Please stop changing the UI
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Hi PocketCasts,
As time goes on, your UI has gone from being simple, intuitive, clean, and functional, to, I dunno, the opposite of those things?
Two recent examples:
- My playlists are now polluted by a GIANT header of thumbnails that take up half the vertical space. Every time, I have to scroll down to get rid of it to see the actual list. It’s a list, not a webpage. It should be a list. The thumbnail quad has never added to the experience or the information content of the list.
- With the most recent updates, the bottom tool bar now, what, auto-hides? I have to sort of swipe down to get it to animate back into place.
I see (2) can be turned off in settings, but how about also (1)? There was a request on here months ago to please make it removable.
This trend is awful. Almost nobody appreciates a constantly changing, ever complexifying UI. If the devs and designers can’t help themselves, then please have a policy of enabling users to turn off everything future UI change.
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Thanks for laying this out clearly, both points are useful feedback.
On the tab bar: you’ve already found the right toggle. Since Liquid Glass landed on iOS in version 8.13, the tab bar minimizes on scroll by default, but you can keep it expanded via Profile > Settings > Appearance > and turning off “Minimize on Scroll.” More detail in our Appearance Settings guide.
On the Playlists artwork collage: there’s currently no setting to hide it, so I understand the scrolling annoyance. This is a known issue we’re tracking on our end, and I’ve made sure your feedback about wanting it removable is logged with it.
As for a broader policy of making every UI change optional, I can’t promise that as a blanket approach since some changes are structural rather than cosmetic, but the team does read and weigh this kind of feedback when planning future updates. Appreciate you taking the time to spell out exactly what’s not working for you; it genuinely helps.
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