Pocket Casts for Wear OS actively being developed

Abner Li | Mar 9 2023 - 1:28 pm PT

Pocket Casts offered a watch client back in the Android Wear era and is now actively working on a Wear OS app.

We can monitor development because Pocket Casts open-sourced its mobile clients last October. A project issue, from today, on Github covers the “Initial Release of Wear OS Watch App.” The Automattic-owned app is open to contributors, with discussions on Pocket Casts for Wear OS starting late last year.

For the initial release, we will focus on the watch app functioning independently of the phone. The ability to control Pocket Casts on the phone will be added after the initial (if we have time, some minimal control of the phone app may be added to the initial release).

Pocket Casts is “largely looking to replicate the functionality from Pocket Casts’ iOS watch app to start.” The Apple Watch client has been around for some time now, and supports downloads as a premium “Pocket Casts Plus” capability.

The Wear OS app is working to offer that same independence. Initial functionality looks to include a Now Playing screen, browsing, and downloads.

Looking at the current landscape, there’s only Spotify and a handful of smaller clients. YouTube Music will presumably update its Wear OS app with podcast functionality once that initiative launches. Wear OS 3 today is home to a number of streaming apps and podcasts are a natural extension.