Posts by Ben Bowler

drea arrived in the podcast ad blocker category with the most disarming pitch possible: it's free, it needs no account, and there's no subscription hiding behind a trial. This review covers ho...

Adblock Podcast is the most ideologically interesting app in the podcast ad-skipping category: it charges you a subscription, then hands part of it back to the shows whose ads you skip. This review co...

There are two honest ways to remove podcast ads: pay for a feed that never contains them, or use a tool that finds the ads in the audio and cuts them out of your listening. Everything else you'll ...

Searching for a podcast ad blocker lands you in a confusing market: some tools are full podcast apps, some are feed services bolted onto your existing app, and some are browser-era blockers that don&#...

If you want to skip podcast ads without stabbing the +30s button four times per break, you have more options in 2026 than ever before. A new generation of apps can detect ad segments inside an episode...

Most mainstream podcast apps won't help you skip ads. Apple Podcasts plays every ad in full. Spotify serves ads to free and premium subscribers alike on podcasts. Pocket Casts respects creator mon...

If you want to block podcast ads at the network level — meaning across every device on your home Wi-Fi, without installing anything per-device — Pi-hole and AdGuard Home are the two big open-source op...

Pocket Casts is one of the most-loved third-party podcast players around. Great queue management, cross-device sync, brilliant playback controls. But if you've searched for "how to block ads ...

If you've decided you want to cut podcast ads on your iPhone, two names come up first in 2026. Filtr, the new system-wide content filter app from the developer behind Wipr. And AdGuard, the long-r...

For a long time, using an ad blocker felt like one of those small ethical questions you don't really want to answer. The publisher loses revenue. The site you wanted to read got served. You knew t...

Apple Podcasts is the most-used podcast app in the United States. It is also one of the worst for ads. There's no built-in ad blocker, episode ads are dynamically inserted into nearly every major ...

Podcast ads in 2026 are longer, more numerous, and harder to skip than they were three years ago. This is the complete guide to blocking podcast ads — every path that actually works, every path that d...

There's news, and there's news podcasts. The first will give you the headlines. The second is for when you want context — why this story matters, what's behind it, who the players actually...

Most podcast listeners don't think about how the ad in the middle of an episode got there. They just hear it, skip it, and move on. But the way podcast ads are delivered has changed substantially ...

YouTube has become one of the biggest podcast platforms in the world. Lots of shows now publish a video version of every episode to YouTube as their primary distribution. That's good for the shows...

If you've felt like podcast ads have grown longer over the last twelve months, you're not imagining it. The average ad load on a typical commercial podcast has crept up across 2025 and into 20...

"Ad-free" can mean a few different things. Some shows run zero ads at all because they're funded by public-broadcasting underwriting or listener donations. Some run a few short ads on th...

Spotify Premium is famous for one thing: no ads. Spotify also has the biggest podcast catalogue of any music app. So it's easy to assume that paying for Premium means ad-free podcasts too. It does...

Podcast transcripts have gone from a niche feature to an expected part of the listening experience. Here's everything you need to know....

Whether you listen to one podcast a week or twenty, a few small changes to your setup can make a big difference. Here are our favourite tips....

Podcast advertising has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. But how do ads actually end up in your favourite shows? And why do some feel seamless while others are jarring?...

Choosing a podcast app can feel overwhelming. There are dozens of options on both iOS and Android, each with different strengths. Some prioritize discovery, others focus on playback features, and a fe...

YouTube users streamed over 700 million hours of video podcasts on their TVs in a single month last year, nearly double the year before. Apple just launched video podcast support. Spotify has been pus...

You started with 3 shows. Then a friend recommended a few more. Then you discovered a great interview pod, a daily news show, and that limited series everyone was talking about. Now you have 47 subscr...

The best storytelling podcasts don't just tell you what happened. They make you feel like you're there, with sound design, pacing, and narrative structure that rival the best TV writing. These...

A great driving podcast has to do two things: hold your attention over hours and keep you alert behind the wheel. That rules out slow-burn meditations and whisper-voiced ASMR. What you want are strong...

You don't need to pay a subscription to get a great podcast app. Several of the best players on iPhone and Android are completely free, and others offer enough in their free tier that you may neve...

In early 2026, we shipped Podcast AdBlock 1.5 — the biggest update to our ad detection system since launch. Here's what changed and why it mattered....