How Apple Podcasts Transcripts Became a Time-Saving Feature

There's no shortage of great third-party podcast clients on the App Store, like 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 types of users. For deaf users, this is an obvious benefit as content that was previously limited to audio is suddenly available in written form. For researchers trying to quickly find key information, transcript search is an invaluable tool.

For me, however, the biggest benefit of podcast transcripts has been their ability to save me significant time by filtering content to just what I need. I really want to hear this.

Returning time to the attention economy

We live in an era when there is a lot of media content, but little user attention. This is true for streaming TV shows and movies, music and, of course, podcasts.

Podcasts tend to expand and cover many topics in a single episode. Historically, the best way to filter episodes to just the bits that interest me is to use chapters. Chapter-based podcasts have long been a time-saving gem, allowing me to consume more of the content I enjoy while easily skipping anything I find less interesting.

The problem is that most podcasts, especially those outside of Apple technology, don't support chapters.

That's why Apple Podcasts' new auto-generated transcripts have been a killer feature for me

Transcript works great on iPad Pro too, especially when multiple people are listening together.

Transcripts in the Apple Podcasts app are easy to view with the simple press of a button, and you can easily scroll through the full content of a multi-hour show to quickly jump to the segment you're interested in. I do this with every podcast I listen to that doesn't have chapters. It's so easy to get a sense of what's coming next, even while an episode is playing, and click to move on to the more interesting section. This ends up saving a lot of listening time.

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

With an endless amount of audio content being created all the time, my tolerance for non- so interesting – that's the minimum. Even if scanning the transcript only saves me a few minutes per podcast, I feel good knowing that I'm only spending my time on carefully selected things that I enjoy.

What do you think? thinking about Apple Podcasts' transcription feature? Do you think this is useful for saving time?