QUILL Cast User Guide

Introduction

Welcome, and thank you for giving QUILL Cast a try.

Cast is a podcast player for people who listen with a screen reader. I am blind, I use one every day, and I built Cast because I wanted a podcast app that felt as if it had been made for me. Everything in it is a list you can arrow through. Every row reads as a whole sentence, so one press of an arrow key tells you what an episode is, which podcast it is from and whether you have heard it. Every command has a key, and Cast tells you how each thing you do turned out.

If you love podcasts, or would like to, and you find your way around Windows with JAWS, NVDA or Narrator, Cast is for you. There is no account to make and nothing to sign up for. You install it, open it, and start listening.

What you will be able to do

By the time you have read this guide you will be able to find and follow podcasts by name, bring your list across from another podcast app, and play any episode with a single key. You will know how to pause, skip, change the speed, jump between chapters and set a sleep timer. You will have new episodes gathering in your Inbox each morning, a Play Queue lined up for the drive to work, and Cast set up to sound and behave the way you like. And when something puzzles you, you will know where to find help.

None of this needs to happen on day one. Chapter 1 gets you listening in about ten minutes. Everything after that is there for when you are curious.

How this guide is laid out

The chapters follow the order you are likely to want things.

1. Chapter 1: Your first ten minutes. A hand-held first session. You open Cast, follow a podcast, play an episode, pause and skip, and learn where to go next.
2. Chapter 2: Finding your way around. A walk around the one window: the Places list, the episode lists, Find, Go To, the status bar and the menus.
3. Chapter 3: Sit back and listen. Everything for the episode that is playing: skipping, chapters, speed, volume, show notes, bookmarks and the sleep timer.
4. Chapter 4: Finding podcasts you will love. Following a podcast by name or by its address, private feeds, bringing your list from another app, your own recordings, and keeping it all tidy in folders.
5. Chapter 5: Keeping up without keeping watch. How new episodes reach you through the Inbox and New Episodes, the Play Queue, downloads, playlists and notifications.
6. Chapter 6: Making Cast yours. Preferences, settings for one podcast, Quick Actions, changing keys, switching off what you never use, and AI help.
7. Chapter 7: Your podcasts, wherever you are. Listening statistics, backups, moving to a new computer, and what Cast shares with QUILL and Quill Radio.
8. Chapter 8: When you need a hand. F1 help, finding a forgotten command, undo, tutorials, updates, support and answers to common snags.
9. Chapter 9: QUILL Lineups. Lists of episodes, and anything else Quill Radio plays, that fill themselves by rules you write and keep the order you choose. Shared with Quill Radio, and played through the Play Queue.

After the chapters comes the Keyboard reference: every key Cast comes with, in small tables grouped by where you use them. Keep it handy for the first few weeks.

Cast also has guided tutorials, short lessons you do with Cast open in front of you, on Help > Tutorials (Ctrl+Alt+F1). Whenever a lesson covers the same ground as part of this guide, I give you its name, so you can choose between reading about something and being walked through it.

Now and then a short note from QUILLBee, QUILLVille’s guide, is set apart as a quote: a faster key, a word explained, or something worth knowing before it catches you out. QUILLBert, the curious porcupine, wanders in once or twice when he has found something. The guide reads perfectly well if you skip every one of them, and you can meet the pair properly on the Meet QUILLBert and QUILLBee page.

Reading this guide with a screen reader

The guide is built from headings so you can move through it quickly. Each chapter is a level 2 heading, and the main topics in a chapter are level 3 headings. When a topic has parts of its own, those parts sit one level deeper, at level 4, and once or twice at level 5. In JAWS or NVDA, press 2 to move from chapter to chapter, 3 to move between the main topics, and 4 to step through the parts of a topic. Shift with any of those numbers goes back. To see every heading at once, press Insert+F6 in JAWS or Insert+F7 in NVDA and choose headings.

The notes from QUILLBee and QUILLBert are block quotes. In a web browser, Q moves to the next one in JAWS and NVDA, and Shift+Q goes back, so they are as easy to skip as they are to find.

Every chapter ends with a short section called What you learned, and where to go next. If you are skimming, those are a quick way to hear what a chapter covers before you read it.

Keys are written the way Cast writes them in its menus. Ctrl+Shift+I means hold down Ctrl and Shift together and press I. A menu path such as Podcasts > Add Podcast means open the Podcasts menu and choose Add Podcast.

When a section walks you through something, the steps are numbered. Follow them with Cast open beside the guide and you will learn faster than by reading alone. Alt+Tab moves you between the two.

You do not always need this guide to answer a question. Every window in Cast answers F1 with a short note on what that window is for and what the control you are on does. When you wonder what a checkbox will change, F1 is often the quickest answer.

Chapter 1: Your first ten minutes

This chapter is your first session with Cast, and I will stay with you the whole way. You will open Cast, follow a podcast, play one of its episodes, pause it, skip around in it and turn the volume up. By the end you will have something playing that you chose, you will know the handful of keys that do most of the work, and you will know which chapter to read next. Put the kettle on. Ten minutes is plenty.

A few words before you start

A podcast is a show that publishes episodes, a bit like a radio programme you can hear whenever you like. When you follow a podcast, Cast keeps an eye on it for you and collects each new episode as it comes out. Following is free, and you can unfollow any time.

Behind every podcast is a feed, a web address where the podcast lists its episodes. You rarely need to know it, because Cast can find a podcast by its name. It is handy to know the word if someone sends you one.

An episode you have not listened to yet is unheard. Cast uses that word everywhere, so you always know what is new to you.

Opening Cast for the first time

Open QUILL Cast from the Start menu.

The installer is for the Windows account you are using. It does not offer an all-users installation, and a normal install does not require administrator approval. The shared runtime is installed for that account too.

On a new install, Cast greets you with one short window called Welcome to QUILL Cast. It asks one question and then gets out of your way.

1. The welcome words are in a text box at the top. Arrow through them at your own pace, and read any line again whenever you like.
2. Press Tab to reach Where would you like to land each time? (Alt+W). This is the place Cast puts you each time it opens. Leave it on What is new if you are not sure: Cast then opens on your Inbox when something is waiting, otherwise on an episode you are part way through, and otherwise on your podcasts. You can change it later in Preferences.
3. Press Add Your First Podcast (Alt+A) to go straight to finding one, which the next section walks through. Or press Done (Enter) to start with an empty library.

Skip (Escape) leaves the welcome without changing anything. Skipping counts as done, so it will not come back next time. If you already have podcasts, from a backup or another QUILL app, Cast does not show it at all.

The welcome also has a checkbox, Show me a tip now and then (Alt+T). Leave it checked. The first time you reach somewhere new, such as the Play Queue, Cast says one helpful sentence about it. Each tip is said once, ever. It goes to your braille display as well as to speech, and it never takes your focus or makes you press anything.

Everything the welcome does not cover is in the Tutorials (Help > Tutorials, Ctrl+Alt+F1), short guided lessons you can take whenever you like. The very first one, The first hour, walks the same path as this chapter, one step at a time. Chapter 8, When you need a hand, has more on the tutorials.

Following your first podcast

Think of a podcast you have heard about. Perhaps a friend mentioned it, or you heard it on the radio this morning. Let’s add it.

1. Press Ctrl+N (Podcasts > Add Podcast). The Add Podcast window opens with your cursor in the Podcast name box.
2. Type a few words of the podcast’s name and press Enter.
3. Cast tells you how many podcasts it found.
4. Press Alt+R to move to the Results list, and arrow through it.
5. When you hear the one you want, press Alt+O for Follow.

Cast says “Now following”, the podcast’s name and how many episodes it has. Its episodes are fetched in a few seconds. Press Escape to close the Add Podcast window when you have added all you want.

Not sure you have the right one? Plenty of podcasts share a name. Press Enter on a result instead and Cast shows you a preview of the podcast and its recent episodes before you decide. Chapter 4, Finding podcasts you will love, covers the preview and every other way to add a podcast, including by its feed address.

Two quick ways to fill your library

If you would like more than one podcast to start with, here are two shortcuts.

Follow ACB Media’s podcasts. Choose Podcasts > Follow ACB Media Podcasts (Ctrl+Alt+B). Cast follows ACB Media’s whole live directory in one step, which gives you plenty to explore straight away.

Bring your list from another app. Most podcast apps can save the podcasts you follow as an OPML file. Save one from your old app, then in Cast press Ctrl+N and choose Import OPML… (Alt+I) in the Add Podcast window. Pick the file and press Import. Your folders come across too, and you can keep listening while it works. Chapter 4 has the details.

Until you follow something, the Podcasts place (Ctrl+Shift+S) holds three rows to get you started: Add a Podcast by URL…, Import Podcasts from OPML… and Find a Podcast…. Press Enter on any of them. They go away by themselves as soon as you follow your first podcast.

Hearing an episode

Now for the good part.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+S to go to Podcasts. This is your library, laid out as a tree with one row for each podcast you follow.
2. Arrow to the podcast you followed a moment ago.
3. Press Enter. Cast plays its next unheard episode and tells you what it is playing.

If you have heard every episode already, Enter plays the most recent one and says so.

Want a particular episode instead? Press Right Arrow on the podcast to open it, arrow down through its episodes, newest first, and press Enter on the one you want. Left Arrow takes you back up to the podcast. On an expanded folder, Left Arrow collapses it and keeps focus on that row in the Podcasts tree; it does not jump to Places.

Lose track of what is on? Press Ctrl+T from anywhere in Cast and it tells you.

Pausing, skipping and volume

Let the episode play for a moment, then try each of these. The transport shortcuts work in the main window unless the focused control needs a key for text entry or arrow navigation. Text fields keep their editing keys; trees and lists keep their arrow navigation.

1. Press Ctrl+P to pause. Press it again and the episode carries on from the same spot.
2. Press Shift+Right to skip forward 30 seconds. Press Shift+Left to skip back. Bare Left and Right stay with the focused control; in the Now Playing window, they seek while its slider has focus.
3. Press Ctrl+Up to make it louder and Ctrl+Down to make it quieter.
4. Press Ctrl+. (Ctrl+Period) to stop.

When you stop, Cast remembers where you were. Play that episode again and it picks up where you left it, today or next month.

The buttons in the main window do the same jobs, if you prefer them. Play (Alt+Y) says in its label which episode it will play. While something is playing it becomes Pause or Resume (Alt+S), and Stop is Alt+T.

Chapter 3, Sit back and listen, has everything else for the episode that is playing: chapters, speed, a sleep timer and more.

Queueing up what comes next

Here is one more habit worth learning on day one. The Play Queue is your listening list for later. When one episode finishes, the next one in the queue plays.

1. In Podcasts, press Right Arrow on a podcast to open its episodes.
2. Arrow to an episode you would like to hear later.
3. Press Space. Cast says it has been added to the Play Queue.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Q to go to the Play Queue and hear what is lined up. Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, shows how the Play Queue and the Inbox can keep you supplied without you lifting a finger.

Where everything lives

Press Alt+L. This is the Places list, the map of Cast. Each row is a place, with a count beside it: Inbox, New Episodes, Continue Listening, Favorites, Playlists, Personal Audio, Play Queue, Downloads, Notifications and Podcasts.

Arrow down the list and the area beside it changes to match as you go; focus stays in Places. Enter or Right Arrow updates the place without moving focus out of this list. Press Tab to move into the content and Shift+Tab to return to Places. Backspace returns from an opened show or playlist to its place. Two places worth knowing about today: the Inbox is where new episodes wait until you decide about them, and Continue Listening holds anything you have started and not finished.

The menus are across the top: Podcasts (Alt+P), Edit (Alt+I), View (Alt+V), Episode (Alt+E), Downloads (Alt+D), Window (Alt+W) and Help (Alt+H). Every menu item shows its key, so opening a menu is a gentle way to learn keys as you go.

Chapter 2, Finding your way around, walks you through each place and the rest of the window.

Keys for your first day

These will carry you a long way.

If you like learning by doing, the tutorials on Ctrl+Alt+F1 walk you through Cast one lesson at a time, with Cast open in front of you. The Keyboard reference at the end of this guide has every other key, grouped by where you use them.

QUILLBee’s shortcut: One key isn’t in the table, and it’s the one to reach for when the others slip your mind. Press Ctrl+Shift+P for the Command Palette and type a word, like “sleep” or “queue”. Each command it finds comes with its key, when it has one, so you learn the key while you use it.

How Cast talks to you

Cast tells you how everything you do turned out. It speaks through your screen reader and writes to your braille display at the same time. It only tells you things your screen reader would not already say, such as a download finishing or the result of a command, and it never moves your focus to do it.

Missed something? Press F9 and Cast says it again.

A note from QUILLBee: F9 only goes back one. If two things were said while you were busy elsewhere, press Shift+F9 for Activity instead. It lists everything Cast has told you this session, newest first, one sentence to a row.

When you add an episode to the queue, remove one from a place, or mark one as played, Cast plays a short sound as well as saying what happened. Once you know the sounds, you may prefer just the sound, or just the words. Choose in Preferences (Ctrl+,), in the Telling you section, under When a one-key action works. If something does not work, Cast always says so in words.

Braille settings are shared by the whole QUILL family. If you also use QUILL, set them once there under Preferences > Accessibility and Cast follows along.

When you press the wrong thing

We all do it. Any question that would delete something starts on No, so pressing Enter too soon loses nothing. To say Yes, arrow to it first.

If something goes anyway, press Ctrl+Z (Edit > Undo Last Action). It brings back the last podcast you unfollowed, the last episode you removed or the last thing you marked, and tells you what it restored. When an action can be undone, Cast ends its message with “Ctrl+Z undoes this.”

Listening with the window out of the way

Cast keeps playing when you put it away, so you can get on with your email while the episode carries on.

1. Press Ctrl+W (Podcasts > Send to Tray).
2. Cast says “QUILL Cast is still running in the system tray.”
3. To bring it back, double-click the Cast icon in the notification area, or choose Show from its menu.

The tray icon also has a menu. Open it with the Applications key or Shift+F10 and you will find playback controls, Show and Exit.

To choose what closing the window does, open Preferences (Ctrl+,) and pick The window in the Section list. Closing can exit Cast, send it to the tray, or ask you each time.

If you choose to be asked, closing the window brings up a small question called Closing QUILL Cast. Press Exit to close Cast, or Minimize to Tray (Alt+M) to keep listening with the window out of the way. Check Don’t ask me again (Alt+D) and Cast remembers your answer. Cancel, or Escape, leaves everything as it was.

One more choice sits beside it: Alt+F4 minimizes to the system tray. With it checked, Alt+F4 tucks Cast into the tray, still playing, instead of closing it.

If your keyboard has media keys, Play/Pause, Stop, Next Track and Previous Track control Cast from any program, even while it is in the tray. Next and Previous move by chapter.

There is one more key that works from anywhere: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12 shows or hides Cast, whatever window you are in. Press it while Cast is showing and Cast tells you it is hidden in the tray. Press it again and Cast comes back with focus and tells you it is shown. The episode keeps playing either way. If another program already uses that key, Cast leaves it alone, and the tray icon still works.

Opening Cast next time

Cast opens where something is waiting for you. If new episodes have arrived, it opens on the Inbox. Otherwise, if you are partway through an episode, it opens on Continue Listening. Otherwise it opens on Podcasts.

Would you like Cast to carry on playing the moment it opens? Choose Podcasts > Resume Last Episode on Launch (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L) once. From then on, opening Cast picks up exactly where you left off.

Cast, QUILL and Quill Radio share your podcasts

If you use QUILL or Quill Radio too, they share your podcasts with Cast. Follow a podcast in Cast and QUILL has it as well. Your Play Queue, your place in each episode, your notes and your downloads are one set across all three. Start an episode in Cast and any station playing in Quill Radio stops, so you never hear two things at once.

Uninstalling Cast never deletes your podcasts. They will be waiting if you come back. Chapter 7, Your podcasts, wherever you are, has more on what the apps share.

What you learned, and where to go next

You have followed a podcast, heard it, paused it, skipped through it and lined up something for later. That is a real first session, and those few keys will carry you through most days.

If you would like to go over it again with Cast keeping you company, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called The first hour. It follows the same steps and moves you on as you do each one.

When you are ready, Chapter 2, Finding your way around, takes you for a walk around the window. If you would rather get a few more podcasts in first, skip ahead to Chapter 4, Finding podcasts you will love.

Chapter 2: Finding your way around

You have a podcast playing, and now you want to know where everything else lives. This chapter is a walk around QUILL Cast with me beside you. Everything in Cast happens in one window, so once you know the shape of that window, there is nothing hidden behind another door.

We will go through the window from top to bottom, step in and out of the places where your episodes live, find an episode by typing a word or two, and try the shortcuts that jump straight to where you want to be. Have Cast open while you read, and try each thing as we meet it.

A walk from top to bottom

Think of the main window as a short column of things, one under the other. Tab moves you down the column and Shift+Tab moves you back up. Try it now: press Tab a few times and listen to what you meet.

1. Now playing (Alt+G). A line naming the episode that is playing, its podcast, and how far in you are. Cast never reads it out on its own, so it stays out of your way. Come here when you want to hear a title again or spell a name letter by letter. Ctrl+T says the same thing from anywhere in Cast.
2. Find (Alt+N, or Ctrl+F from anywhere). Type here to find anything in your library. There is a section on it below.
3. Places (Alt+L). The map of Cast: the Inbox, the Play Queue, your podcasts and the rest.
4. The place you are in. Whatever the selected place holds, usually a list of episodes.
5. Show notes (Alt+O). The notes for the episode under your cursor. They sit one Tab after the list, so you can check what an episode is about before you play it. Chapter 3, Sit back and listen, shows you how to read them.
6. The buttons. Each one says in its label what it will act on, so you always know what you are about to press.
   • Play and the name of the selected episode (Alt+Y). While something plays it becomes Pause, and while paused it becomes Resume (Alt+S).
   • Stop (Alt+T).
   • Add to Favorites (Alt+F), for the podcast that is playing. If it is already a favorite, the button says Remove from Favorites.
   • Unfollow and the selected podcast’s name (Alt+U). Cast asks first, and Ctrl+Z brings the podcast back if you change your mind.
   • Add Podcast (Alt+A).

The status bar runs along the very bottom. Tab skips it on purpose, so it never slows down your trip through the window. F6 takes you in and out, and there is a section on it below.

When you open Cast and new episodes arrived while it was closed, it greets you with one sentence, something like “Since yesterday: 4 new episodes from 3 podcasts. They are in the Inbox.” It is a nice way to start the day.

The Places list

Your episodes are sorted into places. A place is a list with a purpose: the Inbox holds new episodes waiting for you, the Play Queue holds what you want to hear next, Downloads holds what is saved on this computer, and so on. The Places list is how you move between them. Each place has a count beside it, so you can hear at a glance how much is waiting.

Here is every place, in the order Cast starts with, and the key that takes you straight there from anywhere in the window.

Every one of these is also on the View menu, so you never have to remember the keys. You will pick up the ones you use most without trying.

To wander between places:

1. Press Alt+L to go to the Places list.
2. Arrow up and down. The list beside it changes as you go, so you can peek into a place without going in.
3. Press Enter or Right Arrow to update that place without leaving the Places list. Press Tab to move into its content.
4. Press Shift+Tab to return to Places. Up or Left at the first content row does not jump into another control. Backspace returns from an opened podcast or playlist to its containing place.

Walk into an empty place and Cast tells you, once, what fills it. In an empty Play Queue you hear “The queue is empty. Space on any episode adds it.”

