There is no shortage of great third-party podcast clients on the App Store, such as Castro, Overcast, and Pocket Casts. But when Apple Podcasts introduced transcripts in iOS 17.4, the app immediately won me over.

Podcast transcripts are a fantastic feature for all kinds of users. For Deaf users there’s a clear benefit, since content that was previously limited to audio suddenly became accessible in written form. For researchers trying to quickly find key info, transcript search is an invaluable tool.

For me though, the biggest win with podcast transcripts has been their ability to save me significant time by filtering down the content to only what I actually want to hear.

Getting time back in the attention economy

We live in an age where media content is abundant, but user attention is scarce. This is true with streaming TV shows and movies, music, and certainly with podcasts too.

Podcasts especially have a tendency to stretch on and cover a variety of topics within a single episode. Historically, the best way I’ve managed to filter down episodes to only the bits I’m interested in is through chapters. Podcasts that support chapters have long been a time-saving gem, providing the opportunity to consume more of the content I enjoy while easily skipping past anything I find less interesting.

The problem is that most podcasts—especially those outside the Apple tech sphere— don’t support chapters.

That’s why Apple Podcasts’ new auto-generated transcripts have become a killer feature for me.

Transcripts in Apple’s Podcasts app are easy to view with the simple tap of a button, and you can seamlessly scroll through an hours-long show’s full contents to quickly jump to the segment you’re interested in. I’ve gotten in the habit of doing this with every podcast I listen to that doesn’t offer chapters. It’s so easy to get a sneak peek of what’s coming, even while an episode’s still playing, and tap to jump to a more compelling section. This ultimately saves a ton of listening time.

There have been moments when I’ve even scrolled through a podcast’s full transcript only to find the whole episode is worth skipping. Not necessarily because it isn’t “good,” but rather because I’m just not interested. Either way, the end result is that I have more time to spend on another podcast or audiobook I’ll enjoy more.

With an endless supply of audio content being created all the time, my tolerance for the not-so-interesting is at a minimum. Even if scanning a transcript only ends up saving me a handful of minutes per podcast, I feel good knowing that I’m spending my time on only the hyper-curated things I expect to enjoy.

What do you think of Apple Podcasts’ transcript feature? Have you found it a useful timesaver?

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