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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en" class="controller_main"> <head> <title>Overcast</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="152x152" href="/apple-touch-icon.png"/> <link rel="mask-icon" href="/img/logo-black.svg" color="#fc7e0f"/> <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico"/> <link rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@overcastfm" /> <style type="text/css" nonce="B4VWMNGHh+hoNs9J2+sgRQ=="></style> <script type="text/javascript" nonce="OvkLi4KohWS9rnOSMfWAgA=="></script> </head> <body> <div class="nav"> <a class="left navlink" href="/"><img class="narrow" id="tinyhomeimg" src="/img/logo.svg" alt="Overcast"/><span class="notnarrow">Overcast</span></a> <a class="left navlink" href="/podcasterinfo">Podcaster Info</a> <a class="left navlink" href="/ads">Ads</a> <a class="left navlink" href="/login">Log In</a> <div class="clear"></div> </div> <div class="container pure-g"> <div class="content pure-u-1"> <h1>Info for Podcasters</h1> <p>Overcast works with the open, standard world of podcasts. It’s the kind of podcast app that used to be the only kind.</p> <p>There’s no terms to agree to, no rights to give up, and no loss of control over your podcast or its distribution. Overcast parses your RSS feed, downloads episodes directly from your servers to each listener, and doesn’t interfere with your stats or content at all.</p> <h2>Inclusion in Overcast</h2> <p>There’s no separate submission process to be included in Overcast. Simply <a href="https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itcd88ea40b9">submit your podcast to Apple Podcasts</a>, and it will typically show up in Overcast’s search within 1–2 days.</p> <p>If your podcast is already <a href="https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itcd88ea40b9">listed in Apple Podcasts</a>, but isn’t showing up in Overcast, you may <a href="/add">add it manually here</a>.</p> <p>Overcast listeners can always subscribe to any public podcast feed by entering its feed URL, but URLs not known to be in Apple Podcasts won’t be included in search or recommendations.</p> <h2>Prohibited content</h2> <p>Since Overcast is a one-person company that can’t possibly review and monitor all known podcasts for spam, adult content, hate speech, and other problematic, controversial, or illegal material, Overcast uses the human-reviewed Apple Podcasts directory as its filter for what should be included in search results and recommendations.</p> <p>In rare cases, a show may be included in Apple Podcasts that does not comply with <a href="https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itc1723472cb">its content requirements</a>. If I’m notified that Apple’s guidelines are being significantly violated by a show that is (but should not be) in their Podcasts directory, I may manually remove it from Overcast’s search results and recommendations.</p> <p>Regardless of whether a podcast is included in Overcast’s search or recommendations, listeners can always subscribe to any podcast with a public feed URL using the “Add URL” button in the app’s Add Podcast screen.</p> <h2>Featured podcasts</h2> <p>Overcast does not feature podcasts via human curation or editorial selections.</p> <p>Overcast lets users “recommend” episodes with a star button. The categories in the Add Podcast screen show the top-recommended podcasts recently for each category.</p> <p>If you’d like to rank higher in these, feel free to encourage your listeners to recommend your show in Overcast at a reasonable time, such as when asking for ratings or reviews in other apps.</p> <h2>Advertising your podcast</h2> <p>Overcast offers <a href="/ads">display ads for podcasts</a> on the Now Playing screen and in the top “Ad” slot in each directory category.</p> <h2>Linking to your show page</h2> <p>Overcast’s web URLs for known shows in Apple Podcasts always take the form:</p> <ul> <li><code>https://overcast.fm/itunes123456789</code></li> </ul> <p>…where “123456789” is the iTunes ID for your podcast. Simply look for the corresponding number in your iTunes/Apple Podcasts URL to construct your Overcast URL.</p> <h2>Subscribe URL scheme in iOS</h2> <p>On iOS, for customers who already have Overcast installed, you can link directly to a Subscribe prompt to any RSS URL (useful for paid private feeds) using this URL scheme:</p> <ul> <li><code>overcast://x-callback-url/add?url=...&x-success=...</code></li> </ul> <p>Parameters:</p> <ul> <li><code>url</code> (required, URL-encoded): The podcast’s RSS feed URL.</li> <li><code>x-success</code> (optional, URL-encoded): A URL that the app should open after successfully subscribing.</li> </ul> <h2>Icons for “subscribe” buttons</h2> <p>You may use or adapt Overcast’s <a href="/img/appicon-3200.png">icon</a> and/or <a href="/img/logo.svg">logo</a> to create “Subscribe on Overcast” buttons that link to podcasts’ pages on Overcast.</p> <h2>Chapter support</h2> <p>Overcast displays MP3 and M4A chapter markers with titles, images, and/or link URLs.</p> <p>You can easily add chapter markers to your podcasts with <a href="/forecast">Forecast</a>.