In development builds, a large place shows loading… while Cast prepares its counts and rows from a detached catalogue. Choosing another place discards the earlier result rather than moving you back when it finishes. Downloads remains a place in this main window, not a separate storage-report dialog. Opening, row publication and transport/status updates happen in small UI steps. If you move focus while an opening is pending, its completion does not take focus back. Closing Cast during preparation also retires unfinished detached input in the background rather than waiting to free it. Large-library Windows responsiveness is still under release validation; build 3 has not been published.

Ctrl+F5 checks every podcast without repeatedly rebuilding the Podcasts tree as each feed answers. Expanded podcasts keep your selected episode while new rows and updated titles arrive. Moving a podcast to another folder leaves you on the next podcast where it came from, or on the previous podcast or containing folder if there is no next one. Rapid arrow presses keep the buttons pointed at your latest selection instead of updating every intermediate row. Closing Cast finishes pending file work and saves in the background while Windows continues processing events.

Making the Places list your own

The list starts in the order most people find useful. You are not most people. If you live in the Play Queue and rarely open the Inbox, put the Play Queue at the top. Go to the Places list, arrow to a place, and then:

• Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down move it, and Cast says where it went: “Continue Listening moved to first.”
• Delete hides a place you never use. Its key still works, and Ctrl+Z brings it back straight away.
• F2 gives it your own name. Call the Inbox “Morning pile” if you like. Cast remembers.
• The Applications key (or Shift+F10) opens a menu of what the whole place can do, such as Clear Entire Queue in the Play Queue or Mark All as Played in the Inbox. The same menu has Rename This Place…, Hide This Place, Move Up and Move Down, in case you forget the keys, and Places… at the bottom for the whole list at once. On a list of episodes, such as the Inbox or the Play Queue, it also has Choose Columns…, which Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, explains.

To rearrange everything in one go, choose View > Places (Ctrl+Shift+G). You can move, hide, show and rename places there, and Reset to Default puts it all back the way it came. This is also where you show Recently Expired if you want it.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Places. It also takes you into the status bar and Go To.

Lists of episodes

Most places hold episodes: the Inbox, New Episodes, Continue Listening, Personal Audio, the Play Queue, Recently Expired and Downloads. They all work the same way, so learn one and you know them all. Each row reads as the title, the podcast, the length and the status.

Arrow to an episode, then:

• Enter plays it.
• Space adds it to the end of the Play Queue.
• Delete takes it out of this place only. It stays in your library.
• F2 gives the episode a name of your own, handy when a podcast calls every episode “Episode”. Your name sticks, even after Cast checks the podcast again. Clear it and the podcast’s own title comes back. You can rename a podcast the same way.
• Shift+F10 or the Applications key opens everything else you can do with it: play next, download, mark as played, read the show notes, look at its chapters, share it and more.
• Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 run your Quick Actions. Enter is really Quick Action 1, which is Play until you change it. Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, shows you how.

Delete always does the sensible thing for the place you are in, and Cast says what it did. In the Play Queue it takes the episode out of the queue. In Downloads it deletes the saved file, and you can still stream the episode. In Continue Listening it forgets your place, so the episode starts from the top next time. In the Inbox it clears the episode out of the Inbox, and it is still unheard in its podcast.

Two choices on the View menu change what every list shows:

• View > Show narrows every list at once: All Episodes, Unheard Only, Started Only, Downloaded Only or Played Only. Choose Unheard Only and every list hides what you have already heard.
• View > Sort Episodes puts them in the order you like: newest first, oldest first, by title, or by length with Longest First and Shortest First. Shortest First is a good way to find something that fits a short walk.

Working with several episodes at once

Sorting a busy Inbox one episode at a time gets old fast. In any episode list, the Play Queue included, you can select several and act on them together.

1. Go to the list, for example the Inbox (Ctrl+Shift+I).
2. Select the episodes you want:
   • Shift+Up or Shift+Down extends the selection.
   • Ctrl+Space adds or removes the episode under the cursor.
   • Ctrl+A selects the whole list. Cast counts as you go.
3. Press Shift+F10. The menu opens with actions for the whole selection: add them to the queue, download them, mark them played, add them to a playlist, remove their downloaded copies, or file them to an Inbox folder.
4. Choose one. Cast tells you how many it did.

Removing downloaded copies deletes only the files. The episodes stay in your library with your place in each, ready to download again whenever you like.

Favorites, Playlists, Notifications and Podcasts

Four places hold something other than a plain list of episodes.

Favorites lists the podcasts you love most. Press Enter on one and its episodes open right there in the same list. Backspace takes you back to your favorites. Delete takes a podcast out of Favorites, and you still follow it. To add a favorite, play one of its episodes and press Add to Favorites (Alt+F).

Playlists works the same way. Enter opens a playlist in place, Backspace comes back. Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, shows how to make your own.

Notifications keeps what Cast has told you, newest first, so a message you missed is still there. Enter takes you to whatever the notice was about. Chapter 5 has more on it.

Podcasts is your whole library as a tree, with folders at the top and podcasts inside them. Try it now: press Ctrl+Shift+S and arrow down through the podcasts you follow. In the tree:

• Enter on a podcast plays its next unheard episode. This is the one I use every morning.
• Right Arrow opens a podcast to show its episodes, newest first. Left Arrow closes it again.
• Delete on a podcast unfollows it. Cast asks first, and Ctrl+Z brings it back. On a folder, Delete removes the folder and moves its podcasts out of it, so you never lose a podcast by deleting a folder.
• F2 renames a folder.
• Alt+Up and Alt+Down move a podcast or folder into your own order.
• Shift+F10 opens the menu for the row you are on. On a podcast it has Play Next Episode, Add to Favorites, Move to Folder, Move Up in Custom Order and Move Down in Custom Order, Download All Episodes, Remove All Downloads, Remove All Episodes, Feed Credentials for a private feed, Unfollow and New Folder. On a folder it has Rename Folder…, Delete Folder, New Folder and Add Podcast. On an episode inside an open podcast it has Play Episode, and either Download Episode or, once it is saved, Stop and Remove Download.

When your library grows, View > Hide Caught-Up Podcasts (Ctrl+Shift+H) takes the podcasts with nothing unheard out of the tree, so what is left is what has something new for you. Chapter 4, Finding podcasts you will love, shows how to make folders and file podcasts into them.

Finding a podcast or episode

You half remember an episode about a ferry in Bristol, but not which podcast it was on. Find will turn it up.

1. Press Ctrl+F from anywhere, or Alt+N.
2. Type part of a podcast’s name, an episode title, or something you wrote in one of your own notes. Try “bristol”.
3. The list beside Places fills with matches. When you pause typing, Cast says how many it found: “14 matches for bristol.”
4. Press Down Arrow to move into them. Each row says what it is, such as “The Daily, a podcast”. Podcasts come first, then episodes, newest first, then your notes.
5. Press Enter to play, or Shift+F10 for everything else you can do.
6. Press Escape when you are done. Your library comes back with the cursor right where you left it.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Find.

The status bar

The status bar is a row of small readouts along the bottom of the window: what is playing, mute, volume, speed, how many episodes are in the Queue, the Inbox and Downloads, unread notifications, the sleep timer and the clock. It is a good place to check everything at once.

1. Press F6 to step into it.
2. Left Arrow and Right Arrow move from cell to cell. Home and End go to the first and last.
3. Press Enter to use a cell. On the Queue cell, for example, it takes you to the Play Queue, and on the Speed cell it tells you the speed and whether it belongs to this podcast or to every podcast. Shift+F10 opens a cell’s own menu.
4. Press F6, Escape or Tab to step back out.

Prefer it gone? View > Show Status Bar (Ctrl+Shift+B) hides and shows it.

Go To

The place keys are quick, but there are a lot of them. Go To is the one key that reaches everything: a short numbered list of places, and the numbers never move, so your fingers can learn them.

1. Press Ctrl+G.
2. A numbered list opens: Podcasts, Continue Listening, the Play Queue, Downloads, Bookmarks, Listening Statistics, Lineups, Add a Podcast and so on.
3. Press a number to go there, or Escape to stay where you were.

Press Settings inside Go To to choose which ten places are on the list and in what order. Put the one you use most at number 1. Besides every place in the Places list, you can add Lineups, Sound Enhancements, Skip Settings (which opens Preferences at the Playing section), Quick Actions, Episode Extras (About This Episode), Keyboard Shortcuts, the Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet, Media Tools and the Places window. Each row also shows the place’s own key, so after a few weeks of Go To you will find you have learned those too.

The menus

The menu bar reads Podcasts (Alt+P), Edit (Alt+I), View (Alt+V), Episode (Alt+E), Downloads (Alt+D), Window (Alt+W) and Help (Alt+H). Every row shows its key, so a stroll through the menus on a quiet afternoon is a fine way to learn Cast.

• Podcasts is your library. Refresh All Now (Ctrl+F5) and Add Podcast (Ctrl+N) are at the top, with folders, Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,), Preferences (Ctrl+,), Send to Tray (Ctrl+W) and Exit (Ctrl+Q) further down.
• Edit has Undo Last Action (Ctrl+Z).
• View gets you places: Find, every place with its key, and the Show and Sort choices.
• Episode is everything about listening: play, skip, speed, chapters, the sleep timer and sound. Chapter 3, Sit back and listen, goes through it. Lineups… (Ctrl+U) is here too; Chapter 9 is about it.
• Downloads pauses and resumes all your downloads.
• Window lists your open Cast windows. Ctrl+1 always takes you back to the main window, and Ctrl+2 is always Now Playing.
• Help has the user guide, tutorials, the keyboard sheet, AI Features and ways to reach support. Chapter 8, When you need a hand, covers it.

Now and then a menu row is dimmed. Cast tells you why, so you know what would make it work. Chapter 8 has more on that.

Simple and Advanced

Cast starts in Simple mode, with menus that hold what you do week to week: follow, find, play, queue, download, settings and help. Advanced mode adds the rows you go looking for once you know they exist, such as backups, OPML import and export, Choose Columns, Quick Actions and the Quillins menu.

1. Choose View > Advanced Features, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G.
2. Cast tells you which mode you are now in, and the menus change straight away.
3. Press the same key again to switch back.

Even in Simple mode, every Advanced command still works from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and from Go To. Nothing is out of reach.

If you would like an even smaller Cast, View > Customize Features (Ctrl+Alt+C) can switch whole parts of it off, such as Downloads or the sleep timer. Whatever you turn off, you still have a podcast player. Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, tells you more.

Windows that stay open

Most of what Cast opens is a window of its own rather than a box you have to finish with first: Add Podcast, Feed Check, Settings for This Podcast, Episode Filters, Smart Playlist rules, Show Notes, the Transcript, Listening Statistics, Year in Review, About This Episode, Sound Enhancements, Notifications, Watched Folders and Lineups. They all work the same way:

• Each one has a menu bar, and is listed in the Window menu, so you can go back to your library and come back to it.
• Escape or Ctrl+W closes it, and you are back on the row or button you opened it from.
• Opening it again brings the same window to the front instead of a second copy. If you ask for it on a different podcast or episode, the same window shows that one instead.
• Where a window changes settings, its button says Save rather than OK, and the window stays open afterwards, so you can try something and adjust it. Ctrl+S saves too. Close leaves without saving anything you have not saved.

The few that still ask a single question, such as Delete Folder or the Sleep Timer, wait for your answer before you can go on, the way any dialog does.

QUILLBee’s tip: With three or four of these open, it’s easy to lose track. The Window menu (Alt+W) lists every Cast window you have open, and from any of them, Ctrl+1 takes you back to the main window.

Getting home

Wherever you are in the window, Ctrl+Home takes you back to the place Cast opens on, with the cursor on its first row. It is the quickest way back when you have wandered. In a text box, such as the show notes or Find, Ctrl+Home keeps its usual job of moving to the top of the text.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now get around the whole window: the Places list and the place beside it, Find, the status bar, Go To and the menus. You know how to step into a place and back out, how to act on several episodes at once, and how to get home with Ctrl+Home when you have wandered off.

If you would like some practice, Help > Tutorials has two short lessons for this chapter, Places and Find.

Next, Chapter 3, Sit back and listen, is all about the episode that is playing. If you are more curious about sorting what arrives each morning, Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, covers the Inbox and the Play Queue.

Chapter 3: Sit back and listen

This is the good part. You have an episode playing, and this chapter is about everything you can do with it while it plays, without hunting for anything.

We will start with the everyday keys: pause, skip, change the volume and the speed. Then we will move around an episode by its chapters, make a podcast sound the way you like, and set a sleep timer. After that come the things that make listening richer: the Now Playing window, the show notes and their links, transcripts, bookmarks and your own notes. There is a lot here, so dip in for whatever you need today and leave the rest for another evening.

Nearly everything here is on the Episode menu (Alt+E), and nearly every row on that menu has its own key. Give it a few days and you will stop opening the menu at all. Have something playing as you read, and try each key as you meet it.

Playing and pausing

Arrow to an episode in any list and press Enter. It plays, from where you left off if you have heard some of it before.

Once it is playing, these keys work from anywhere in Cast:

1. Ctrl+P pauses. Press it again to carry on.
2. Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down turn the volume up and down. Cast says the new volume.
3. Ctrl+Alt+M (Episode > Mute/Unmute) mutes, and pressing it again brings the sound back.
4. Ctrl+. (Ctrl+Period) stops. Cast remembers your place, so next time the episode carries on where you left it.

If the episode is still loading, Play/Pause changes whether it will start playing when it is ready. Pressing it again changes that choice back. Cast reports a playback problem if the audio backend refuses a request; it does not say that playback paused or resumed when it did not.

Lost track of what is on? Press Ctrl+T (Episode > Say Current Episode) from anywhere, and Cast tells you the episode, the podcast and how far in you are.

The buttons in the main window do the same jobs, if you prefer them: Play, Pause or Resume (Alt+Y or Alt+S) and Stop (Alt+T). If you also use Quill Radio, your hands already know these keys.

Moving around in an episode

Someone is reading a long sponsor message, or you missed what the guest said a moment ago. Skipping is the answer.

• Ctrl+Right skips forward 30 seconds.
• Ctrl+Left skips back 15 seconds.

Cast says where you landed. If you would like bigger or smaller jumps, open Preferences (Ctrl+,), choose the Playing section, and change Skip forward by and Skip back by. To change them for one podcast only, use Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,) instead.

Going to a time. A friend says the good bit starts an hour and two minutes in.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+J (Episode > Go to Position).
2. Type 1:02:00. Typing 62:00 works too, and so does a number of seconds.
3. Press Enter. You are there.

How much is left? You are about to set off on a twenty-minute drive and want to know whether this episode will fit. Press Ctrl+Shift+T (Episode > Time Remaining). Cast says something like “12:04 of 31:50, 20 minutes left”. If you are listening faster than normal, it also tells you how long that really takes, such as “13 minutes at 1.5 times”, and if the sleep timer is running it adds when it will stop. Nothing opens and nothing changes.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Keys. It covers these skips, going to a time, scanning forward and the Winamp letters.

Skipping the intro and the outro

Some podcasts open with the same two minutes of music every week, or close with a long list of credits. Cast can skip them for you, every time.

1. Select the podcast and press Ctrl+Alt+, for Settings for This Podcast.
2. Set Skip the first to how many seconds to skip at the start.
3. Set Stop this far before the end to how many seconds to leave off the end.
4. Press Save (Ctrl+S), then Close.

The intro skip only happens when an episode starts from the beginning, so picking up halfway through never throws you past where you were. When Cast stops early for the outro, it treats the episode as finished and moves on to whatever comes next. The same two settings are in Preferences > Playing if you want them for every podcast.

Scanning forward

Skipping in jumps is fine when you know how far to go. When you want to hear where the ad break ends, scanning is better.

1. While an episode plays, hold down Shift+Right.
2. Cast says “Scanning forward, 4 times speed”, and the episode races along, still recognisable as speech.
3. Let go when you hear the part you want. Cast drops back to exactly the speed you were listening at and tells you what it is.

Chapters

Many podcasts split their episodes into chapters: the news, the interview, the listener questions. When an episode has them, you can hop straight from one part to the next.

• Ctrl+Alt+Right goes to the next chapter.
• Ctrl+Alt+Left goes to the previous one.

Cast says each chapter’s name as you arrive.

To see the whole list:

1. Arrow to the episode and press Shift+F10 or the Applications key.
2. Choose Chapters…. The list shows each chapter’s name and where it starts.
3. Arrow to one and press Enter, or Jump To Chapter (Alt+J), to go there.

Cast finds chapters in several places: a list the podcast published, marks inside a downloaded file, and timestamps the podcast typed into its show notes. Some podcasts mark only a few highlights instead of a full list. Then the list calls them Moments this podcast marked, so you know you are looking at the best bits of the episode.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Chapters, and skipping what you did not come for.

Skipping a chapter

Every episode of a podcast has a sponsor chapter you never want to hear. You can tell Cast to skip it.

1. While the episode plays, open its Chapters… list as above.
2. Arrow to the chapter you want to miss and press Skip This Chapter (Alt+S). The button changes to Stop Skipping This Chapter, in case you change your mind.
3. Mark as many as you like, then close the list.

When playback reaches a marked chapter, Cast says “Skipping chapter” and its name, and jumps past it. Skip Nothing (Alt+N) clears every mark at once.

The marks last for this listening session only, so tomorrow’s episode starts with a clean slate.

For a chapter that turns up in every episode, such as “Sponsor” or “Ad break”, tell the podcast once. In Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,), under Playback, type the chapter names into Skip chapters named. From then on Cast jumps over any chapter with that name in every episode of that podcast. Nothing is removed from the episode.

When an episode has no chapters

Most episodes come without any chapters. Cast can work some out for you, in the background, while you listen. It does this for downloaded episodes from the start, and you will hear one short sentence when it has finished. You do not need to wait for it or press anything.

Worked-out chapters say so in the list, and tell you how sure Cast is about them, so you know they are Cast’s best guess.

To choose how hard Cast tries:

1. Open Preferences (Ctrl+,).
2. In the Section list, choose Chapters.
3. Change How long to spend looking:
   • Not long uses only what Cast already has. Instant.
   • A while, the one Cast starts with, reads the episode’s published transcript if there is one. A few seconds.
   • As long as it takes listens to the whole episode on your own computer, writes down what was said, and finds the sections from that. It takes minutes, works without the internet, and you can stop it any time.
4. Press Save.

Work out chapters, in the same section, chooses whether Cast does this never, only for downloaded episodes, or for every episode. The rest of the Chapters section lets you choose where Cast looks:

• Look for chapters in the show notes reads the times the podcast typed into its notes. It costs nothing and is usually right.
• Look for chapters in the transcript uses a transcript when there is one.
• Listen to the audio to find chapters lets Cast write down what was said when nothing else worked. It is the slow one, so turn it off if you never want it.
• Give worked-out chapters names asks an AI to name the sections. It sends words only, never audio, and it stays off until you turn it on.
• Say when a chapter scan finishes gives you one sentence when Cast is done, and says nothing when it found nothing.
• Chapter preview length is how much Preview This Mark plays either side of a chapter.

Each of these can be set for one podcast in Settings for This Podcast, and each has its own F1 help.

You can also ask for chapters on one episode, right now:

1. Arrow to a downloaded episode and press Shift+F10.
2. Choose Analyse Chapters…. Cast tells you how it is getting on while it works.
3. When it has finished, the Review Chapters window opens with the chapters it found.
4. Arrow to a chapter and press Preview This Mark (Alt+P) to hear a few seconds either side of it. Stop Preview (Alt+S) stops.
5. If a mark is in the wrong place, Nudge Earlier (Alt+E) and Nudge Later (Alt+L) move it a little, and Set Time… (Alt+T) moves it to a time you type. Rename… (Alt+N) gives it a better name, Add Chapter Here… (Alt+A) adds one, and Delete Chapter (Alt+D) removes one.
6. Press Save Chapters to keep them.

