued feedback here, everyone. This is clearly a pain point for a number of people and it’s helpful to hear the specifics.
A couple of things that may help in the meantime:
- Tinted Liquid Glass: If the floating controls feel hard to see or too translucent, switching Liquid Glass from Clear to Tinted in iOS Settings can improve contrast and legibility. Go to iOS Settings > Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass > Tinted. This applies system-wide, including inside Pocket Casts.
- Display Zoom: To make all interface elements larger (not just text), go to iOS Settings > Display & Brightness > Display Zoom. This affects the whole UI, so the controls and mini player will scale up too.
- Tab bar behavior: If the tab bar is collapsing while you scroll, you can keep it expanded via Profile > Settings > Appearance > Tab Bar: Minimize on Scroll (turn it off).
- Full Now Playing screen: Tapping the mini player opens the full Now Playing screen, where playback controls are larger and easier to tap.
On the broader request for a dedicated option to resize controls or opt out of the Liquid Glass layout, that feedback has been noted and is being considered as the design continues to evolve. No timeline to share, but it is on the radar.
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None of those suggestions make my fingers small enough to hit the play/pause or skip forward/backward buttons (and I’m a woman with small hands), or solve the problem that now the menus disappear and move around and it takes multiple taps to do what used to take one.
The developers need to understand that I never use the screen that shows just the current podcast- I’m playing things from the “up next” screen 99% of the time and now that has become impossible to use.
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100% agree with the feedback so far. I’ve been extremely disappointed with the new floating player: The buttons are too small, and they’ve been moved around as well. I got a promotional email from Pocket Casts today saying “The UI gets out of the way. The podcast stays primary. That’s the whole idea.” and honestly it made me frustrated enough that I immediately came here to see if there was some thread I could post on or reply to. (And I’ve written a lot of positive posts/threads in the past)
Muscle memory is incredibly important when navigating long-time apps, and now the “Back” button is where the “Forward” button used to be, the “Forward” button is where the “Up Next” button used to be, and the “Up Next” button is gone. And all of the buttons are half the size they used to be. I can’t count how many times I’ve “mistapped” since getting this update.
(Yes, I know we can use the “Up Next” that slid into the tabs during an update last year, but I never liked that change and I’m even less impressed now that I’m expected to have to use it.)
When you do UI changes like this, please let us choose to keep the older UI. I love the new features that Pocket Casts has rolled out over the years, but I can’t get behind UI changes that seem to have no purpose other than to “refresh” things because it keeps hurting usability.
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The new tiny player is very big step backwards. One area where Pocket Casts has always won is how easy it is to just quickly look at the screen and do what you need to do. The large tiles being #1 to that , but the easy to spot player was the #2 to to that. This new play control bar is preposterously tiny. It’s gone from a single finger tap to feeling like when when you have to change 1 letter in a text message. I often end up tapping the podcast tiles behind the play button instead and then they open up. So frustrating. I evangelize this app to friends and family all the time for its clean and simple ease of use. This new change needs to be addressed, however.
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Just created an account to also give my feedback. The tiny new player is a disaster to use! Please make the controls bigger again. I need three things from the player: download episodes, add new episodes to the queue (that also got more difficult recently), start and pause playback. Everything else is nice to have.
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Thank you for taking the time to write in. It’s really helpful to hear directly from the people using the app every day. I’ve made sure your feedback reaches the team so it can be weighed as we plan future updates.
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On the main screen, which has tiles representing subscribed-to podcasts, the tiles run to the bottom of the screen, under the two control menu bars which float over them. But at the top, the search bar does not have the tiles behind them.
My interpretation of this is that the designer knew at a gut level that having tiles behind the search bar would make the search bar harder to use, and so wisely left the background behind the search bar clear of distraction.
I’d like to make the case that the same reasoning applies to the control bars. There is no advantage to having tiles behind these controls, since the controls leave them part-obscured, and on an iPad, if not on a phone, there is ample space for tile display in the middle of the screen.
The only reason to have the bars float is because it conforms with some modern design theme or language. That that may be idiomatic for the platform should not come at the cost of usability.
So bigger bars, please, permanently in place, and behind them not tiles scrolling but a blank area as already demonstrated by the search bar.
Which, unless my memory is poor, is rather like what there was before the recent UI revision.
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Yes, exactly what David said – I have started a different podcast in my queue so many times since this “update” when trying to stop/play/forward/back – it’s making it unusable.
The entire reason I use Pocket Casts is for the queue. If it doesn’t work to play from that – in the order I want, when I want, not constantly accidentally getting deleted or rearranged – there’s no point.
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I wanted to chime in with my support for a return to more usable controls. Liquid glass has been a problem and is generally disliked, so much so that I’m surprised anyone is actively rolling out elements that conform to the design. But the control size is just as bad, perhaps worse. I wish the designers would imagine driving 75mph down a highway and trying to tap the tiny forward button while the phone is mounted on your dash. I don’t condone this of course, but some people do things like this.
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Everyon, thanks for the detailed feedback here. We hear you that the smaller, relocated player controls are harder to use, and this is exactly the kind of feedback that helps us further refine the design.
Some concrete news for you. Our iOS team has already made changes in the upcoming version, 8.15:
- The collapsed mini player controls are being enlarged to full-size tap targets, so they’re easier to hit.
- The play button is a bit bigger, and we’ve added extra blur behind the tab bar on the Podcasts screen to improve legibility over the artwork.
In the meantime, one setting that can help a lot is if you go to Profile > Settings > Appearance and turn off “Minimize on Scroll.” That keeps the tab bar and player expanded instead of collapsing as you scroll, which cuts down on the shifting and mis-taps. And on the relocated controls, Up Next now lives as its own tab along the bottom rather than a button in the player.
On the broader asks, like keeping the previous layout, those are noted with the team, though I can’t promise those specific changes. The control-sizing improvements above should land in 8.15 and directly target the “too small to tap” problem.
Thanks again for helping us improve the app!
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