</p> <h2>Private and password-protected feeds</h2> <p>Overcast specially handles feeds it recognizes as private:</p> <ul> <li>URLs with HTTP Basic Auth credentials, e.g. <code>http://user:password@site.com/…</code></li> <li>Feeds containing the <code><itunes:block></code> element</li> </ul> <p>Private feeds are given the following restrictions:</p> <ul> <li>They are excluded from search and recommendations.</li> <li>They do not display Share or Recommend buttons in the app.</li> <li>Their pages on the Overcast website are only shown to logged-in users who have entered their exact URLs in the “Add URL” screen (and therefore know the username and password, if present).</li> </ul> <h2>User-Agents</h2> <p>Overcast’s iOS app uses the following HTTP User-Agent string for its episode downloads:</p> <ul> <li><code>Overcast/3.0 (+http://overcast.fm/; iOS podcast app)</code></li> </ul> <p>The Apple Watch app uses the following User-Agent for its episode downloads:</p> <ul> <li><code>Overcast (+http://overcast.fm/; Apple Watch podcast app)</code></li> </ul> <p>Keep in mind that a listener may download an episode from multiple devices.</p> <p>These User-Agents only apply to audio-file downloads, not requests to your feed (see the next section).</p> <h2>Crawling your feed</h2> <p>Overcast uses server-side crawling, centrally fetching your RSS feed for all Overcast listeners to deliver new episodes faster and save bandwidth.</p> <p>Each listener still downloads your audio directly from your servers. Overcast does not cache, re-host, or re-serve audio to listeners, but you may see Overcast’s servers download episodes to collect metadata.</p> <p>Please ensure that these servers are not blocked:</p> <ul> <li><code>crawl1.overcast.fm</code></li> <li><code>crawl2.overcast.fm</code></li> <li><code>crawl3.overcast.fm</code></li> <li><code>crawl4.overcast.fm</code></li> <li><code>crawl5.overcast.fm</code></li> <li><code>crawl6.overcast.fm</code></li> </ul> <p>They update feeds at varying intervals from a few minutes to 24 hours, depending on their popularity. Standard HTTP caching headers are obeyed.</p> <p>Subscriber counts are reported in the HTTP User-Agent string, e.g.:</p> <ul> <li><code>Overcast/1.0 Podcast Sync (123 subscribers; feed-id=456789; +http://overcast.fm/)</code></li> </ul> <p>To protect <a href="/privacy">privacy</a>, no other statistics, analytics, or usage data are provided.</p> <h2 id="ping">Ping API for immediate feed crawling</h2> <p>The “ping” API triggers Overcast’s crawlers to update a podcast’s RSS feed immediately, rather than waiting the 5–30 minutes it might typically take before it’s crawled next. This is intended for podcast publishing services and CMSes to trigger an Overcast update immediately after a new episode of a podcast is published.</p> <p>Make a <code>GET</code> or <code>POST</code> request to <code>https://overcast.fm/ping</code> with these parameters in the query-string or request body:</p> <ul> <li><code>urlprefix</code> (required, URL-encoded): Update any known feed URLs that begin with this prefix.</li> <li><code>urlcontains</code> (optional): Also require URLs to contain this substring anywhere after the prefix.</li> </ul> <p>For instance, a <code>urlprefix</code> value of <code>https://example.com/bestshow/rss</code> could match:</p> <ul> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshow/rss</code></li> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshow/rss?format=xml</code></li> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshow/rss/member12345</code></li> </ul> <p>This is especially useful for per-user private feeds. For instance, a premium podcast may generate individual feeds for each paying member:</p> <ul> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshowpremium/VGX4tvqr</code></li> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshowpremium/BSFE2tWV</code></li> <li><code>https://example.com/bestshowpremium/uKHIwIx2</code></li> <li>…</li> </ul> <p>Submitting a ping with <code>urlprefix</code> set to <code>https://example.com/bestshowpremium/</code> whenever a new episode is published would rapidly update all of the private feeds.</p> <h3>Important implementation details</h3> <p><strong>Be as specific as possible</strong> to avoid crawling more feeds than necessary. When a new episode is published, submit a request that covers only the <strong>single</strong> podcast that has a new episode, not <strong>every</strong> podcast on your platform.</p> <p>When integrating this API into a CMS using caching, please ensure that it’s called <strong>after</strong> any relevant caches are updated so Overcast’s feed request includes the newly published episode.</p> <p>This API is heavily <strong>rate-limited</strong> by design. Ping requests that exceed the rate limit are ignored.</p> <p>Feeds using HTTP Basic Auth (username and password) are not supported for ping requests.</p> </div> </div> <div class="footer l-box is-center"> © 2014–2024 Overcast Radio, LLC<br/> <a href="/privacy">Privacy Policy</a> • <a href="/terms">Terms</a> • <a href="/contact">Contact</a> • <a href="/add">Add</a> • <a href="/podcasterinfo">Info for Podcasters</a> • <a href="/forecast">Forecast</a> </div> </body> </html>