Both are in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) for the episode that is playing. Analyse Chapters in This Episode works them out and opens Review Chapters, as above. Find Chapters in This Episode works them out and keeps them straight away, for when you trust Cast’s guess and just want to get on with listening.

Speeding up or slowing down

Some people talk slowly. Some podcasts are best at their natural pace. Cast lets each podcast have its own speed.

1. Start an episode of the podcast you want to change.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+Up to speed up or Ctrl+Shift+Down to slow down. Each press moves a tenth, anywhere from half speed to five times.
3. Cast says the new speed and that it belongs to this podcast.
4. Ctrl+Shift+0 (Episode > Reset Speed to Normal) puts it back to normal.

Cast remembers the speed for that podcast. Your fast-talking news show can stay at normal speed while the slow, rambling one runs at 1.8, and you never have to change it again.

Press the same keys with nothing playing and you set the speed for every podcast that does not have its own. Cast tells you which one you changed.

QUILLBee wants you to know: If an episode plays at a speed you didn’t expect, its podcast probably has a speed of its own. Press F6 to reach the status bar, arrow to the Speed cell and press Enter. Cast tells you the speed and what it belongs to. To have that podcast follow the shared speed again, open Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,) and press Use shared default for Playback speed.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Sleep and speed. It does the sleep timer with you too.

Shortening the silences

Long pauses add up over an hour. Cast can shorten them, so an episode takes less time without anyone sounding rushed.

The quickest way is Ctrl+Shift+9 (Episode > Skip Silence) while an episode plays. Cast says “Skip Silence on” and the pauses get shorter from that moment. Press it again to turn it off.

You can also do it from Sound Enhancements:

1. While an episode plays, press Ctrl+E for Sound Enhancements.
2. Check Smart Speed.
3. Press OK. The episode carries on from the same spot.

Like speed, this belongs to the podcast that is playing, or to every podcast when nothing is playing. You can also turn on Shorten silences in Preferences > Playing for every podcast at once. Just below it, How much silence to shorten chooses A little, A moderate amount, or As much as possible. Even at its strongest, it never speeds anyone up. It only trims the gaps.

Making it sound right

Some podcasts need a little help before they sound good in your ears. Here is how to shape the sound, lift a podcast that is always too quiet, and choose where the sound goes.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Shape the sound.

Sound Enhancements

Some podcasts are muddy, some are thin, and some swing from a whisper to a roar. Sound Enhancements lets you shape the sound.

1. While an episode plays, press Ctrl+E (Episode > Sound Enhancements).
2. Choose a Quick preset: Flat, Bass Boost, Voice Clarity or Podcast. Voice Clarity is a good first try for a muddy recording.
3. If you want finer control, move the Bass, Mid and Treble sliders. Up is more.
4. Check Even Out Volume to bring quiet and loud parts closer together. It is lovely for a laughing guest and a softly spoken host.
5. Press Apply (Alt+Y). Playback picks up at the same spot with the new sound, and the window stays open so you can try something else.
6. When it sounds right, press Close, Escape or Ctrl+W. You are back where you were.

Sound Enhancements is a window of its own, so you can leave it open and go back to your library while you listen. Press Ctrl+E again and it comes to the front, showing the settings for whatever is playing now.

Like speed, these settings belong to the podcast that is playing, or to every podcast when nothing is. The same three sliders are in Preferences > Playing as Bass, in decibels, Middle, in decibels and Treble, in decibels, with Even out volume beside them, if you want a starting sound for every podcast. Sound Enhancements needs a free tool called FFmpeg. If it is missing, the episode plays as normal and Cast tells you why. Chapter 8, When you need a hand, explains how to get it.

Making a quiet podcast louder

One podcast always seems to be recorded in a cupboard. Turning up the computer’s volume for it means turning it down again for everything else. Give that podcast a boost instead.

1. Select the podcast and press Ctrl+Alt+, for Settings for This Podcast.
2. Set Volume Boost to Low, Medium or High.
3. Press Save (Ctrl+S), then Close.

Cast applies the boost every time that podcast plays, and leaves everything else alone. Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, has more on what Settings for This Podcast can do.

Which ear and which speakers

Ctrl+Shift+M (Episode > Audio Output Mode) changes where the sound goes. Each press moves on to the next: stereo, mono, left ear only, right ear only. Left ear only is handy when one ear is for the podcast and the other is for your screen reader. To make a choice stick, set Send the audio to in Preferences > Playing, or in Settings for This Podcast for one podcast.

Ctrl+Shift+K (Episode > Audio Output Device) chooses which speakers or headphones Cast plays through. If Cast cannot switch devices itself, it says so and offers to open the Windows sound settings, where you can send Cast to any device. Windows remembers your choice.

When an episode ends

When an episode finishes, Cast marks it played and plays the next episode in your Play Queue. Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, tells you all about the queue. While you listen, three keys work with it:

• Ctrl+Alt+Down plays the next episode in the queue now.
• Ctrl+Alt+Up goes back to the previous one.
• Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Down marks this episode played and moves on to the next.

Two switches in Preferences > Playing decide what happens at the end: Play the next episode in the Play Queue, which is on, and When the queue is empty, keep going with the same podcast, which is off until you turn it on. With both off, Cast stops at the end of each episode.

If you notice a pause between one episode and the next, turn on Start loading the next episode before this one ends, in the same section. Cast fetches the start of the next queued episode a little early, so the next one begins straight away. It starts off, because it uses some data in advance, which matters on a capped connection.

About ten seconds before an episode ends, Cast tells you what comes next: “Next: Episode 412 from Accidental Tech Podcast.” It names the podcast only when it changes, it says nothing when nothing will follow, and it stays quiet during Quiet Hours. If you would rather not hear it, turn off Say what is up next before an episode ends in Preferences, in the Telling you section.

Stop After This Episode (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A) is for tonight only. Cast stops at the end of this episode instead of moving on, and then the setting turns itself off. Press the key again before then to cancel it.

Falling asleep to a podcast

The sleep timer stops playback for you after a while, so you can drift off with a podcast and wake up with your place still saved.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T (Episode > Sleep Timer).
2. Choose how long: a number of minutes from the list, End of this episode, or Custom… to type your own number of minutes.
3. Press Start (Enter).

A minute before it stops, Cast warns you, and then the sound fades gently away.

• Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T sets the timer straight to the end of this episode. It follows the episode, so skipping ahead moves it too.
• Ctrl+Alt+X (Episode > Extend Sleep Timer 5 Minutes) gives you five more minutes, even once the sound has started to fade.
• To turn the timer off, open the Sleep Timer again and press Cancel Sleep Timer.

If you always fall asleep to the same podcast after about the same time, let Cast remember it. Sleep timer starts at in Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,) sets the number of minutes the Sleep Timer offers first while that podcast plays. It never starts a timer by itself. The same row in Preferences > Playing sets it for every podcast.

The status bar’s Sleep timer cell tells you how long is left at any time.

QUILLBert and QUILLBee:

QUILLBert: The sound started fading, and I wasn’t sleepy yet.

QUILLBee: Ctrl+Alt+X. Five more minutes, and the volume comes straight back up.

Now Playing

Now Playing is a window with every control for the episode that is playing, in one Tab order. It is a lovely place to sit for an evening without your library in the way.

1. Press Ctrl+2 to open it. Episode > Now Playing (Ctrl+Alt+2) opens it too.
2. Tab through it. You meet, in order:
   • Lines naming the podcast, the episode and where it is playing from, such as the Inbox or the Play Queue.
   • A Position slider. Left Arrow and Right Arrow move 5 seconds, Page Up and Page Down move 30, Home and End go to the start and the end, and Cast says where you are.
   • Pause, Stop, Back 30 Seconds, Forward 30 Seconds, Previous Chapter and Next Chapter.
   • Speed, a list of speeds plus Custom… for a speed you type.
   • Volume, a slider, and Mute.
   • The sleep timer, with Set…, At End of Episode, and Extend by 5 Minutes.
   • Chapters. The playing one says “playing”. Press Enter on any row to go there.
   • The show notes, which work as described in the next section.
   • Your note, a box for a thought about this episode. Type it and move on. Cast saves it when you leave the box and says “Note saved”. Empty the box to remove the note.
   • Add to Favorites, Mark as Played, Share…, and About This Episode….
3. Press Ctrl+1 to go back to the main window.

Ctrl+W or Alt+F4 hides Now Playing, and Ctrl+2 brings it back with your place intact. If you would like it to come forward every time an episode starts, turn on Switch to Now Playing when playback starts in Preferences > Playing.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Now Playing.

Reading the show notes

Show notes are what the podcast wrote about an episode: who is on it, what they talk about, and links to things they mention. In Cast they read like a small document, headings and links included.

1. In any list, arrow to an episode.
2. Press Tab. You are in the show notes. Alt+O goes there too.
3. Read with your usual reading keys.

The same notes reader is in Now Playing and in the Show Notes window (View Show Notes… on an episode’s menu), and the same keys work in all three:

• H and Shift+H move to the next and previous heading.
• Tab and Shift+Tab move from link to link. Cast says the link’s name, such as “Link, Jane and Co”. Press Enter to open it in your browser.
• A timestamp such as 12:34 is a link too. Cast says “Timestamp, 12 minutes 34 seconds”. Press Enter and the episode plays from there.
• Ctrl+F finds text in the notes, and F3 finds the next match.

Under the notes are three buttons. Their keys differ a little between the main window and Now Playing:

Copy Notes copies the notes as plain text, ready to paste into an email, and Cast tells you how many words it copied. Press the Applications key on the button for other choices: Plain text with links, which keeps each link’s address beside it, Markdown, or Formatted, which keeps the headings and bold when you paste into Word or Outlook. Cast remembers what you chose. You can also pick it in Preferences > Playing, under Copy show notes as.

Links opens a list of every link in the notes, each with its name and where it goes. The button says how many there are.

1. Press the Links button.
2. Arrow to the link you want.
3. Press Enter to open it in your browser, or use Copy Address, Copy Title and Address or Copy All Addresses.
4. Press Escape to go back to the notes, on the link you were on.

View in Browser opens the notes as the podcast wrote them, pictures and all, in your web browser.

The Show Notes window has two more buttons of its own:

• Send to Editor (Alt+S) puts the notes on the clipboard as plain text, so you can paste them into QUILL, Word or an email. Cast says “Show notes copied to clipboard”.
• Save As… (Alt+A) saves the notes to a file. Choose plain text, HTML or Markdown in the file type list. HTML and Markdown keep every link as a link.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Show notes, and what else the podcast sent. It goes on to About This Episode and transcripts as well.

About This Episode

Many podcasts send more than a title and an audio file. They might say who is on the episode, mark the best moments, recommend other podcasts, or offer a way to support the show. About This Episode shows you whatever this one has.

1. Arrow to an episode, or play one.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+A (Episode > About This Episode), or choose it from the episode’s menu.
3. Before the window opens, Cast gives you a one-line summary, such as “Extra details for this episode: 2 people, 1 marked moment, 1 recommended podcast.” If that is all you wanted to know, press Escape.
4. Move between the tabs with Ctrl+Tab. There is a tab for each kind of detail the episode has, and empty ones are left out:
   • People: the hosts and guests. Enter opens a person’s website if the podcast gave one.
   • Highlights: moments the podcast marked as worth hearing. Enter plays from one.
   • Live: a live stream the podcast is running. Enter tunes in.
   • Other Audio: another version of the episode, often a smaller file for a slow connection.
   • Recommended: podcasts this one recommends. You can follow one from here.
   • Support: where to support the podcast. It opens in your browser.
   • Place: where the episode is about.
5. The button under each list says what it will do for the row you are on, such as Open in Browser, Play or Follow This Podcast. Enter or Space on the row does the same thing.

The window stays open after you use a button, so you can play a highlight and then follow a recommended podcast without opening it twice. It is a window of its own: you can go back to your library while it is open, and asking for About This Episode on another episode shows that episode in the same window. Press Escape or Ctrl+W to close it, and you are back on the episode you started from.

If the podcast sent none of these, the window says so.

Transcripts

Some podcasts publish a transcript, a written copy of everything said in the episode. When an episode has one, its menu (Shift+F10) offers three things:

• Read Transcript… opens the transcript in a reader that follows along as the episode plays. Arrow to any line and press Enter to hear the moment it was spoken.
• Save Transcript As… saves it to a file.
• Open Transcript in Editor opens it in QUILL, if you have it, ready to read, quote or copy from.

Transcripts are also how Cast works out chapters when you choose A while in Preferences > Chapters.

Keeping a moment

When something in an episode is worth coming back to, you have three ways to keep it: a bookmark, a note in your own words, or a sentence you can send to a friend.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Keep a moment.

Bookmarks

A guest recommends a book, and you want to remember where. A bookmark marks that spot in one keystroke.

1. While the episode plays, press Ctrl+Alt+A (Episode > Bookmark This Moment).
2. Cast says the bookmark is saved. There is no window and nothing to type, and the episode keeps playing.

To find your bookmarks again:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J (Help > Bookmarks).
2. Arrow through the list. Each row says what it is in and where.
3. Press Go There (Enter) to play that episode from that moment.

The Bookmarks window also has Edit Note… to add a few words to a bookmark, Share to copy it for someone else, Delete, and Export… to save the whole list as a document. If you use Quill Radio, its bookmarks are in the same list, and Radio sees yours.

A bookmark with a note. Sometimes you want to say why, right then. Press Ctrl+Shift+D (Episode > Bookmark with a Note) instead. Type a few words, such as “the book the guest recommends”, and press Enter. The note is optional; pressing Enter on an empty box still makes the bookmark.

Just this episode’s bookmarks. Press Ctrl+Shift+J (Episode > Bookmarks in This Episode) to see only the bookmarks in the episode that is playing, or the one you are on. The same list is one button away in Now Playing (Bookmarks, Alt+O), and About This Episode has a Bookmarks tab whose Go There plays the episode from that moment.

Your notes on an episode

When you want to say something about a moment, such as “the bit about the recipe”, use a note. A note keeps your words and the time together.

1. While the episode plays, press Ctrl+Alt+N (Episode > Add Episode Note).
2. Type your note and press OK. Cast saves it at the point you were listening.

To read your notes:

• Episode Notes… on any episode’s menu shows that episode’s notes, whether it is playing or not.
• My Notes in This Episode, in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), lists the notes for what is playing.

Select a note and press Jump To Note (Alt+J), or Enter, and Cast takes you to that moment, starting the episode if it has to. Copy Note (Alt+C) copies the episode, the podcast, the time and your words together, ready to send to someone. Delete Note (Alt+D) removes the note you are on, and Cast says “Note deleted”. The Your note box in Now Playing is a note too, so it shows up here as well.

Sharing a moment

You hear something wonderful and want a friend to hear it too.

1. While it plays, press Shift+F10 on the episode and choose Share This Moment. In Now Playing, press Share….
2. Cast copies a sentence such as “Blind Abilities, Episode 214, at 41 minutes 12 seconds”, along with a link.
3. Paste it into a message or an email.

The sentence works for anyone, even read out over the phone. A friend who has Cast and follows the same podcast can open the link and hear that exact second.

Picking up where you left off

You never have to remember where you stopped. Every episode keeps your place, and Cast saves it as you listen, so even a power cut costs you a sentence at most. When you finish an episode, Cast marks it played, and it starts from the beginning if you ever play it again.

Continue Listening gathers everything you started and did not finish.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+L.
2. Arrow through the list, newest first. Each row tells you how far in you are, such as “Rome, The Rest Is History, podcast, 20 minutes in, 33% through.”
3. Press Enter to carry on from that point.
4. Press Delete on an episode you are not going back to. Cast forgets your place and takes it off the list, and the episode stays unheard.

If your place in an episode came from another device, the row says so at the end: “last played on Kitchen laptop”, or “last played on Earshot” when it came from the Earshot app on your phone. Once you listen to it here, that goes away, because the place is yours again.

If you also use Quill Radio, an unfinished audiobook chapter or recording from Radio shows up in the same list.

Two more ways back:

• The Recently Played submenu on the Episode menu lists your last fifteen episodes. Choose one to play it.
• Resume Last Episode on Launch (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L on the Podcasts menu) starts your last episode as soon as Cast opens. I have it on. I open Cast with my coffee and the episode is already talking.

Clearing out a podcast

You have fallen behind on a podcast and want a fresh start, without forty unheard episodes staring at you.

1. Select the podcast, or play one of its episodes.
2. Press Alt+Shift+E (Episode > Mark All as Played). In the Command Palette it is called Mark All Episodes as Played.
3. Cast asks first, naming the podcast and how many episodes. Press Mark Played.

Every episode is marked played and leaves the Inbox. They stay in your library, and your downloads stay too. If you do this often, check Don’t ask me again and Cast stops asking.

For one episode at a time, press Shift+F10 on it and choose Mark as Played. On an episode you have already heard, the same row reads Mark as Unheard, which puts it back among the new ones, handy when you want to hear it again or marked it by mistake.

Everything about what is playing

When you want every detail about the playing episode in one place, press Ctrl+I (Episode > Player Information). You get a text box you can read at your own pace and copy from: the title, podcast, position, length, time left, speed, whether it is streaming or saved on this computer, and which chapter you are in.

Winamp keys

If your fingers learned on Winamp, the classic playback keys work in the Now Playing window. Open it with Ctrl+2. In the main window, letters belong to the focused library or episode list and jump to matching rows.

The letters never fire while you are typing in a text box. In a list or the Podcasts tree, letters and arrows keep their usual navigation job. Turn off Winamp playback keys in Preferences > Playing if you do not want the optional keys in Now Playing.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now listen exactly the way you like. You can skip and scan, hop between chapters and skip the ones you never want, give each podcast its own speed, shape the sound, and fall asleep with a sleep timer running. You can read the show notes, keep a moment with a bookmark or a note, and share it with a friend.

Several lessons in Help > Tutorials go over this chapter with you: Keys, Sleep and speed, Chapters, and skipping what you did not come for, Shape the sound, Now Playing, Keep a moment, and Show notes, and what else the podcast sent. Start with whichever one you want to feel at home with first.

Next, Chapter 4, Finding podcasts you will love, helps you fill your library with more to listen to.

Chapter 4: Finding podcasts you will love

This chapter is about filling your library. Someone mentions a podcast on the radio, a friend will not stop talking about one, or you have years of favourites sitting in another app. Here you will learn every way to bring a podcast into Cast: by name, by its address, from a members-only feed, from a list exported by another app, and from audio files already on your computer. Then we will sort it all into folders that make sense to you.

A word you will meet often: a podcast’s feed is the address where the publisher lists its episodes. Cast reads the feed to learn what is new. Most of the time you never see it, because finding a podcast by name finds the feed for you.

Most of this starts on the Podcasts menu (Alt+P). Its first two rows are the ones you will use most. Refresh All Now (Ctrl+F5) asks every podcast you follow whether it has anything new, and Add Podcast… (Ctrl+N) opens the window for finding new ones. The Add Podcast button in the main window (Alt+A) opens it too.

During Refresh All Now, Cast waits until the requested feeds have finished before rebuilding the library tree and refreshing Podcast Manager, and it runs maintenance once at the end. This avoids repeating whole-library work for every feed in the run.

A few rows mentioned here show only in Advanced mode, and this chapter says which. The Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) reaches them in either mode.

Adding a podcast by name

You know what it is called. That is enough. Try it now with a podcast you already like.

1. Press Ctrl+N. Focus is in Podcast name.
2. Type part of the name and press Enter, or press Find Podcasts (Alt+S).
3. Cast tells you what it found, for example “12 results: 9 from iTunes, 3 from Podcast Index.”
4. Press Alt+R to go to the Results list and arrow through it.
5. Found it? Press Follow (Alt+O). Not sure? Press Enter on it for a closer look first, which the next section explains.

