new “archive” interface on player screen
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I think this is something that started with the liquid glass update for the iOS app, but I’m not positive.
I mostly listen while driving, and have my phone mounted to the dashboard. Other than hitting the 30sec jump control, my most frequent interaction with the app is archiving an episode that has started that I’m not interested in. I want this to be quick and relatively easy to do with only a brief glance at the phone.
In the past, after hitting the archive button at the bottom, a large red confirmation button appeared just above it. Now, after hitting archive a dialog box insstead appears in the middle of the phone screen with two buttons side by side, smaller than the old one. Within the context of listing while engaged in another activity, it’s much harder to interact with the new controls than the old one. For example, I usually have to reposition my entire hand/arm to reach the confirmation button instead of moving just my fingertip. It feels more like two separate actions now, which means more distraction from my main task:
Screenshot Additionally, the new dialog can’t be escaped/cancelled by touching elsewhere on the screen on dead space, while I’m pretty sure the old one would let me touch (for example) up around the player controls or artwork to cancel it.
And, this part is an aside, but the text of the dialog itself is confusing. It states the episode will be “hidden from your feed, not deleted”, which sounds like removing it from the playlist, not archiving. Doesn’t “archive” in Pocket Casts always mean that the file is deleted?
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This confirmation dialog change came in with the Liquid Glass redesign in iOS 8.13, and we don’t have a setting to bring back the old inline confirmation button.
A couple of alternatives that might be more thumb-friendly while driving:
- Swipe left on the episode row in an episode list to archive directly, no confirmation dialog involved.
- Customize your Player Toolbar shortcuts so Archive sits in your preferred spot, via Customize Player Toolbar. (Which I see you’ve already done!)
Also worth noting: archiving never deletes the episode itself, it just removes it from your active list and clears the downloaded file. If you ever archive something by accident, you can always find it again with Show Archived on the podcast page and unarchive it.
Neither workaround fully replicates the old single-thumb confirm flow, but I passed this feedback on regarding the dialog sizing and placement as Liquid Glass continues to be refined. Thanks again for sharing the real-world context!
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