FluidCast

Your Podcasts, Everywhere

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July 5, 2026 Why I built a podcast player from scratch

FluidCast is a podcast player built around two things most apps treat as an afterthought: actually working the same way across every device you use, and telling the difference between an ad break and the episode itself.

It's now fully cross-platform — iOS, macOS, Apple Watch, Android, Windows, and Linux all released.

What it does:

  • Cross-device sync — playback position, queue, and library stay in sync everywhere you listen

  • On-device AI ad detection — detects and skips ads inline without sending any audio off the device (Apple Intelligence on iOS/macOS). Worth being upfront about the edges: ads at the very start of an episode are a genuinely hard case, since the model needs a few seconds of audio before it knows what it's hearing

  • CarPlay support

  • Folders for organizing subscriptions

  • Advanced queue editing

  • Bookmarks

  • Episode transcripts

  • Apple Watch app

Free tier + Pro subscription ($2.99/mo or $17.99/yr, one-month free trial). 4.5 stars on the App Store. I'm the solo dev — product, support, and marketing all handled by one person.

What would make you switch podcast apps at this point — is it a missing feature, or just inertia?

1 Comment

  1. 1

    What stood out to me is that you're treating interruptions as part of the listening experience rather than just another playback feature.

    Cross-device sync is expected today. Knowing when not to make someone listen to an ad—while keeping everything on-device—is a much more distinctive reason to switch than adding another podcast player feature.

About

FluidCast is a cross-platform podcast app with a first-class experience - including cross-device sync, CarPlay, Folders and more. It also now includes AI powered ad-detection using on-device Apple Intelligence.