Cast says “Now following”, the podcast’s name and how many episodes it has. The podcast is in your library straight away, and its newest episodes are ready to play.

Cast looks in two directories at once, iTunes and Podcast Index, which between them know nearly every podcast there is. Podcast Index is also where many independent podcasts live, so asking both finds things a single store misses. If you ever want only one, choose it in the Directory list (Alt+D). Most people leave it on Both. To change where Add Podcast always starts looking, set Find podcasts in these directories in Preferences > Data.

A podcast you already follow says “Following” in the results, and on that row the Follow button reads Unfollow instead. To look for something else, clear the name box and type again.

When you follow a podcast, Cast brings in its newest episodes. If you would like some of its older ones too, open Preferences > Fetching and set When I follow a podcast, also fetch to the newest few, the last few months, or everything the feed still offers. How many, or how many months says how far back. This happens once, at the moment you follow. If you add a feed you already follow, If I add a podcast I already follow, in the same section, decides whether Cast asks you, skips it quietly, or adds a second copy.

Looking before you follow

Plenty of podcasts share a name. Three shows called “The Daily”, a dozen called “Book Club”. A quick look saves you following the wrong one.

1. In the Results list, press Enter on a result, or press Preview… (Alt+P).
2. Read About this podcast (Alt+A): its own description, as text you can arrow through.
3. Press Alt+R for Recent episodes, the ten newest with their dates.

Between them, these tell you whether it is the one you meant, whether it is still running, and whether it is in your language. Press Follow if it is, or Escape to go back to your results and keep looking.

Every result has a menu of its own, too. Press Shift+F10 or the Applications key on it for Follow (or Stop Following), Preview…, Copy Feed Address, Copy Website Address and Open Website in Your Browser. The two website items are dimmed when the podcast did not give a website. Cast tells you when an address has been copied.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called The first hour. Its first few steps find and follow a podcast with you.

Following ACB Media’s podcasts

If you would like a full shelf to explore on your first day, Podcasts > Follow ACB Media Podcasts (Ctrl+Alt+B) follows every podcast in ACB Media’s directory at once. They are set to stream, so nothing starts a pile of downloads. Run it again later to pick up any new ones. It never adds the same podcast twice, so it is safe to press whenever you like.

Adding a podcast by its address

Sometimes a website, a newsletter or a friend gives you the feed address itself. It usually ends in “.rss” or “.xml”, or the page calls it the “RSS feed”.

1. In Add Podcast, press Alt+F to go to Feed address.
2. Paste the address with Ctrl+V.
3. Press Enter or Add (Alt+A).

There is a shortcut. Copy the address first, wherever you found it, then press Ctrl+N in Cast. Add Podcast opens with the address already filled in and the cursor on it, and Cast tells you so. Press Enter to follow.

Cast says “Fetching” while it reads the feed, then tells you it is following.

Private feeds with a username and password

Patreon supporter feeds, members-only podcasts and company feeds usually need a sign-in. Cast handles them like any other podcast once it knows your details.

1. Paste the feed address into Add Podcast and press Add.
2. A Feed Credentials window opens with focus in Username (Alt+U). Type the username and password (Alt+P) your provider gave you. Patreon shows them on the same page as the feed address.
3. Press OK, and the podcast is added as usual.

If the password is wrong, the window comes back with your username still filled in, and says so. Once a podcast has a sign-in, Cast uses it for everything that podcast needs: checking for episodes, downloading, playing, chapters and transcripts.

To change or remove a sign-in later, press Shift+F10 on the podcast and choose Feed Credentials…. Type a new password to replace the old one, or leave the password blank to keep the one already saved. Clear Credentials (Alt+L) removes the sign-in altogether.

Your password is kept safely by Windows, never in a plain file, and never in a list you export, so an exported list is always safe to share. On a portable copy, the password stays with the computer it was typed on. On a new computer, Cast tells you the sign-in failed, and you type it once more in Feed Credentials.

Using your own Podcast Index key

Cast already uses Podcast Index for you, with nothing to set up. If you have your own free key from podcastindex.org and would rather use it, choose Podcasts > Podcast Index Credentials… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I, Advanced).

1. Type your key in Key (Alt+K) and your secret in Secret (Alt+E).
2. Press Read It Back (Alt+R) if you want to hear what you typed.
3. Press Save.

Your key is used from then on, and it is kept by Windows like a feed password. Forget These (Alt+F) removes it, and Cast goes back to its own.

Bringing your podcasts from another app

Every podcast app can export the podcasts you follow as an OPML file. Think of it as a moving box: one file holding your whole list, folders and all. Cast can read one, however long, even a list of a thousand podcasts built up over years.

1. In your old app, export your podcasts as OPML and save the file somewhere you can find it.
2. In Cast, choose Podcasts > Import OPML… (Ctrl+Alt+I, Advanced), or press Import OPML… (Alt+I) in the Add Podcast window.
3. Pick the file.
4. Decide on the two checkboxes.
   • Check that each feed is still reachable after importing (Alt+C) finds the podcasts that have stopped publishing, so you are not left wondering why one never has anything new.
   • Add every show as streaming (Alt+S) is checked to begin with, so a long list does not start a download for every podcast in it. Leave it checked unless you know you want downloads.
5. Press Import.

Your folders come across as folders, exactly as the file has them: folders inside folders as deep as they go, in the same order, and empty folders too. Podcasts that sit outside any folder stay at the top level. Folder names with an ampersand, accents or quotation marks come across as written, and so do names that another app saved with its punctuation spelled out twice.

A podcast listed twice is imported once, even if one copy has a slightly different address. If the file puts one podcast in two folders, Cast follows it once, in the first folder it appears in, and the report says where the other copy was. Two different podcasts that happen to share a name are both imported, whether the other one is already in your list or elsewhere in the same file, and the report points them out so you can check. A line in the file whose address is not a complete web address, like “http://feed/”, is not imported; the report lists it with the reason.

The first time Cast reads each new podcast, it takes that as a starting point. You will not be told about hundreds of “new” episodes from shows you have just brought across, and nothing is downloaded or added to a playlist because of it. The only exception is what you asked for under “When I follow a podcast, also fetch” in the podcast’s settings.

Reading the OPML file and preparing the import plan also run in the background, so a long list does not freeze Cast. Subscriptions are added before the optional reachability check starts. If you asked for that check, Cast tells you how far along it is as it goes. Stop Checking (Alt+T) ends the check early and keeps the subscriptions already imported. A private feed that asks you to sign in counts as working. An address that now opens a web page, a feed with nothing in it, and a host that turns podcast apps away do not.

When it is done, the OPML Import Report window lists anything worth your attention. It names feeds that did not answer, each with the reason in plain words, and duplicates it skipped. It lists anything it could not import, and feeds whose host says they have moved for good. Cast moves a podcast to its new address only when Follow permanent feed redirects is on (Preferences > Fetching). Otherwise the report says the address was left alone. Two buttons sit under it:

• Export Report… (Alt+E) saves the whole report as a text file.
• Save Pruned OPML… (Alt+P) writes your original file back out without the feeds that no longer answer, which is a nice way to tidy the list you keep elsewhere.

You can ask about dead feeds again any time with Podcasts > Feed Check… (Ctrl+Shift+C). Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, shows you how to read it.

To go the other way, choose Podcasts > Export OPML… (Ctrl+Alt+E, Advanced) and save the file. Any other podcast app can read it. Your folders go into the file as folders, empty ones included, so importing it again, in Cast or anywhere else, gives you the same arrangement. Inside each folder the folders are written first and then the podcasts. A file that mixed the two in another order comes back with the same folders and podcasts in the same places, just grouped that way.

If you checked the box for it when you installed Cast, pressing Enter on an OPML file in File Explorer opens Cast straight into the import, and Cast tells you which file it is opening. A list saved with an “.xml” ending imports fine through Import OPML too.

Podcasts that other podcasts recommend

Some of the best finds come from podcasts you already enjoy. Many publishers list podcasts they recommend, and Cast shows them in About This Episode on the Episode menu, under its Recommended tab. Following one there is a real follow, with the podcast’s proper name and its episodes. Chapter 3, Sit back and listen, walks through About This Episode.

QUILLBert found something: Most of the podcasts he follows now came from that Recommended tab in About This Episode (Ctrl+Shift+A). He follows one, it recommends three more, and he has given up counting. Not every podcast sends recommendations, so if there’s no Recommended tab, this one didn’t.

Your own recordings and audiobooks

Cast can play audio you already have, such as audiobooks, lectures, sermons or your own recordings. It treats each collection like a podcast, so you get the same keys, the same bookmarks and the same “pick up where I left off”. They live in the Personal Audio place (Ctrl+Shift+U).

1. Choose Podcasts > Add Personal Audio… (Ctrl+Alt+L).
2. Pick one or more audio files. MP3, M4B, M4A, WAV, FLAC and OGG all work.
3. Type a name for the collection and press Enter.

Each file becomes an episode. Cast keeps its own copy, so moving or deleting the originals does no harm.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Your own audio. It covers watched folders too.

Folders Cast watches for you

This is one of my favourite parts of Cast. Maybe your voice recorder copies its recordings to a folder on your computer. Maybe a friend drops lectures into a shared Dropbox folder, or your audiobooks download into the same place every time. Tell Cast about that folder once, and from then on anything that lands there turns up in Personal Audio on its own. Cast tells you when it arrives, it never brings the same file in twice, and your original stays exactly where it was. You never have to go and fetch it.

To watch a folder:

1. Choose Podcasts > Watched Folders… (Ctrl+Alt+W). The Watched Folders window opens.
2. Press Add Folder (Alt+A) and choose the folder, the same way you would choose one anywhere else in Windows.
3. The Watched Folder Settings window opens for that folder. The choices are explained just below, and the ones it starts with are good ones, so you can simply press Save.
4. Cast says it is watching the folder and has a first look straight away. Anything already there arrives now.

Try it with a folder you already have recordings in. Within a few seconds you will hear something like “New in Voice Memos: Tuesday meeting, 42 minutes”. Press Ctrl+Shift+U to go to Personal Audio, and there it is, ready to play with every key you already know.

What the folder settings mean

The settings page has one row for each choice:

• Name (Alt+N) is what Personal Audio calls the files from this folder. It starts as the folder’s own name.
• What to do with the original (Alt+O). Leave it where it is is the safe choice: Cast keeps its own copy and never touches yours. Move it into Cast’s folder tidies your folder as files arrive. Play it from where it is makes no copy at all, which saves space. If that folder is on a drive you unplug, the episode says it is unavailable and keeps your place until the drive is back.
• New arrivals (Alt+A). A new file can simply join Personal Audio, or also go to the end of your Play Queue, or also start playing when nothing else is.
• Tell me (Alt+T). Cast can say each new file by name and length, say only how many arrived, or stay quiet. Every arrival goes into Notifications whichever you pick.
• Ignore files shorter than (Alt+I). Recorders sometimes make a file by accident when a button is bumped. Anything shorter than this, in seconds, is left out. It starts at 30.
• Speed (Alt+P). Lectures and audiobooks often want different speeds, so each folder can have its own.
• Include subfolders (Alt+S) also watches every folder inside this one.
• Each subfolder is its own group (Alt+G). With this on, a folder of audiobooks becomes one group per book in Personal Audio.
• File types to bring in (Alt+Y). Every kind of audio Cast plays starts checked. Uncheck one to leave those files alone, such as raw .wav recordings you are still editing.

If you add folders often, you can choose what a new one starts with. In Preferences (Ctrl+,), the Data section has four rows for it: A new watched folder’s original files, When files arrive in a new watched folder, tell me, A new watched folder ignores files shorter than, and A new watched folder includes its subfolders. Folders you already watch keep their own settings.

And if you like to decide about everything in one place, turn on New files in watched folders also wait in the Inbox, in the The Inbox section of Preferences. Your new recordings then wait in the Inbox beside new episodes, as well as being in Personal Audio.

Living with your watched folders

The Watched Folders window lists each folder as a sentence: its name, whether Cast is watching it, how many files it has brought in, when something last arrived, and where it is. Press Enter on one to go to its files in Personal Audio. The buttons do the rest, and the Applications key offers them again, along with Go to Its Files, Open Folder in File Explorer and Copy Path. On that menu, Pause or Resume says exactly which it will do: Pause Watching on a folder Cast is watching, and Resume Watching on one you paused.

• Folder Settings (Alt+S) opens that folder’s settings page again.
• Scan Now (Alt+N) looks at the folder straight away.
• Pause or Resume (Alt+U) stops watching for a while, and starts again.
• Remove (Alt+M), or the Delete key, stops watching the folder. Cast asks first, and the answer starts on No. The files it already brought in stay in Personal Audio, and nothing in the folder is touched.

A few things happen without you having to think about them:

• A file that is still being written, such as a long recording copying across, is left alone until it has finished. Then it arrives once.
• The same recording renamed, or dropped into two watched folders, is still one episode.
• Deleting a file from the folder does not delete the episode. The folder is a way in, not a mirror.
• Cast also looks at every folder when it opens and when your computer wakes up, so nothing that arrived while it was closed is missed.
• A folder on a network drive is looked at every ten minutes, because Windows cannot always tell Cast about changes there. Scan Now is there for when you cannot wait. To look at every watched folder at once, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and choose Scan Watched Folders for New Episodes.
• If a folder goes missing, for example because a drive is unplugged, Cast tells you once and keeps watching. Help > Recent Problems keeps a note of it.

Organising podcasts into folders

Once you follow more than a handful, folders help: News, Comedy, Tech, Long Drives, whatever suits you. They live in the Podcasts place (Ctrl+Shift+S), a tree of your folders with your podcasts inside them.

To make a folder and fill it:

1. Choose Podcasts > New Folder… (Ctrl+Shift+F), type a name and press Enter.
2. Go to a podcast, press Shift+F10, and choose Move to Folder….
3. Pick the folder and press Enter.

After moving, focus stays in the podcast tree on the next podcast in the source folder, or the previous one if you moved the last podcast. If no podcasts remain there, the containing folder is the fallback. Unchanged rows stay in place rather than the whole library being cleared and rebuilt.

In the tree:

• Enter on a podcast plays its next unheard episode.
• Right Arrow opens a podcast to show its episodes.
• F2 on a folder renames it.
• Delete on a folder removes the folder and moves its podcasts out of it. Your podcasts stay.
• Alt+Up and Alt+Down move a podcast or folder in your own order.

A folder is a good place to listen from, too. A folder always includes any folders inside it. Press Shift+F10 on one for:

• Play All Unheard, which queues the newest unheard episode from each podcast in it and starts playing. One from each keeps the queue a sensible length.
• Add All to Queue, for every unheard episode in it.
• Move Up and Move Down, which move the folder among its neighbours. Cast tells you where it is now, such as “News, 2 of 5”.
• Export This Folder as OPML…, to share one folder and what is inside it with another computer or another person.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Arrange a library that has grown.

Choosing the order of your podcasts

Podcasts > Sort Podcasts offers Ascending (A to Z), Descending (Z to A), or Custom Order, and the menu always shows which one is in use. Custom Order is the one you build yourself. The first time you press Alt+Up or Alt+Down in the Podcasts place, Cast switches to Custom Order for you, starting from the order you were looking at, so nothing jumps around.

Choosing how the library looks

A long library is easier to move around when it is shaped the way you think about it. Press Ctrl+Shift+R (View > Rearrange Library and Inbox). Each choice in that window takes effect as soon as you make it, so you can try one, press Escape, listen to the library, and come back. Close keeps everything.

• Show the library as decides the shape of the Podcasts place:
  • Folders first, then podcasts, the way it starts. Your folders come first, then any podcasts that are not in a folder.
  • Folders only. Just your folders, closed, so even a library of a hundred podcasts is a short list. Podcasts not in a folder get a folder of their own at the end, called “Podcasts in no folder”. Right Arrow opens a folder.
  • Podcasts only, without folders. One list of every podcast, with no folders in the way.
  • Folders and podcasts together, by name. Folders and podcasts mixed in one alphabetical list.
• Sort podcasts by: title A to Z or Z to A, most unheard first, recently updated first, or your own order.
• Sort folders by: your own order (the one Move Up and Move Down make), name A to Z or Z to A, most unheard first, or most podcasts first.
• Folders start open, showing their podcasts, or closed until you open one.
• Counts say how many episodes are unheard, how many podcasts a folder holds, both, or nothing at all, if you would rather hear just the names.
• Leave out folders with nothing in them keeps empty folders out of the way. They come back the moment you file a podcast in one.
• Show the Inbox as is explained in “Folders first in the Inbox” below.

None of these hides a podcast. Whatever you choose, every podcast is still there, one Right Arrow away at most. The same choices are in Preferences (Ctrl+,), in the section called The library, with the Inbox one in The Inbox. There, Folders start is called Folders in the library start, and Counts say is Counts in the library say.

The library section has one more choice, Show lists that mix podcasts as. It shapes the lists that mix podcasts, such as New Episodes: one flat list, grouped by podcast, or a folder for each podcast. It only groups the rows; it never leaves any out.

QUILLBee’s tip: A big library gets shorter still with View > Hide Caught-Up Podcasts (Ctrl+Shift+H), which leaves out every podcast with nothing unheard. It’s a check item on the View menu, so the same key brings them all back. And if the Podcasts place ever looks emptier than you remember, that check mark is the first thing to look at.

Keeping your favourites close

Some podcasts you reach for every day. Select one and press Add to Favorites (Alt+F), or choose it on the podcast’s menu, and it appears in the Favorites place (Alt+Shift+V). Enter on a favourite opens its episodes right there, and Backspace brings you back. Delete takes a podcast out of Favorites, and you still follow it.

Settings for one podcast

Every podcast can have its own way of doing things: a slower speed for a fast talker, a louder volume for a quiet one, its own skips. Select a podcast and press Ctrl+Alt+, (Settings for This Podcast). Anything you change there has a “Use shared default for…” button beside it to put it back. The shared defaults are in Preferences (Ctrl+,). Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, walks through both.

Unfollowing a podcast

Had enough of one? Select it and press Unfollow (Alt+U), or press Delete on it in the Podcasts place. Cast asks first, and if you downloaded episodes, asks separately whether to delete those too. Changed your mind? Press Ctrl+Z straight away and it comes back with its episodes and your place in them.

Spotify podcasts (experimental)

Cast can play podcasts hosted on Spotify. This is early work, and hidden until you unlock it. You need four things:

• the Spotify feature unlocked with a code, through Help > Redeem Unlock Code…;
• a Spotify Premium account, since Spotify only streams to Premium members;
• your own Spotify Client ID, from an app you register in the Spotify Developer Dashboard with its redirect address set to exactly http://127.0.0.1:43217/callback;
• the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which current Windows already has.

Once it is unlocked, the Help menu gains two rows.

1. Connect to Spotify… (Ctrl+Alt+S). Type your Client ID and start the sign-in. Your web browser opens on Spotify’s own page. Approve it, and Cast takes over from there. Your sign-in is kept by Windows.
2. Browse Spotify Podcasts… (Ctrl+Alt+V). Type a podcast or episode name, arrow to a result, and press Enter to play.

All the usual playing keys work on a Spotify episode. Spotify episodes play as streams and have no Download, and many Spotify podcasts exist only on Spotify. Spotify is switched off in Safe Mode, and the first sign-in asks your permission before Cast reaches Spotify.

What you learned, and where to go next

You now know every way to bring a podcast home: by name, by its address, from a private feed, from another app’s list, and from audio files already on your computer. You can sort your library into folders, choose how it looks, keep your favorites close, and let a podcast go when you have had enough of it.

To practise, Help > Tutorials has Your own audio, for Personal Audio and watched folders, and Arrange a library that has grown, for folders, favorites and unfollowing.

Once you are following a few podcasts, Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, shows how their new episodes find you.

