A small and a big update

This release is both a small release with a few minor updates but also a big change to the app.

tldr: miaocast is now completely free and all the features that previously required a subscription are now available to all users but I can no longer work on the app in the foreseeable future.

Why this change

I quit my job almost a year ago to become an indie developer, however as the one year anniversary approaches I had to face the reality that this is not going to pay the bills.

Before quitting my job, I put aside about a year of savings to try this indie dev thing thinking that the worse case is that I treat this one year as a sabatical and would go back to regular full time job once the savings are gone. A few months in, I already mentally prepared that the worse case is likely the outcome given how hard it is to convince users to try out a new app let alone to get them to pay for it.

In case you are curious how much I've made with the app, below is a screenshot of the revenue dashboard for the app:

So at the minimum wage of $15/h, that's less than 2 days of pay.

In the past few months I've started looking for a new job and last week I accepted a job offer. I would have been happy to continuing working on the app as a side/hobby project in my free time but my new job prohibits that. Given that I can no longer add new features or offer support, I've decided to remove the paywall and make the app free.

I expect the app to continue working without any additional work but can't promise any external changes such as new OS update that might break the app in the future.

Details

All the features are now free to use

Previously premium features that required a miaocast+ subscription are now available to all users, including:

• Chapters support
• Additional theme customization
• Per podcast settings
• Sideload content
• Web audio clipping

Active subscriptions will be cancelled

If you have an active miaocast+ subscription, the subscription will be cancelled in the coming weeks and you will receive a refund. Since all the features behind the subscriptions are free now, you should not see any changes while using the app.

One Last Update

With this last update, I've included a few user requested customization features.

Customize Android Auto Tabs

You can now customize the order of the tabs in the Android Auto interface.

Customize Show Notes Preview

You can now choose how long the show notes preview you want to see in the episode row, with the option to completely hide the preview. This setting supports per podcast override, so you can customize the setting per podcast. Outside of the podcast screen, the global setting is used such as on the Inbox screen:

Custom Playback Seek and Skip Control

Beside the pre-defined set of values, you can now choose a custom value for seek forward/backward and skip intro/outro. Those settings can be override per podcast so you can fine-tune the settings to adapt for different podcasts.

Limit Download to WiFi Only

The app now restricts download to WiFi only but you can disable that in "Settings" -> "Download" screen.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has tried miaocast throughout this journey! I'm especially grateful to those who took the time to provide feedback, report bugs, or share feature ideas - your input has been invaluable in shaping the app. A special thanks to those who purchased a subscription; even through it's far from enough to support my full time indie dev work I still appreciate that you showed your belief in what I was building.

Xiaoming