Stitcher redesign brings cleaner look and new features to the podcast app

Stitcher has revealed a new look for its podcast app, which boasts several useful features and upgrades. The service says the revamped web, iOS and Android app has better user control and navigation along with its more streamlined design.

You'll be able to organize shows however you like into custom categories and see recent and unfinished episodes, and all of your downloads and favorite podcasts together in My Podcasts. Using filters, you'll be able to view only downloaded, unplayed or liked episodes of a given podcast, or you can sort episodes by date. The app has a particularly handy sorting feature that lets you view podcasts by episode length, so you can find one to burn through with however much time you have to listen.

At long last, you can select the shows for which you want to automatically download episodes and how many of them you'd like to keep on your device at a time. There's a slider control that will let you fine-tune the playback speed too. Stitcher also reworked the Alexa and Sonos integrations, so smart speaker playback should be a bit more robust.

A public beta of the redesigned mobile and web app is available now, and Stitcher plans to roll it out more broadly in the coming months. Time will tell whether the redesign can help Stitcher better compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but the cleaner look can't hurt its chances. It's been a big week for Stitcher, as SiriusXM finalized its acquisition of the service a few days ago.