Chapter 5: Keeping up without keeping watch

Following a podcast is the easy part. The fun starts the next morning, when there is something new waiting. This chapter is about that everyday rhythm: how Cast finds new episodes, where it puts them, and how you decide what to hear and in what order. You will meet the Inbox, the Play Queue, playlists, downloads, schedules and Episode Filters, each explained before you use it.

The chapter starts with the ideas, then the morning routine that uses them, then each part in turn. Read the first two sections and you can stop there if you like. The rest is for when you want Cast to fit you a little better.

How new episodes reach you

Here is the whole picture in a few sentences, the way I would explain it over coffee.

Checking. Cast learns about a new episode by reading the podcast’s feed, the list its publisher keeps. You can ask Cast to check at any time with F5. You can also give a podcast a schedule, so it checks itself, every hour, at six in the morning, or around the time the podcast usually comes out.

New Episodes. Everything that arrives shows up in the New Episodes place, newest first, from every podcast you follow. It needs no setting up. It is a good place to browse.

The Inbox. The Inbox is where new episodes wait until you decide about them. You choose which podcasts send episodes there. Then you go through it, like a pile of post: play this one, queue that one, file one away for the weekend, and mark the rest played. An Inbox that you empty each morning means nothing slips past you.

The Play Queue. The Play Queue is your “up next” list. When one episode ends, the next one in the queue starts. You fill it from anywhere with a single key, Space.

Playlists. A playlist is a list you keep and come back to. You can fill one by hand, or write a few rules and let it fill itself, such as “everything under twenty minutes that I have not heard”.

Episode Filters. Some podcasts publish things you do not want, such as trailers or a daily segment beside the main show. A filter is a rule for one podcast that keeps those episodes out of your way. It never deletes them.

Downloads. Every episode can play straight from the internet. Downloading keeps a copy on your computer, for listening offline or on a slow connection, and Cast can do it for you.

The everyday rhythm

Here is how most mornings go. Try it now with the podcasts you already follow.

1. Press F5 (Podcasts > Refresh All Now) to check every podcast you follow. Cast tells you how many it is checking, and the answers come in podcast by podcast over the next few seconds. If your podcasts have schedules, you can skip this step.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+W for New Episodes, or Ctrl+Shift+I for the Inbox.
3. Arrow through what arrived. Press Enter to play an episode now, or Space to add it to the Play Queue. Cast says “Added to the Play Queue”.
4. Press Ctrl+Shift+Q whenever you want to see what is lined up in the Play Queue. When one episode ends, the next one starts.

That is the whole loop. Everything else in this chapter makes it fit you a little better.

A note from QUILLBee: An empty Inbox on your first morning doesn’t mean nothing arrived. Nothing goes to the Inbox until you send a podcast there, which “Choosing what goes to the Inbox” explains a little further on. Until you do, New Episodes (Ctrl+Shift+W) has everything.

New Episodes

New Episodes (View > New Episodes, Ctrl+Shift+W) shows recent episodes from all your podcasts, newest first. All the usual episode keys work here: Enter plays, Space queues, Shift+F10 opens everything else. Delete takes an episode off this list without touching it anywhere else.

On a morning when you want a clean slate, press the Applications key on the New Episodes place and choose Mark All as Played…. Cast asks first.

The Inbox

The Inbox (View > Inbox, Ctrl+Shift+I) holds the unheard episodes of the podcasts you send there. It is a place for sorting, so everything you do in it is about deciding:

• Enter plays an episode now.
• Space adds it to the Play Queue.
• Shift+F10 and File to Inbox Folder… puts it aside for later, which the Inbox folders section explains.
• Delete takes it out of the Inbox. It stays unheard in its podcast’s own list.
• Mark All as Played…, on the Inbox place’s Applications key menu, clears the lot when you are starting fresh.

Nothing you do in the Inbox removes an episode from your library. When Cast opens and something is waiting in the Inbox, that is where it starts you.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called The Inbox. It finishes by catching a new episode from its notice.

Choosing what goes to the Inbox

Nothing goes to the Inbox until you say so, one podcast at a time.

1. Go to a podcast, in the Podcasts place or Favorites.
2. Press Shift+F10 or the Applications key.
3. Choose Route New Episodes to Inbox.

From then on its new episodes wait in the Inbox. The same menu row now reads Stop Routing to Inbox, to turn it off.

If you would rather have nearly everything in the Inbox, open Preferences (Ctrl+,), choose The Inbox section, and change Which podcasts go to the Inbox to “Every podcast except the ones I mark”. The podcast menu row then becomes Keep This Show Out of the Inbox, and on a podcast you have kept out, Put Back in the Inbox.

Inbox folders

Sometimes you want to keep an episode without hearing it today: a long interview for the weekend, a cooking episode for when you are in the kitchen. Inbox folders hold those. They belong to the Inbox and are separate from your library’s folders.

1. In the Inbox, go to an episode, or select several.
2. Press Shift+F10 and choose File to Inbox Folder….
3. Pick a folder, or type a new name, and press Enter.

With several episodes selected, Cast asks once for all of them. Once you file an episode from a podcast, Cast remembers the folder and files that podcast’s later episodes there too, and tells you it has done so.

To look in one folder, use View > Inbox Folder… (Ctrl+Shift+O), or Inbox Folder… on the Inbox place’s Applications key menu. Deleting an Inbox folder moves its episodes up a level. It never removes them.

Folders first in the Inbox

When a lot arrives at once, a long Inbox is easier to take in by folder. Press Ctrl+Shift+R and choose Show the Inbox as:

• Every episode in one list, the way it starts.
• Folders first, then episodes. The Inbox begins with a row for each of your library’s folders that has something new, such as “News, folder, 5 in the Inbox”, and then lists the episodes from podcasts that are not in a folder. Press Enter on a folder row to see just its episodes, and Backspace to come back to the folder row.
• Folders only. Just the folder rows, with one more called “Podcasts in no folder” for everything else.

These are the folders your podcasts live in, the same ones as in the Podcasts place. Inbox folders, the ones you file single episodes into, are separate and still work as described above.

Keeping the Inbox tidy

An Inbox that keeps everything forever turns into a second library. To stop that, open Preferences > The Inbox and set two limits:

• Inbox: keep at most a number of episodes. Leave it at 0 for no limit.
• Inbox: drop episodes older than a few hours up to two weeks.

Any podcast can have its own limits in Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,), so a daily news show can keep three while a weekly one keeps everything.

Trimming never deletes anything. A trimmed episode stays unheard in its podcast’s own list, downloaded file and all. Episodes you have started, queued, or filed into an Inbox folder are never trimmed and do not count toward the limit.

Now and then a publisher re-issues an episode, with a corrected file or a new cut. If that episode had been trimmed from your Inbox, Cast brings it back and tells you: “Episode 42 was re-published by The Daily, so it is back in your Inbox.” Episodes you have played, started, queued or filed stay where they are. A few podcasts re-issue their whole back catalogue every time they tidy their feed. For one of those, turn off Treat re-published episodes as new in its Settings for This Podcast, and old episodes stop coming back.

The Play Queue

The Play Queue (View > Play Queue, Ctrl+Shift+Q) is what plays next. Fill it in the morning and Cast plays one episode after another until it runs out.

Ways to add to it:

• Press Space on any episode, in any list.
• Press Shift+Space on any episode to play it next, straight after the one that is playing. Play Next on an episode’s menu (Shift+F10) does the same.
• On a folder in the Podcasts place, choose Add All to Queue for every unheard episode in it.
• In the Notifications window, choose Add to Queue on a new-episode notice.

Several at once? Select them with Shift and the arrows, or Ctrl+Space, then press Space or use the menu. Chapter 2, Finding your way around, has more on working with several episodes at once.

While the queue is playing, you can move through it from anywhere. These are on Episode > Play Queue Run:

• Next in Queue (Ctrl+Alt+Down) skips to the next episode.
• Previous in Queue (Ctrl+Alt+Up) goes back one.
• Mark as Played and Next (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Down) finishes this one for good and moves on. I use this one for news I have heard enough of.

In the queue itself, Delete takes an episode out of the queue. It stays in your library. An episode Cast put there for you, rather than one you added yourself, says why at the end of its row: “queued by Auto-Queue”, “queued by your listening run” or “queued by a watched folder”. So you always know where an episode came from.

The Applications key on the Play Queue place offers:

• Clear Entire Queue…, which asks first.
• Play Queue Shuffled, for a change of pace.
• Save Lineup… and Apply Lineup…, which save the queue’s order as a QUILL Lineup and put one back at the front. Lineups, below, explains them.

When you just want something to listen to, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and type “unheard”. Play an Unheard Episode (newest) plays the next unstarted episode in your queue if there is one, then looks in the Inbox, then everywhere else, and picks the newest you have not started. Play an Unheard Episode (oldest) looks in the same order but picks the oldest, which suits a podcast you are working through from the start.

If your queue is long, Group the Play Queue by in Preferences > The window clusters it by podcast or by folder. The play order does not change, and each group header says what it is: “News, group, 4 episodes”.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called The Queue. It covers lineups and expiry as well.

Sending a podcast straight to the queue

For a podcast you never skip, there is no need to queue each episode by hand. Choose Auto-Queue New Episodes on the podcast’s menu (Shift+F10). Its new episodes go straight into the Play Queue when they arrive and skip the Inbox. Stop Auto-Queueing New Episodes on the same menu turns it off. You can also check it in the podcast’s Settings for This Podcast.

Starting a series from the beginning? In the same window, set Auto-Queue takes the to Oldest unheard episode. Cast then queues the podcast one episode at a time from the start, instead of the newest first.

Lineups

A lineup is the order you like to listen in on a particular day: news first, then the comedy, then the long interview for the drive home. Arrange it once and have it back whenever you want.

1. Arrange the Play Queue the way you like it.
2. Press the Applications key on the Play Queue place and choose Save Lineup….
3. Type a name, such as “Tuesday”, and press Enter. Cast says “Saved lineup Tuesday: 5 episodes, in this order.”

Next Tuesday, choose Apply Lineup… and pick the name. The lineup’s episodes that are still unheard move to the front in your order, and the rest of your queue waits behind them. Nothing is thrown away. Cast tells you how many it applied and how many it skipped because you had already heard them. Saving under a name you already used replaces that lineup.

A lineup you save here is a QUILL Lineup, the same kind Chapter 9 is about, so you can open it with Ctrl+U, rename it, rearrange it, give it rules, and see it in Quill Radio too. Apply Lineup offers every Lineup that has episodes, including ones built by rules. Lineups saved before this version were playlists; Cast copies each one into Lineups once, and leaves the playlist where it was in Playlists.

Letting old episodes expire

A daily news podcast goes stale fast. Yesterday’s headlines sitting in your queue take a turn they do not deserve. To have Cast take old episodes of a podcast out of the queue:

1. Press Shift+F10 on the podcast and choose Queue Expiry….
2. Pick how long an episode may wait, from a day up to a month, or Never.
3. Press OK. Cast tells you what you chose.

Never is where every podcast starts. The shared choice for all podcasts is Expire from the queue in Preferences > The Inbox.

An expired episode is not deleted. It moves to Recently Expired (View > Recently Expired, Ctrl+Shift+X), where it waits a week with its position and its downloaded file. This place is hidden from the Places list until you show it with View > Places… (Ctrl+Shift+G). On an episode there, choose Restore to the Play Queue to bring it back with a fresh start, or Forget This One to let it go. The place’s own menu offers Restore All to the Queue.

QUILLBee’s shortcut: You don’t have to show Recently Expired in the Places list to look in it. Ctrl+Shift+X (View > Recently Expired) goes straight there, even while it’s hidden.

When Cast looks for new episodes

Until you tell it otherwise, Cast checks when you ask. There are three ways to ask:

• F5 (Podcasts > Refresh All Now) checks everything you follow.
• Refresh Feed on a podcast’s menu checks only that podcast. It is a Quick Action, so you can put it on a key.
• Refresh All Now on the Podcasts place’s Applications key menu does the same as F5.

When you press F5, a separate, modeless progress window shows how many feeds have been checked. Feed requests run in the background, so you can switch back to the editor or keep using Cast. Closing the progress window hides it but does not stop the run. Stop remaining checks cancels feeds that have not started; a check already in progress finishes.

A check you asked for always answers, even when nothing is new.

To have Cast check without being asked, open Preferences > When Cast opens. Check when Cast opens looks once at start-up, and Check when the computer wakes looks once after sleep. Catch up on a missed check at the next launch is on to begin with, so a check that was due while Cast was closed still happens.

For checking through the day, give your podcasts a schedule, which comes next. A scheduled check only speaks when something new arrived. Checking reads the list of episodes. It downloads nothing unless you have asked for automatic downloads.

If you also run Quill Radio, the two apps share the record of when each feed was checked, so neither asks the publisher twice.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called When Cast looks for new episodes. It covers schedules, pausing a podcast, Feed Check and quiet hours.

Giving a podcast a schedule

A schedule decides when Cast looks at a podcast on its own. There is one shared schedule for all your podcasts, and any podcast can have its own.

To set the shared one:

1. Open Preferences (Ctrl+,) and choose Fetching. Make sure Look for new episodes on a schedule is checked. While it is off, Cast only checks when you press F5 or open Cast.
2. Press Change Schedule…. The button says what the schedule is now.
3. In Kind of schedule (Alt+K), choose one of five:
   • Manually only: Cast waits for you.
   • Every so often: such as every 45 minutes or once a day. Set the number in Every (Alt+E) and the Unit (Alt+N), or pick from Quick pick (Alt+Q).
   • At set times: such as 6:00 and 18:00. Type up to six times in Times of day (Alt+T), separated by commas, and check days under On these days (Alt+D). No days checked means every day.
   • Around when it usually publishes: Cast learns when the podcast tends to appear and looks closely then. This is the one I use for my daily shows. The window tells you what it has learned. Pin This Pattern (Alt+P) keeps that pattern fixed, and Reset Learning (Alt+R) starts again.
   • Follow the publisher’s hint: uses what the feed says about how often it changes.
4. Press Save.

To give one podcast its own schedule, press Shift+F10 on it and choose Change Schedule…, or use Check for new episodes in its Settings for This Podcast. When you save, Cast reads the schedule back in one sentence: “The Daily now checks: at 06:00 and 18:00, weekdays.”

Scheduled checks wait for the end of Quiet Hours unless you check Check during Quiet Hours in Preferences > Fetching.

Pausing a podcast

A podcast between seasons, or one that has finished, does not need checking. Press Shift+F10 on it and choose Pause Updates for This Podcast. Cast stops checking and downloading it on its own, and everything you already have stays. F5 and Refresh Feed still check it when you ask. Resume Updates for This Podcast on the same menu wakes it up again.

Feed Check

Sometimes a podcast moves house or stops publishing, and its feed stops answering. When you wonder which of your sixty podcasts has gone quiet, open Podcasts > Feed Check… (Ctrl+Shift+C).

A podcast that has moved house properly usually leaves a forwarding address. Turn on Follow permanent feed redirects in Preferences > Fetching, and Cast updates the podcast’s address for you when it finds one. It starts off. A saved username and password are never sent on to the new address.

1. Focus is in Your feeds, worst first (Alt+W). Failing feeds come first, then feeds that are empty, then quiet ones, then healthy ones.
2. Read from the top and stop when the rows turn healthy. A failing row says why, in plain words, and each row says when Cast will check it next. The “last new episode” column is the date of the podcast’s newest episode, so a show that stopped years ago says so.
3. On a failing row, press Retry (Alt+R). To try every failing feed again, press Retry All Failed (Alt+F).

The reasons you may hear:

• The host no longer has a feed at this address, or has removed it for good. The podcast has probably moved or ended.
• This podcast’s web address no longer exists. The website’s name has lapsed.
• The podcast’s site is refusing every connection, or the site’s secure connection is broken. The site itself is broken.
• The site’s security certificate could not be verified. Usually the site’s fault, but not always. See “Feeds over http and https” below.
• This address returns a web page, not a podcast feed. The address now leads somewhere else entirely.
• The feed is there, but it has no episodes. The publisher has emptied it. These rows read “Empty”.
• The publisher has locked this feed. It may now need a paid subscription.
• The feed’s host is refusing podcast apps. This is usually a bot check that only the publisher can switch off.
• This feed needs a sign-in. Use Feed Credentials on the podcast’s menu.
• The host took too long to answer, or is having trouble right now. This usually passes by itself.

For a podcast that has moved, ended up somewhere unexpected or emptied its feed, press Find This Show’s New Feed… (Alt+N). Cast looks the show’s title up in the podcast directories you use in Add Podcast. It reads each feed it finds to make sure it answers, and lists the ones that do, with how many episodes each has and the date of the newest. That date is the quickest way to tell the show you know from a different one with the same name. Choose one and press Replace Feed (Alt+R). The podcast keeps everything: what you have heard, where you stopped, your notes and its settings. Only its address changes, and episodes the new feed shares with the old one are not listed twice. Nothing is looked up until you press the button.

Opening Feed Check checks nothing by itself. Copy Feed Address (Alt+C) puts a row’s address on the clipboard. On a row, the Applications key also offers Check Now, Find This Show’s New Feed… and Change Schedule…. A failing feed is not given up on: Cast keeps trying.

Checking is kind to your connection. After the first time, Cast asks each host whether the feed has changed, and a feed that has not changed costs almost nothing to check. A plain “http” address is tried over a secure connection first. Feed checks also run on their own, so a big check never holds up a download or anything else you are doing. If a feed is so large that Cast cannot read all of it, Player Information says so; the newest episodes are always there.

Feeds over http and https

Most podcast addresses start with “https”. That means the feed travels to you encrypted, and Cast can check it really came from the podcast’s site. Some long-running shows, often small and independent ones, still use a plain “http” address. Cast plays those too.

• https comes first. When an address starts with “http”, Cast asks for it over https anyway, and only uses plain http when the secure way does not work. Many sites quietly support both, so you get the secure one without doing anything.
• You can tell which one a podcast uses. Player Information says Feed: not encrypted (plain http) for a podcast that really is on plain http. It says nothing about the rest, so the line only turns up when it matters.
• Your password is never sent over plain http. If a podcast needs a sign-in and the secure connection says no, Cast stops there and tells you. It does not try again in a way that would send your username and password where anyone on the network could read them.
• Certificates are checked the way Windows checks them. Cast trusts the same certificates Windows does, so a site that opens in your web browser should open here too. The same check covers everything else Cast reaches: podcast searches, episode downloads and Check for Updates. Wherever a certificate cannot be verified, Cast says it in the same words.

When a feed will not load:

1. Open Feed Check and read the reason on the podcast’s row.
2. If it says the security certificate could not be verified, check that this computer’s date and time are right, then run Windows Update. An out of date clock is the most common cause.
3. At work, or with security software that inspects secure connections, ask whoever looks after the network. That software has to be trusted by Windows for Cast to trust it.
4. If the site really is broken, nothing on your side will fix it. Find This Show’s New Feed… may find the show somewhere else.

Being told about new episodes

Cast keeps a list of what it has told you, so the episode that arrived while you were in your email is still there when you come back. There are three ways to look at it.

• The Notifications place (View > Notifications, Ctrl+Shift+N). Newest first. Enter goes to what a notice is about, and Delete removes the notice. The place’s Applications key menu offers Mark All as Read, Clear List and Open in a Window….
• The Notifications window (Help > Notifications, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F3). On a new-episode notice, the row’s menu offers Play Now, Add to Queue, Go to the Podcast and Mark Read.
• The status bar’s Notifications cell, which counts what is unread. Press F6 to reach the status bar, and Enter on the cell opens the window.

In either list, a new-episode notice answers two keys of its own, so you never need to chase a pop-up before it disappears. Ctrl+Enter plays the new episode straight away, and Space adds it to the Play Queue, just as Space does on any episode.

How loudly Cast tells you is up to you. In Preferences > Telling you, When new episodes arrive offers three choices. Quietly, where Cast starts, adds the episodes to Notifications and says nothing. Notify me also shows a Windows desktop notification with a short sound. Not at all keeps no record. Either way the episodes still arrive. The same section has a switch for each kind of notice, if you want to hear about some things and not others. Each one starts with Tell me about:, followed by a new episode, a feed that keeps failing, a podcast that has gone quiet, a download you started finished, the sleep timer’s last minute, or a personal audio import finished. Turning one off only stops the notice. The episodes still arrive, download and queue as usual.

If a busy morning brings a flood of announcements, At most this many spoken announcements an hour sets a ceiling. Anything over it is folded into one summary instead of being said twenty times. Two more rows, which any podcast can set for itself, tell you when something may be wrong: Tell me if this podcast goes quiet for a number of weeks, and Tell me after this many failed checks. Leave either at 0 and it never says anything.

A podcast can even have a sound of its own. In Settings for This Podcast, under Announcements, choose a sound in Play this sound when it publishes, and that podcast’s new episodes play it instead of the usual sound. The sounds come from your sound pack.

For a podcast you really care about, choose Announce New Episodes on its menu. When a scheduled check finds something new from it, Cast says the episode names out loud and in braille. Stop Announcing New Episodes turns it off.

Quiet hours

You do not want Cast talking to you at two in the morning about a new episode. Help > Quiet Hours… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z) sets a time when Cast stops speaking on its own. It starts at 22:00 to 07:00, and the time can cross midnight.

During quiet hours, downloads still run and nothing is lost. Announcements wait, and the notices are there in Notifications in the morning. Anything you press a key for still answers, and failures always speak. Quiet hours are shared with the other Quill listening apps, so you set them once.

Downloading episodes

You can play any episode without downloading it. Cast streams it. Downloading keeps a copy on your computer, for listening offline, on a slow connection, or without a pause at the start.

On an episode’s menu (Shift+F10):

• Download Episode downloads that one.
• Pause Download and Resume Download appear while it is downloading.
• Remove Downloaded Copy deletes the file and keeps the episode. You can download it again later.

On a podcast’s menu, Download All Episodes downloads everything it has not got yet, and Remove All Downloads… deletes its files and keeps its episodes and your place in them.

Started streaming something you now want to keep? Press Ctrl+Alt+K (Episode > Keep This Episode) and Cast keeps it as a download, often without fetching it again.

Now and then a podcast moves its audio, or a download comes out cut short or silent. You do not need to unfollow and follow again. Press Shift+F10 on the episode and choose Refresh Episode Audio…. Cast reads the podcast’s feed again, tells you whether the address changed, asks once (because it will download the episode again), and then fetches a fresh copy. Your place, your played mark and your notes stay exactly as they were. It is also in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

To watch what is downloading, go to Downloads (View > Downloads, Ctrl+D). Delete there removes the file, and you can still stream the episode. The Downloads menu (Alt+D) has Pause All Downloads (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U) and Resume All Downloads (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V) for anywhere in the app.

If your connection drops halfway, you hear “Download connection dropped; reconnecting”, and Cast picks up where it stopped. Reconnect and keep downloading automatically in Preferences > Fetching turns this on or off, and Reconnect attempts sets how many times it tries.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Downloads, and the disk they live on.

Downloading on its own

If you like having the newest episodes ready on your disk, let Cast fetch them. In Preferences > Fetching:

• Automatically download keeps the newest episodes of each podcast ready: none, the newest 1, 3, 5 or 10, or every episode. Any podcast can have its own choice in Settings for This Podcast.
• Also download anything you add to the Play Queue fetches whatever you queue.
• Also download everything routed to the Inbox does the same for Inbox episodes. It starts off, since the Inbox is for deciding.
• Download automatically on a metered connection decides whether this happens on a phone hotspot or a capped connection.
• Only download automatically after (hour) and …and before (hour) keep automatic downloads to the hours you choose, such as overnight. Leave both the same and there is no limit. A download you ask for always starts straight away.
• Always sync the full catalog downloads every episode a podcast has ever published, not just the new ones. It suits an archive you want complete. Turn it on for that one podcast in Settings for This Podcast, not for everything.

Cast tells you how many downloads it started. To hear when they have all finished, check Notify me when downloads finish in Preferences > Telling you. You get one notification for the whole batch.

Keeping disk use in check

Downloads add up. Preferences > Data has two clean-up rules, both off until you set them:

• Delete downloads after a number of days.
• Total download storage cap, in megabytes. When you go over, played downloads are removed, oldest first.

One more choice, in the same section: Delete its downloaded file when you finish an episode. With that on, an episode you take out of the Inbox with Delete is finished with too, so its download goes as well, and Cast says so. An episode you marked Keep This Episode is never deleted this way.

Neither ever removes an episode that is in your queue or that you are partway through. To protect one podcast completely, check Never delete this podcast’s downloads in its Settings for This Podcast.

A few more rows in Preferences > Data, for when you want them:

• Default retention chooses between keeping every download and Keep the most recent, which keeps only the number of newest downloads you set for each podcast. Older episodes stay in the list, ready to stream.
• This podcast may use gives one podcast a share of the disk, in megabytes. When it is full, Cast stops downloading that podcast on its own. It never deletes what you already have.
• Download location is the folder downloads are saved in. Leave it blank for the usual one. Files already saved stay where they are.
• When I stop following a podcast, delete its downloaded files sets the answer Cast starts on when you unfollow a podcast: Ask me, Always or Never.
• Prefer the audio that is picks which version to download when a podcast offers more than one: whatever it lists first, the smallest file, or the best quality.
• Auto-trim silence from downloaded episodes and Normalize loudness of downloaded episodes tidy each new download as it arrives: the first trims silence at the start and end, the second evens out how loud episodes are. Both change the saved file, so they apply to new downloads only.

Streaming has a small store of its own. Keep streamed episodes ready while they play saves the audio of what you are streaming, so a dropped connection does not stop the episode and Cast can find chapters in it. It is on to start with, and the audio is cleared away by itself. Space for streamed episodes sets how much room that may take.

Free Up Space (Ctrl+Alt+F) applies those rules now and tells you how much space came back. Run Housekeeping Now (Ctrl+Alt+H) does the whole tidy-up at once: expired queue episodes, Recently Expired, Inbox limits and storage, and tells you what it did in one sentence. It also runs after every check. Both are on the Downloads menu in Advanced mode, Free Up Space is on the Downloads place’s Applications key menu, and both are always in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

Playlists

A playlist is a saved list of episodes you can come back to. There are two kinds. One you build by hand holds exactly what you put in it, like a mixtape. A smart playlist holds whatever matches its rules right now and keeps itself up to date, like a standing order: “anything from my comedy podcasts under half an hour that I have not heard”.

Go to Playlists (View > Playlists, Alt+Shift+Y). Enter opens a playlist in place, and Backspace comes back. The place’s Applications key menu offers:

• New Playlist…, for one you fill by hand.
• New Smart Playlist…, to write rules.
• Add Starter Playlists, five ready-made smart playlists to try: Continue Listening, New This Week, Quick Listens, Downloaded and Unplayed, and Long Reads. Change or delete them as you like.

To put an episode in a hand-made playlist, choose Add to Playlist… on its menu, and pick the playlist. Select several episodes first to add them all at once.

On a playlist’s own row, the menu offers Open, Edit Rules… for a smart one, Rename Playlist… and Delete Playlist… (Delete).

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Playlists and smart playlists.

Writing a smart playlist

If you are new to this, press Add Starter Playlists first and open one with Edit Rules to see how it is made. Then try your own.

1. In Playlists, press the Applications key and choose New Smart Playlist…. Give it a name.
2. Under Shows, check the podcasts to include. None checked means every podcast.
3. Choose an Episode status (Alt+S), such as unheard.
4. Fill in any of the rest, leaving 0 for “any”:
   • Published within days (Alt+D), for recent episodes only.
   • Minimum minutes (Alt+M) and Maximum minutes (Alt+X), for length.
   • Title or notes contain (Alt+T), for a word or a name.
   • Most episodes (Alt+0), to keep the list short.
5. Choose a Sort (Alt+R).
6. Press Save (or Ctrl+S). The playlist is made, and the window stays open so you can keep adjusting it; each later Save updates the same playlist. Press Escape when you are done.

The window tells you how many episodes match as you change things. Every choice has its own F1 help.

Episode Filters: what they are for

Some podcasts publish more than one thing in the same feed: a daily two-minute segment beside the weekly show, trailers for other podcasts, a members-only strand mixed into the public feed, reruns. If you only want the main show, the rest clutters your Inbox and your queue.

An Episode Filter is a set of rules for one podcast that decides what happens to those episodes. It never deletes anything. A filtered episode keeps its played mark, its position, its download, its notes and its bookmarks. A filter only changes where an episode shows up.

A filter works in one of two ways, which you choose in When a rule matches:

• Keep everything except episodes a rule matches. This is the usual one: “everything but the trailers”.
• Keep only episodes a rule matches. The sharp one: “only the Daily Briefing, nothing else”.

You open Episode Filters from a podcast’s menu (Episode Filters…), or with Episode Filters… (Alt+L) in its Settings for This Podcast. But the easiest way in is from an episode you do not want, which comes next.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Stop the parts of a podcast you did not want.

Filter Episodes Like This

You usually know the episode you do not want before you know what it has in common with the others. So let Cast work that out.

1. Go to an episode you would rather not see, such as a trailer.
2. Press Shift+F10 and choose Filter Episodes Like This….
3. Episode Filters opens with a drafted rule already in it. The first line tells you why Cast chose it and how many recent episodes it catches.
4. Press Preview (Alt+V) and read Preview results (Alt+L) to see what would happen to each recent episode.
5. If it looks right, press Save (or Ctrl+S). The window stays open. If not, press Edit Rule… (Alt+E) and adjust it, or press Close to leave everything as it was.

Cast drafts the rule by looking, in this order, for:

• a publisher’s mark: if the episode is marked as a trailer or a bonus, the rule catches every episode marked that way;
• a series name: if its title starts or ends like other recent titles, such as “Daily Briefing:”, the rule catches titles that start or end the same way;
• length: if it is much shorter than this podcast usually is, the rule catches episodes about that short;
• and otherwise this exact title, which you can widen yourself.

Cast never offers a rule that would catch every recent episode. Nothing is saved until you press Save.

Writing a filter rule yourself

Once you have tried Filter Episodes Like This, writing your own is not much harder. Here is a rule that hides trailers, step by step.

1. Press Shift+F10 on the podcast and choose Episode Filters….
2. Check Filter new episodes of this podcast (Alt+F).
3. In When a rule matches (Alt+W), leave “Keep everything except episodes a rule matches”.
4. Press Add Rule… (Alt+A). The Episode Filter Rule window opens.
5. In Name for this rule (Alt+N), type something you will recognise, such as “Trailers”.
6. In Title match (Alt+T), choose how to read the title:
   • No title rule, to match on length or other tests only;
   • Wildcard, where a star stands for any text and a question mark for any one character, so Trailer* catches every title starting with “Trailer”;
   • Regular expression, if you know them.
7. Type the pattern in Pattern (Alt+P).
8. If you like, set Minimum length in minutes (Alt+M). An episode shorter than this matches. Leave it at 0 for any length.
9. Press Try It on Recent Episodes (Alt+Y) to see what the rule catches. “Trying a rule before you keep it”, below, tells you more.
10. Press Save to keep the rule and go back to Episode Filters.

Capital letters have to match too (Alt+C) makes the words match only with the same capitals. This rule is switched on (Alt+O) lets you keep a rule but rest it for a while.

Back in Episode Filters, the Rules list (Alt+R) shows each rule in a sentence, such as “Short things, enabled. Any one of: Episode type is a trailer. Length in minutes is at most 5.” Beside it, Edit Rule… (Alt+E), Switch Rule On or Off (Alt+O) and Delete Rule (Alt+D) do what they say. A podcast can have as many rules as you like, and an episode needs to match only one of them.

Adding more tests to a rule

The title and the length are often enough. When they are not, a rule can look at more. In the rule window, go to More tests (Alt+S) and press Add Test… (Alt+A). A small window called Episode Filter Test asks three things.

1. Look at (Alt+L): the title, the show notes, the people on the episode as the publisher lists them, the episode type (full, trailer or bonus), its length in minutes, its age in days, its season number or its episode number.
2. Test (Alt+T), which changes with what you chose to look at. For words it offers contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, is, is not, fits the wildcard, and matches or does not match a regular expression. For a number it offers at least, at most, is and is not. For the type it offers the whole test in one choice, such as “is a trailer”.
3. Value (Alt+V): the words, the pattern, or the number.

Press Save. Edit Test… (Alt+E) and Remove Test (Alt+R) change or remove one later. If Cast cannot read what you typed, such as a number with letters in it, it tells you why and puts you back in Value.

Match when (Alt+W) in the rule window decides how its tests combine: Every test has to match, or Any one test is enough. With “any one”, “a trailer, or anything under five minutes” is one rule with one name.

A few things to know. Words are found anywhere in the text, and capitals do not matter unless you check the capitals box. When a feed leaves out a fact, such as an episode’s length, number tests never match that episode. An episode with no type counts as a full episode.

Some rules worth writing:

• Sponsor-only episodes: Show notes contains “sponsored by”.
• Reruns: two tests, Title contains “rerun” and Title contains “best of”, with Match when set to Any one test is enough.
• One strand of a busy feed, with “Keep only episodes a rule matches”: Title starts with “Daily Briefing:”.
• Old episodes the publisher re-uploaded: Age in days is at least 365.
• A guest you would rather skip: People on the episode is their name, as the publisher writes it.
• Everything from old seasons: Season number is at most 3.

Trying a rule before you keep it

You do not have to guess whether a rule is right.

In the rule window, Try It on Recent Episodes (Alt+Y) runs the rule as it stands against the podcast’s 50 newest episodes. Cast says how many it catches and reads the first few titles: “Matches 7 of the 50 newest episodes. Daily Briefing: Monday; Daily Briefing: Tuesday; and 2 more.” The same sentence stays in Try it result (Alt+U) so you can read it again.

In Episode Filters, Preview (Alt+V) does the same for all the rules together and lists every recent episode in Preview results (Alt+L), with what would happen to it first and then its title and length. Preview works even while the filter is switched off, so you can check a “keep only” filter before it takes effect.

Nothing changes while you try, so adjust and try again as often as you like.

Where a filter applies, and saving it

Under Where this applies (Alt+H), check what the filter does to matching episodes. There are eight checkboxes. The first four are checked on a new filter, and they keep an episode from reaching you:

• Keep them out of the Inbox.
• Never add them to the Play Queue automatically.
• Never download them automatically.
• Don’t announce them as new episodes.

The other four hide an episode, and start unchecked:

• Hide them from this podcast’s episode list.
• Hide them from New Episodes and Continue Listening.
• Keep them out of smart playlists.
• Leave them out of Search Everywhere, so Find skips them.

When you press Save, the filter works straight away, on episodes you already have as well as new ones. The Play Queue is the one list you built by hand, so Cast asks about it separately: Save and clear them from the queue, or Save, leave the queue alone. The episode playing now keeps its place either way. Unchecking a box later brings those episodes straight back.

If a “keep only” filter turns away every new episode of a check, Cast tells you, and leaves a note in Episode Filters for when you next open it, in case the publisher changed their titles.

QUILLBee’s tip: Give a new filter a week or two before you check any of the four boxes that hide episodes. While the episodes it catches are still in the podcast’s own list, one it caught by mistake is a Shift+F10 away from Always Keep This Episode (Ignore the Filter). Once a rule has proved itself, hide away.

Getting a filtered episode back

Two ways, always:

• On one episode, press Shift+F10 and choose Always Keep This Episode (Ignore the Filter). That episode is treated as if no filter existed, and editing the rules later does not change that. Apply the Episode Filter to This Episode undoes it.
• Uncheck a box under Where this applies, or switch a rule off, and its episodes come back at once.

If you checked Hide them from this podcast’s episode list, a hidden episode is not there to press Shift+F10 on. Uncheck that box for a moment, keep the episode, and check it again.

Saving an episode’s audio

Sometimes you want the file itself: to send a clip to a friend, to keep an interview, or to play it somewhere else. These are on an episode’s menu, and all of them are Quick Actions, so you can put one on Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9.

• Save Episode Audio As… saves a copy wherever you choose. Cast suggests a name made from the podcast and the episode. If the episode is not downloaded yet, Cast says “Preparing audio file for export”, fetches it, and opens the Save window when it arrives.
• Show in File Explorer opens the folder with the file selected.
• Copy File Path puts the file’s location on the clipboard, ready for an upload box or a message. Cast reads back the file name and folder.
• Copy Podcast Link copies the feed address, to give to another podcast app. Copy Episode Link copies the episode’s own link.

Show in File Explorer and Copy File Path need a downloaded episode, and say so if there is no file yet.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now let new episodes come to you, sort them in the Inbox, line them up in the Play Queue, and keep the clutter out with filters. You also know how to give a podcast a schedule, look after your downloads, and make playlists that fill themselves.

The tutorials spend more time on this chapter than on any other, because these pieces work best together. Help > Tutorials has The Inbox, The Queue, When Cast looks for new episodes, Downloads, and the disk they live on, Playlists and smart playlists, and Stop the parts of a podcast you did not want. Take them one at a time, on a day you have a few spare minutes.

Next, Chapter 6, Making Cast yours, is where you shape all of this to suit the way you listen.

Chapter 6: Making Cast yours

Cast plays podcasts well the day you install it, so nothing in this chapter is required. After a week or two, though, you start to notice small things. One host talks too fast. A list row says more than you want to hear. Enter plays an episode when you would rather it downloaded one. There is a whole menu you never open. This chapter is about those moments.

We will go through the places you can change Cast, from the broadest to the most particular: Preferences for the whole app, Settings for This Podcast for one podcast, what each list row says, what Enter does, which features you see at all, and which keys do what. At the end are Quillins and AI help, for when you want Cast to do a little more.

One tip before we start. Every window in this chapter answers F1. If a setting is not described here, put focus on it and press F1 to hear what it does. You never have to guess.

Preferences: how Cast behaves everywhere

Preferences holds the settings for Cast as a whole. It also holds the shared defaults, the values every podcast follows until you give that podcast its own. Change the skip distance here and every podcast skips that far.

1. Press Ctrl+, (or choose Podcasts > Preferences). The QUILL Cast Preferences window opens.
2. Focus starts in the Section list. Arrow to the section you want.
3. Tab into that section’s settings and change what you like.
4. Press Save, or Escape to leave without changing anything.

You can move between sections before you save, and Cast keeps what you changed in each one. When you press Save, it tells you what changed. If you get lost in a long section, Alt+S takes you back to the Section list. Saving refreshes the current library place only when Hide caught-up podcasts changes which rows are visible; other preference changes and closing without changes do not trigger that reload. Cast applies your choices before writing the podcast library, application history, and any changed shared-family choices in the background. An applied-changes message is not a saved-to-disk confirmation. If a write fails, Cast tells you which save failed instead of reporting that everything saved.

Two sections have a shortcut by name. In the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), Fetching Preferences opens Preferences on Fetching, and Playing Preferences opens it on Playing.

Here is what each of the nine sections is for, so you know where to look:

• When Cast opens. Where Cast puts you when it starts, whether it picks up the last episode straight away, whether it checks your podcasts on opening, whether it starts when you sign in to Windows, and whether it looks for a new version of Cast.
• Playing. Skip distances, skipping intros, what happens when an episode ends, the Winamp keys, and how show notes are copied.
• Fetching. How often Cast looks for new episodes, how many it downloads for you, and what happens if a download’s connection drops.
• The Inbox. Which podcasts send new episodes to the Inbox, how many wait there, and how long episodes wait in the Play Queue.
• The library. How the Podcasts place is laid out, and the order of your podcasts, folders and episodes.
• Chapters. Whether Cast looks for chapters in episodes that do not come with any.
• Telling you. What Cast says out loud, which notifications you get, and how each list row is spoken.
• The window. What closing the window does, AI help, sharing your choices with other Quill apps, how the Play Queue is grouped, and how many episodes a podcast’s list shows.
• Data. Where your podcasts and downloads are kept, when old downloads are tidied away, and how long your listening history is kept.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Preferences, and one podcast’s own settings. It opens Settings for This Podcast with you as well.

The settings worth a look first

You could spend an afternoon in Preferences. You do not need to. These are the ones people change most, and the reasons they do.

• Where to land on launch (When Cast opens). To start with, Cast opens on what is new. If you always reach for the same place first, pick it here. Mine opens on the Play Queue.
• Resume the last episode on launch (When Cast opens). Turn this on and Cast starts playing where you stopped the moment it opens. Leave it off and Cast opens without a sound, with the Now playing line telling you where you stopped.
• Start QUILL Cast with Windows (When Cast opens). Start Cast when you sign in to this Windows account. It is a per-user setting and needs no administrator rights. It is available only for an installed copy on Windows; a portable copy cannot change the computer’s startup settings.
• Skip forward by and Skip back by (Playing). Thirty seconds forward and fifteen back to start with. Set them to whatever suits your ears. Skip the first jumps over a long intro every time an episode starts.
• Play the next episode in the Play Queue (Playing). On to start with. Turn it off and playback stops at the end of each episode.
• Winamp playback keys (Playing). With these on, Z, X, C, V and B control playback in Now Playing. Letters in the main lists always jump to rows.
• Automatically download (Fetching). None, the newest few, or every episode. This is what makes new episodes arrive ready to play, even when your connection is not.
• When closing the window (The window). Exit, tuck Cast into the system tray and keep playing, or ask you each time.
• Data Folder (Data). Pick a folder that Dropbox or OneDrive keeps in sync, and your podcasts and settings follow you between computers. Nothing moves until you say so. Chapter 7, Your podcasts, wherever you are, has other ways to take your library with you.

A few more you may come to like: Desktop toasts for new episodes and finished downloads, and One sentence on launch about what arrived while Cast was closed (both in Telling you), and Switch to Now Playing when playback starts (Playing), for people who like the Now Playing window up front.

Every row, section by section

When you are hunting for one setting and cannot remember its section, this list is for you. Each row is named exactly as it appears in Preferences, with a few words about what it does. Most of them are explained more fully in the chapter where you would use them, and F1 on any row tells you more.

When Cast opens

• Where to land on launch: the place Cast opens on.
• Resume the last episode on launch: start playing where you stopped.
• Start QUILL Cast with Windows: open the installed copy when you sign in to this Windows account; portable copies cannot change startup settings.
• Check for updates on launch: look for a new version once a day.
• Check when Cast opens, Check when the computer wakes and Catch up on a missed check at the next launch: when Cast looks for new episodes without being asked.

Playing

• Winamp playback keys (Z X C V B, arrows to seek): optional playback keys in Now Playing; the main lists keep letter navigation.
• Switch to Now Playing when playback starts: bring Now Playing to the front each time.
• Copy show notes as: what Copy Notes puts on the clipboard.
• Playback speed: the speed every podcast starts at.
• Default playback mode: whether a podcast you newly follow downloads its episodes or streams them.
• Send the audio to: both ears, mono, or one ear only.
• Volume Boost: lift quiet podcasts.
• Bass, in decibels, Middle, in decibels and Treble, in decibels: the shape of the sound.
• Even out volume: bring quiet and loud parts closer together.
• Shorten silences and How much silence to shorten: trim the pauses.
• Skip forward by and Skip back by: how far Ctrl+Right and Ctrl+Left jump.
• Skip the first and Stop this far before the end: skip intros and outros.
• Play the next episode in the Play Queue and When the queue is empty, keep going with the same podcast: what happens when an episode ends.
• Start loading the next episode before this one ends: no pause between episodes.
• Sleep timer starts at (minutes, 0 = off): what the Sleep Timer offers first.

Fetching

• Look for new episodes on a schedule: the automatic check, on or off.
• Check for new episodes, with its Change Schedule… button: the shared schedule.
• Look at the schedules every: how often Cast wakes up to see which podcasts are due. It does not check a podcast before its own schedule says so.
• A short sound each time a check runs: a little tick, so you know the checks are happening. It starts off.
• Let what a check found interrupt speech: let news of new episodes cut in on whatever is being said. It starts off.
• Check during Quiet Hours: let scheduled checks run at night.
• Automatically download and Always sync the full catalog: what is downloaded for you.
• Also download anything you add to the Play Queue and Also download everything routed to the Inbox.
• Download automatically on a metered connection.
• Only download automatically after (hour) and …and before (hour): the hours automatic downloads may start.
• Reconnect and keep downloading automatically, Reconnect attempts and Seconds between attempts: what happens when a download’s connection drops.
• When I follow a podcast, also fetch and How many, or how many months: how much of a podcast’s past to bring in when you follow it.
• Auto-Queue takes the: the newest episode, or the oldest unheard one.
• Fetch transcripts: never, when an episode arrives, when you download it, or also make one yourself when the podcast has none.
• Follow permanent feed redirects: let a podcast that has moved update its own address.
• Treat re-published episodes as new: whether a re-issued episode comes back to your Inbox.
• If I add a podcast I already follow: whether Cast tells you, skips it quietly or adds it anyway.

The Inbox

• Which podcasts go to the Inbox: only the podcasts you mark, or every podcast except those.
• Inbox: keep at most (0 = no limit) and Inbox: drop episodes older than: keep the Inbox short.
• Expire from the queue: how long an episode may wait in the Play Queue.
• Show the Inbox as: one list, folders first, or folders only.
• New files in watched folders also wait in the Inbox.

The library

• Show the library as, Sort podcasts by, Sort folders by, Folders in the library start, Counts in the library say and Leave out folders with nothing in them: the shape of the Podcasts place.
• Sort episodes by: the order of a podcast’s episodes.
• Show lists that mix podcasts as: how those lists are grouped.

Chapters

• Work out chapters and How long to spend looking: whether and how hard Cast looks for chapters an episode did not come with.
• Look for chapters in the show notes, Look for chapters in the transcript and Listen to the audio to find chapters: where it looks.
• Give worked-out chapters names, Say when a chapter scan finishes and Chapter preview length.

Telling you

• When new episodes arrive: notify me, quietly, or not at all.
• One switch for each kind of notice:
  • Tell me about: a new episode
  • Tell me about: a feed that keeps failing
  • Tell me about: a podcast that has gone quiet
  • Tell me about: a download you started finished
  • Tell me about: the sleep timer’s last minute
  • Tell me about: a personal audio import finished
• Desktop toasts for new episodes and finished downloads and Notify me when downloads finish: the pop-ups.
• One sentence on launch about what arrived while Cast was closed.
• Say what is up next before an episode ends.
• When a one-key action works: a sound, words, both, or neither.
• Announce dialog transitions (more spoken detail): Cast says a window’s name as it opens and closes. It starts off, because your screen reader already reads the title.
• New episodes of this podcast are: urgent, normal or quiet.
• At most this many spoken announcements an hour (0 = no limit).
• Tell me if this podcast goes quiet for (weeks, 0 = never) and Tell me after this many failed checks (0 = never).
• Read each row starting with, Say the podcast’s name, Say when it was published, Say how long it is, Say whether it is downloaded, Say when it has chapters or a transcript, Say the season and episode number and Read the episode’s description: how a row is spoken, which “How an episode row is spoken” below explains.

The window

• When closing the window and Alt+F4 minimizes to the system tray.
• AI help (sends the show notes you ask about to QUILL’s servers).
• Share these choices with my other Quill apps.
• Group the Play Queue by: nothing, podcast or folder.
• Show at most this many episodes (0 = all of them): a shorter list for a podcast with thousands of episodes.

Data

• Data Folder…: where all your Quill apps keep their settings and podcasts.
• Download location: where downloads are saved.
• Default retention, Keep the most recent, Delete downloads after (days, 0 = never), Delete its downloaded file, Total download storage cap (MB, 0 = none) and This podcast may use (MB, 0 = no budget): when downloads are tidied away.
• When I stop following a podcast, delete its downloaded files: what Cast suggests when you unfollow.
• Prefer the audio that is: which version to download.
• Auto-trim silence from downloaded episodes and Normalize loudness of downloaded episodes.
• Keep streamed episodes ready while they play and Space for streamed episodes (MB, 0 = no limit).
• A new watched folder’s original files, When files arrive in a new watched folder, tell me, A new watched folder ignores files shorter than and A new watched folder includes its subfolders: what a newly watched folder starts with.
• Find podcasts in these directories: where Add Podcast looks.
• Show listening streaks in Statistics and Keep my listening history for.

Settings for one podcast

Not every podcast wants the same treatment. A daily news show wants checking every hour. A fast talker sounds better a little slower. An archive you love should never have its downloads tidied away. Settings for This Podcast lets one podcast be different from the rest.

1. Select the podcast in any list.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+, (or press Shift+F10 and choose Settings for This Podcast).
3. Focus starts in the Category list. There are five: Arrival, Playback, Storage, Announcements and Curation. Arrow to one and Tab into it.
4. Change what you want and press Save (or Ctrl+S). The window stays open, so you can move on to another category. Press Escape when you are done.

Every control shows the value this podcast is using right now, whether it came from Preferences or from the podcast itself. Anything you leave alone keeps following Preferences, so if you change a shared default next month, this podcast picks it up too.

When the podcast has its own value for something, a button sits beside it, such as Use shared default for Playback speed. Press it and that one setting goes back to following Preferences.

QUILLBee’s tip: Set what most of your podcasts want in Preferences first, and give a podcast its own value only where it really is different. Whatever a podcast leaves alone keeps following Preferences, so one change there next month still reaches every podcast that hasn’t gone its own way.

What the five categories hold:

• Arrival. How often this podcast is checked, how much of its back catalogue to collect when you first follow it, and when downloads may run.
• Playback. Speed, sound, skip distances, intro and outro skips, and chapters.
• Storage. How many downloads to keep, how old is too old, and how much disk this one podcast may use.
• Announcements. How loudly new episodes are announced, how the name is spoken, and what each row says.
• Curation. How its episodes are sorted, how many the list shows, a playlist new episodes join, your own labels for it, and its own artwork.

At the top of the window are three checkboxes that are worth knowing about: A favorite podcast, Route new episodes to the Inbox, and New episodes go straight to the Play Queue. At the bottom are three buttons:

• What Have I Changed? (Alt+H) lists only the settings this podcast has changed. When one podcast behaves differently from the rest, this is the quickest way to find out why.
• Use Shared Defaults (Alt+D) drops all of this podcast’s own settings at once, and says how many it dropped.
• Episode Filters… (Alt+L) sets rules for where this podcast’s new episodes go. Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, explains them.

Podcast settings you will be glad you found

Most per-podcast settings are there for the day you need them. These few solve problems people meet in their first month.

Tidy episode titles (Announcements). Plenty of podcasts start every title with the same words: “Ep. 412 -”, “[Bonus]”, or the podcast’s own name. You hear that at the start of every row, and typing the first letter of an episode stops working because they all start the same way. Add a pattern here and Cast leaves those words out when it shows and speaks the title. Press Preview to hear which titles would change before you keep it. The podcast’s real titles are untouched.

Say this podcast’s name as (Announcements). For the podcast name your speech engine always mangles. Type a spelling that sounds right, and Cast uses it whenever the name is spoken. Written, the name stays as it is.

What I care about in this podcast (Curation). A sentence or two in your own words, such as “the interviews, not the news round-up”. Nothing uses it yet. It is there so that AI help, when you turn it on, can suggest episodes the way you would choose them. It stays on this computer.

New episodes of this podcast are (Announcements). Urgent tells you about each new episode straight away, by name. Normal counts it in a summary. Quiet says nothing, though the episodes still arrive, download and queue as usual. Beside it, May speak during quiet hours lets one podcast through when everything else is holding its tongue.

Tell me if this podcast goes quiet (Announcements). Podcasts end without saying goodbye. Set a number of weeks, and if nothing new arrives in that time, Cast tells you once. It never unfollows anything.

Never delete this podcast’s downloads (Storage). Keeps one podcast’s downloads safe from every automatic cleanup, while the others carry on being tidied as usual.

Show at most this many episodes (Curation). A podcast with thousands of episodes makes for a long list. This shows only the newest ones you ask for. Nothing is deleted, Find still finds everything, and raising the number brings the rest back.

Sort episodes by: Season and episode number (Curation). For serial fiction, audiobooks in a feed, and anything else meant to be heard in order.

Labels (Curation). Your own words for a podcast, as many as you like. A podcast lives in one folder, but it can have any number of labels, and a smart playlist can gather episodes by label.

Also add new episodes to the playlist (Curation). Pick one of your playlists, and this podcast’s new episodes join it as they arrive. They are not queued or downloaded, and they still go to the Inbox as usual.

Use this artwork instead (Curation). A picture file of your own for the podcast, shown in the tray and the window. It changes nothing your screen reader says.

Most of the other rows in Settings for This Podcast have the same names as the rows in Preferences, so the list in “Every row, section by section” above is a good map of them too.

None of these deletes an episode or marks anything played.

Help > Tutorials has a lesson with the same name, Podcast settings you will be glad you found, if you would like to try each one with a guide.

Changing a podcast setting in one keystroke

Three podcast settings get changed far more than the rest, so each has its own row on a podcast’s context menu (Shift+F10):

• Episodes to Keep… for how many downloaded episodes to hold on to.
• Queue Expiry… for how long this podcast’s episodes wait in the Play Queue.
• Playback Speed… for this podcast’s own speed.

Each opens a small window with the cursor already in its one control. Cast tells you in words what you chose: “Keeping the 5 newest downloaded episodes.” They are Quick Actions too, which the section after next explains, so if you change speed all the time you can put Playback Speed on Ctrl+1.

Keeping your choices the same in every Quill app

If you use Quill Radio as well, you may want a choice you make here to hold there too. In Preferences, in The window section, turn on Share these choices with my other Quill apps.

Two choices are shared: Announce dialog transitions, which decides whether a window’s name is said as it opens and closes, and When a one-key action works, which decides whether an action answers with a sound, words or both. Every Quill app with this turned on keeps them the same. When Cast picks up a choice you made in another app, it tells you which one.

Your keys, where focus goes and how your screen reader works are never shared, and an app that has not turned this on is left alone.

Choosing what a row says

Your screen reader reads each list row in full, from start to finish. You decide what goes into that sentence, and in what order. There are two places to do it: Choose Columns for the order and contents of each list, and the Telling you section of Preferences for how an episode row is spoken.

Choose Columns:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C (Podcasts > Choose Columns, an Advanced row).
2. In Columns for (Alt+F), pick the list you want to change.
3. The Shown list holds the columns that are read, in order. Select one and use Move Up (Alt+U) or Move Down (Alt+D) to change where it comes. Hide (Alt+I) takes it out of the row entirely, and Show (Alt+W) puts a hidden one back.
4. A row will read (Alt+A) spells out what one row will sound like with your changes, so you can hear it before you press OK.

Two hidden columns are worth trying: Time Left on episodes you have started, and Podcast in lists that mix podcasts. Reset This List puts one list back the way it came.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Decide what a row says, and what Enter does. It goes on to Quick Actions and Customize Features.

How an episode row is spoken

Open Preferences (Ctrl+,), choose Telling you, and you will find a group of settings that shape every episode row:

• Read each row starting with the episode title, the podcast’s name, or the date. Whatever comes first is what you can jump to by typing its first letter, so choose the one you tend to look for.
• Say the podcast’s name, in lists that mix podcasts.
• Say when it was published, as “Today”, “Yesterday”, “3 days ago”, or the date.
• Say how long it is, either the whole length or how much is left. How much is left is handy when you are picking something to fit a car ride.
• Say whether it is downloaded, downloading, or streaming.
• Say when it has chapters or a transcript.
• Say the season and episode number, where the publisher gives one.
• Read the episode’s description: off, a sentence of it, or all of it. Off is kinder to your ears in a long list.

One podcast can have its own choices, under Announcements in Settings for This Podcast. That is handy for a podcast that already puts the date in every title: turn the date off for that one alone.

QUILLBee’s tip: If a podcast starts every title with the same words, such as “Ep. 412 -”, no choice here helps with that one. Tidy episode titles, under Announcements in its Settings for This Podcast, leaves those words out when the title is shown and spoken, so typing a first letter lands on the part that differs.

Quick Actions: what Enter does

Quick Actions decides three things at once: what Enter does on a row, what Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 do in an episode list, and the order of the items on a context menu. To start with, Enter plays. If you always download before you listen, you can make Enter download instead.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Q (Podcasts > Quick Actions, an Advanced row).
2. In Actions for (Alt+F), pick episodes, podcasts, or the Play Queue.
3. Tab to the Order list. The first action is what Enter does, and the first nine are Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9.
4. Select an action and use Move Up (Alt+U) or Move Down (Alt+D). Make Default (Alt+T) puts it first in one step.
5. Press OK.

Try it with the action you use most after Play. Put it second, and Ctrl+2 does it from now on. Reset This List (Alt+R) puts a list back the way it came.

Turning features off

Cast does a lot. If there are parts you will never use, you can switch them off, and they stop showing up in the menus, the places and Go To. A smaller Cast is easier to learn.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+C (View > Customize Features).
2. Every feature is a checkbox, grouped under eight headings: Places, Playing, Library, Getting podcasts, Keeping things, Telling you, Listening data and Around the app. Everything starts on.
3. Uncheck what you do not want and press Save.

The menus and places change straight away. The status bar follows the next time you open Cast.

Three profiles at the top set all the boxes for you, and you can still change any box afterwards:

• Everything is how Cast comes, and your way back after experimenting.
• Just Listen keeps the places, Now Playing, the sleep timer, speed and skipping, show notes, Find, folders and Add Podcast. It turns off the extras: no automatic checks, no pop-ups, no statistics, no add-ons.
• Earshot-like matches the Earshot phone app: places, playback, downloads, the Inbox and filters, without the desktop extras.

If you forget where a feature went, the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) still lists its commands and tells you they are switched off in Customize Features.

Advanced Features (View > Advanced Features, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G) is a different switch. It leaves every feature on and adds the menu rows you need only now and then, such as Choose Columns, Quick Actions, backups and the Quillins menu. Chapter 2, Finding your way around, has more on Simple and Advanced.

Every switch in Customize Features

Here is every checkbox, under its heading, so you can see at a glance what you could turn off. F1 on any box says what goes away with it.

• Places: Inbox, Play Queue, Downloads, Personal Audio, Playlists and Notifications.
• Playing: Now Playing window, QUILL Lineups, Transcripts and chapters, Show notes and your notes, Sleep timer, Speed controls, Sound Enhancements, Skipping, Winamp playback keys and Global hotkeys.
• Library: Folders and custom order, Find, Feed Check, Episode filters and smart playlists, Quick Actions and Choose Columns, Hide caught-up podcasts, and Watched folders.
• Getting podcasts: Directory search and Add by address, Follow ACB Media, Backups and OPML, Private feeds and directory credentials, and Spotify podcasts.
• Keeping things: Automatic downloads, Retention and housekeeping, Keep This Episode and Refresh Episode Audio, and Export my data and Delete all data.
• Telling you: Toasts, Sounds, New-episode digest, Feed failure and gone-quiet notices, Automatic feed check, and Dialog transition announcements.
• Listening data: Statistics, Recently played and Continue Listening, and Listening Places sync.
• Around the app: Status bar, Tray, Tutorials, Command Palette and Go To, Share and export audio, Quillins, and AI features.

Changing keys

Every key in Cast can be changed. If a key is awkward for your hands, or clashes with something your screen reader uses, move it.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W (Help > Keyboard Shortcuts).
2. Type part of a command’s name to filter the list.
3. Select the command and give it a new key. Cast warns you if the key is already taken.

Keys are shared with QUILL and Quill Radio, so a change here changes them there too. Most changes work at once. A few, such as Preferences on Ctrl+,, wait until you next open Cast.

To see every key Cast answers to right now, including the ones you changed, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K (Help > Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet). Type “download” in its filter and you hear only the keys about downloading. Copy All puts the list on the clipboard.

Keys that work from any program

Global Hotkeys give a few Cast commands a key that works even when Cast is not the window you are in. Pause a podcast from your word processor without switching windows.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H (Help > Global Hotkeys).
2. Choose a command and give it a key. Cast offers Play/Pause, Stop, Now Playing window, which brings the player to the front from anywhere, Time Remaining, which says how much is left without leaving what you are doing, and Show or Hide QUILL Cast. Cast already shows and hides on Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12, so you only need a key for that one if you would like a different one as well.

The first time, Cast warns you that a system-wide key can take over the same key in other programs. If another program already owns a key, Cast leaves it alone.

The Play/Pause hotkey does not bring Cast to the front. It also changes the pending play choice while an episode is loading. Stop followed by Play can load the episode again without restarting Cast.

The Keyboard reference at the end of this guide lists every key Cast comes with.

The last steps of the Keys lesson, in Help > Tutorials, move a key and set up a key that works from any program, if you would like company while you do it.

Quillins

Quillins are QUILL’s small add-ons. Cast has its own Quillins menu, which appears in Advanced mode. It comes with one sample Quillin, which signs in to a private, members-only podcast. In this release only the Quillins that come with Cast can run, and none run in Safe Mode.

AI help

Some show notes are long. Cast can ask an AI about the show notes of the episode you are on: sum them up, explain them, or answer a question such as “when is the guest’s book out?”. It is the same AI help QUILL and QUILL Lite have, on the same keys.

AI help stays off until you turn it on, and nothing is sent until you press a key that asks. To turn it on:

1. Press Ctrl+, to open Preferences, choose The window, and check AI help. Press Save.
2. Open Help > AI Features and choose any row. The first time, the privacy agreement explains where the notes go. Nothing is sent until you accept it.

Now select an episode and press Ctrl+Alt+Z to ask about its notes, or Ctrl+Alt+G for the Free AI Assistant, which sums up, explains or shortens them. Show notes cannot be edited, so press Copy to take an answer to the clipboard.

Everything on the AI Features menu:

The free service works for show notes. Ask About an Image needs your ChatGPT subscription or your own Gemini key.

Each Quill app signs in to ChatGPT on its own, so signing in here does not sign in QUILL or Quill Radio, and signing out of one leaves the others signed in. If another Quill app is already signed in, your browser remembers you and it takes one Allow.

The last step of the Show notes, and what else the podcast sent lesson, in Help > Tutorials, turns AI help on with you.

Letting AI help with your podcasts

Below the rows above, the AI Features menu has a few more that are about your podcasts rather than one episode’s notes. Each one asks a question only when you choose it, and each one that would change something shows you its suggestions first. Nothing changes until you say so.

Organise My Podcasts (Help > AI Features, P). Following dozens of podcasts and never got round to folders? Choose this, and AI help suggests folders for them, using the folders you already have where they fit. A list opens with one suggestion per row, such as “Move: Tech Talk – from no folder to Technology”. Every row starts as Accept. Press Space on any row you do not want and it changes to Skip. Accept All (Alt+A) and Skip All (Alt+K) change every row. Press Apply Selected and Cast makes the folders and moves the podcasts you accepted, and tells you how many. Cancel, or Escape, changes nothing. If AI help names a podcast or folder you do not have, Cast leaves it out and tells you how many it left out.

What Is This Podcast About? (W). On a podcast with a description that says nothing useful, this gives you two or three plain sentences about what it is and who it is for. Cast says the answer and shows it in a window you can read at your own pace and copy from.

Is This Episode for Me? (F). First, tell Cast what you care about in a podcast: in Settings for This Podcast (Ctrl+Alt+,), fill in What I care about in this podcast, for example “the interviews, not the news round-up”. Then, on any episode of that podcast, choose this row. You get one sentence starting with Yes, Probably, Probably not or No, and the reason. It never skips or hides anything; it only tells you.

Summarise This Episode (S). A short summary of an episode, for deciding whether to listen. If Cast has the episode’s transcript, it summarises that, and if not it summarises the show notes. The answer always starts by saying which it used, because a summary of the show notes is not a summary of what was said.

Build Me a Listening Run (L). “I have 40 minutes.” Type how many minutes you have, and AI help picks unheard episodes from your Inbox and New Episodes that fit, in an order worth hearing. Cast measures the time itself, so the run really fits. Review the list, then Apply Selected adds them to the end of your Play Queue.

Smart Playlist from a Sentence (T). Describe the playlist you want, such as “unheard news under 20 minutes from this week”. Cast shows the rules it would save, one per row, in plain words. Apply Selected saves the smart playlist; you can change its rules later like any other smart playlist. A podcast or folder you named that Cast cannot find is left out and said.

Name These Chapters (H). When Cast has worked out an episode’s chapters from its transcript (Analyse Chapters, in Chapter 3), their names can be rough. This asks AI help for better names from what is said in each chapter, and lets you accept or skip each name on its own, because one wrong name should not cost you the other eleven.

Tidying the podcasts you follow

Over the years a library collects podcasts that stopped years ago, a podcast followed twice under slightly different names, and a feed that no longer works. Help > AI Features > Tidy the Podcasts I Follow (I) finds them for you. It needs no AI and sends nothing anywhere, so it works even with AI help switched off.

Each row says what it found and offers one action: Pause updates for a podcast with nothing new in over a year or a feed that keeps failing, and Unfollow for a second copy. Space switches a row between Accept and Skip, as in the other lists. Apply Selected pauses the ones you accepted, and asks before each unfollow, with No selected, so nothing goes by accident. A paused podcast keeps every episode; resume it any time from its menu.

What AI help will never do

You can count on these, every time:

• It never asks anything unless you choose a row or press its key.
• It never runs in the background, during a check for new episodes, or while Cast tidies its downloads.
• It never deletes, unfollows or spends anything on its own. Anything it suggests waits for you in a list, and nothing changes until Apply.
• It is sent titles, descriptions, show notes and transcripts. It is never sent a feed address, a file on your computer, where you are in an episode or your support ID.
• It is off in Safe Mode.

What you learned, and where to go next

You now know where to go for any change you have in mind. Preferences sets how Cast behaves everywhere, and Settings for This Podcast lets one podcast be different. You can decide what a row says, what Enter does, which features you see and which keys do what. When you cannot remember where a setting lives, “Every row, section by section” lists every row in Preferences, and “Every switch in Customize Features” lists every feature you can turn off. And when you want it, AI help is there for long show notes and a library that has got out of hand.

Help > Tutorials has three lessons for this chapter: Preferences, and one podcast’s own settings, Podcast settings you will be glad you found, and Decide what a row says, and what Enter does.

Next, Chapter 7, Your podcasts, wherever you are, shows how to keep all of this safe and take it with you.

Chapter 7: Your podcasts, wherever you are

After a few months, your Cast is full of things you would hate to lose: the podcasts you follow, the folders you sorted them into, your place in a dozen half-finished episodes, notes, bookmarks, and a record of all the hours you have spent listening. This chapter is about looking after all of that.

We will start with the fun part, your listening statistics and Year in Review. Then we will make a backup, see how to put it back, move everything to a new computer, and keep your place in step when you listen on more than one computer or in both Quill Radio and Cast. By the end, a new laptop or a bad day with a hard drive will cost you nothing but the time it takes to copy a file.

Some of these commands are Advanced rows. If one is missing from the Podcasts menu, turn on View > Advanced Features (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G), or find it by name in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

Listening statistics

Ever wondered how many hours went into podcasts this year? Cast keeps count, on your computer and nowhere else.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (Episode > Listening Statistics).
2. In Period (Alt+P), choose this week, this month, this year, or all time.
3. Tab to the Listening report (Alt+R) and arrow through it line by line.

The report tells you how long you listened, how much time faster playback gave back to you, how many episodes you finished, and your podcasts with the most-listened at the top. Times are said as words, “3 hours, 47 minutes”, so your screen reader never reads them as a time of day.

The buttons under the report:

• Copy (Alt+C) puts the report on the clipboard, for bragging rights.
• Year in Review… (Alt+Y) tells the story of your year in a few friendly sentences: how long you listened, your top podcasts and what share of the year each took, your busiest month, and how many days you listened. Choose a different Year (Alt+Y) to look back further. Copy (Alt+C) puts the story on the clipboard, and Save as Text… (Alt+S) saves it as a file.
• Export CSV… (Alt+E) saves every listening session as a file you can open in a spreadsheet.
• Clear Statistics… (Alt+S) deletes the listening log and nothing else. Your podcasts, places and notes stay as they are.

Statistics and Year in Review are windows of their own. You can leave them open, go back to your library, and come back from the Window menu. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S again and the same window comes to the front with the latest numbers. Escape or Ctrl+W closes either one, and you are back where you opened it.

If you enjoy a streak, open Preferences (Ctrl+,), choose Data, and check Show listening streaks in Statistics. Your streak then shows in the report and in Year in Review. A streak that ran through yesterday still counts, so you have all of today to keep it going. The same section has Keep my listening history for, from not at all to forever, if you would rather Cast remembered less.

QUILLBert found something: Year in Review doesn’t wait for December. Press Alt+Y in Listening Statistics whenever you like, and its Year list switches between this year and last. He looked in March and found he’d already spent eleven hours on a podcast about bread. He isn’t sorry.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called How much did I actually listen?.

Backing up your podcasts

A backup is one file holding your whole library: the podcasts you follow, your folders and playlists, your Lineups, your place in each episode, your notes, statistics, bookmarks and Go To order. Put it on a memory stick or in a cloud folder, and you can always get back to where you are today.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B (Podcasts > Back Up My Podcasts).
2. Cast asks whether to include your downloaded episodes. The answer starts at No. Downloads can be huge, and Cast can fetch them again. Say Yes only if you want the audio files too.
3. Choose where to save the file and press Save.

Cast tells you when the backup is written. Do it now, while you think of it. Then do it again whenever you have spent an evening sorting folders.

Restoring from a backup

When you need your library back, from a backup you made earlier:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F12 (Podcasts > Restore from a Backup).
2. Pick the backup file.
3. Before it does anything, Cast tells you when the backup was made and how many podcasts it holds. If that is the one you meant, confirm.

The backup replaces the library on this computer. Anything playing stops first, and your podcasts are back straight away, with no restart.

Exporting your data to read

Sometimes you want to look at your data, or use it in another program. Podcasts > Export My Data (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) writes everything Cast knows about your listening to one readable file: the podcasts you follow, folders, the Play Queue, playlists, notes, statistics and what you played recently.

Cast cannot restore from that file. For a copy you can put back, use Back Up My Podcasts. For a list of only the podcasts you follow, to take to another podcast app, use Export OPML, which Chapter 4, Finding podcasts you will love, covers.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Back it up, move it, and keep your place. It makes a backup with you, then covers the move to a new computer and keeping your place in step.

Starting over

If you want a clean slate on this computer, Podcasts > Clear All Podcast Data from This Computer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D) unfollows every podcast and clears your Play Queue, playlists, Inbox folders, statistics and history. Cast asks twice, with No selected each time, then asks separately whether to delete your downloaded files as well. Make a backup first if there is any chance you will want it back.

It only ever clears this computer. Your phone, your other computers and the shared folder you use to keep your place in step are left exactly as they are, so tidying a laptop can never empty anything else.

Moving your setup to a new computer

New computer? You can bring everything you have set up across in one file, including the things a backup does not cover, such as your settings and the keys you changed.

1. On the old computer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X (Help > Export My Setup) and save the file.
2. Copy it to the new computer, by memory stick, email or a cloud folder.
3. In Cast on the new computer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N (Help > Import My Setup) and pick the file.
4. Cast tells you what the file holds before anything changes. Confirm.
5. Close Cast and open it again, so it reads everything back in.

The file carries the podcasts you follow, folders, playlists, settings, your Go To and Quick Action order, bookmarks, and any keys you changed. If you use Quill Radio, your stations and saved places come too.

Passwords stay behind, for your safety. On the new computer you will enter private feed sign-ins again, through Feed Credentials on the podcast’s context menu. Cast reminds you of this before it imports. Importing replaces what is on the new computer, so do it before you start setting things up there.

A note from QUILLBee: Four commands in this chapter sound alike, and they do different jobs. Back Up My Podcasts makes a copy you can put back. Export My Setup is for a new computer, and carries your settings and keys as well. Export My Data is for reading, and can’t be put back. Export OPML, from Chapter 4, is only the list of podcasts you follow, for another app.

Keeping your place on more than one computer

If you listen on a laptop in the kitchen and a desktop in the study, you want to pick up on one where you stopped on the other. Cast can keep your place in each episode in step between them, through a folder you already sync with Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive or a network share. There is no account to make, and nothing goes anywhere except that folder.

1. Open the Podcasts menu (Alt+P) and choose Carry My Place Between Machines (H).
2. Check Carry my place between machines.
3. In Shared folder, choose the synced folder. Browse helps you find it.
4. Choose how to share. Encrypted, for my other QUILL machines locks your places with a recovery phrase. A plain file other apps can read needs no phrase and works with other podcast apps that understand it. You can use either or both.
5. If you chose encrypted, press Make a New Phrase and write the phrase down. Read My Phrase Aloud says it to you. Your other computers need it to join.
6. Give this computer a name in Name for this machine, such as “Kitchen laptop”.
7. Press Sync Now.

On your other computer, do the same, choosing the same folder and typing in the same phrase.

Cast reads the folder when it opens and when you press Sync Now, so your place never jumps while you are listening. Turn on Sync when playback stops, as well to send your place every time you pause. When the two computers disagree, the most recent place wins, so if you went back to hear something again, that is where you will be.

With the plain file, Include episode and file names lets Cast name an episode when it tells you about a disagreement. Turn it off if you would rather the shared folder knew less about what you listen to.

Also share the podcasts I follow, and their folders goes one step further. Follow a podcast on one device and it appears on the others, in the same folder and at the same speed. Stop following it on one, and it goes from the others too. Here is what to know before you turn it on:

• Anybody who can see the shared folder can read the list of podcasts you follow. That is why it is off until you choose it.
• Private podcasts, ones you sign in to or whose address carries a key, never go in the folder. Cast tells you how many it kept back.
• When a podcast leaves because you stopped following it elsewhere, only the follow goes. Your downloaded episodes stay on this computer, and so does your listening history. Follow it again and everything comes back.
• Every podcast added or removed this way is named when you sync, such as “Stopped following Blind Abilities, removed on Studio PC”, so nothing changes without you hearing about it.
• If your phone puts a podcast in two folders, Cast files it in the first one and leaves the phone’s second folder alone.

Cast and the other Quill apps

If you use Quill Radio or QUILL as well, Cast shares with them, so you never have to keep two of anything.

Your place between Quill Radio and QUILL Cast

If you also use Quill Radio, you never need to remember which app you were in. Both apps share one place per episode on the same computer. Pause an episode in Radio, open it in Cast, and it carries on, and Cast tells you so: “Picking up where you left off in Quill Radio, at 1 hour 2 minutes 3 seconds.”

An episode finished in either app is finished in both.

Lineups in both apps

Your QUILL Lineups live in one file that Cast and Quill Radio share. A Lineup you make in one app is there in the other, both can be open and editing at once, and Cast sends Quill Radio anything in a Lineup that only Radio can play, such as a station. Each app keeps its own Start Here. Chapter 9 has the whole story.

Sharing with QUILL

QUILL Cast, QUILL and Quill Radio keep your podcasts in one shared store on your computer. Follow a podcast here and QUILL’s Podcasts follows it too, with the same Play Queue, places, notes and downloads. Your Personal Audio files stay where they are on your disk.

Uninstalling QUILL Cast never deletes any of it. If you come back, your podcasts are waiting.

What you learned, and where to go next

Your listening is now safe and it can travel. You can see how much you have listened, make a backup and put it back, move everything to a new computer, and keep your place in step between computers and between Quill apps.

Help > Tutorials has Back it up, move it, and keep your place for the backup and the move, and How much did I actually listen? for your statistics and Year in Review.

If anything ever puzzles you or goes wrong, Chapter 8, When you need a hand, is there for you.

Chapter 8: When you need a hand

Sooner or later it happens to all of us. You wonder what a checkbox does. You forget where a command lives. You unfollow the wrong podcast. An announcement goes past while you were in another window. A feed will not behave. This chapter is for those moments.

We will go through the help Cast has built in, roughly in the order you are likely to need it: asking about the control you are on, finding a command you have forgotten, taking back a mistake, hearing a message again, and learning Cast with the tutorials. Then come updates, getting in touch with a person, and answers to the questions people ask most. The good news first: very little in Cast can go wrong for good.

Most of what follows lives on the Help menu, Alt+H.

Press F1 anywhere

Every window in Cast answers F1. You hear what the window is for, then what the control you are on does. On a checkbox and not sure what checking it changes? Press F1 before you check it. Try it now on anything in the main window.

Finding a command you have forgotten

You know Cast can do something, and you cannot remember where it is. Three things help.

The Command Palette lists every command in Cast, including the Advanced ones and anything you have switched off.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (Help > Command Palette).
2. Type a few letters of what you want, such as “sleep” or “backup”.
3. Arrow to the command and press Enter.

If a command cannot be used right now, the palette tells you why.

Go To (Ctrl+G) is a short numbered list of places. Press a number and you are there. Chapter 2, Finding your way around, shows how to choose your own ten.

The Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) lists every key Cast answers to, including any you changed, with what each one does. Type in its filter to narrow it.

When a menu item is dimmed, Cast tells you why, in the status bar and to screen readers that read menu help: “Download All Episodes: nothing to download, all 40 are already here.” The same reason comes up if you press a Quick Action key on a row where that action cannot run.

Taking back the last thing you did

Unfollowed the wrong podcast? Press Ctrl+Z (Edit > Undo Last Action, and the Edit menu is Alt+I). Cast brings back what you removed, files and all, and says what it did: “Undid Unfollow. Brought back The Daily, with 412 episodes and 3 downloaded files.”

Undo covers unfollowing, Remove All Episodes, Remove All Downloads, Mark All as Played, deleting a recording, and the changes you make in the Lineups window. Ctrl+Z takes back the most recent one. Press it again and it takes back the one before.

Sometimes the mistake was a few steps ago, and you want to keep what you did since. Choose Edit > Undo History (Ctrl+Shift+Z). It lists the last ten things you can take back, newest first, each saying what undoing it would bring back. Choose one and press Undo This One. Only that step comes back; the others stay as they are. Quill Radio has the same list.

You never have to wonder whether something can be undone. When it can, Cast ends its message with “Ctrl+Z undoes this.” If part of it cannot come back, such as a private feed’s saved password, Cast says so in the same sentence, and you can enter it again in Feed Credentials.

And remember that every question that would delete something starts on No. Pressing Enter too soon is always safe.

Hearing it again

Announcements go by fast, and you may have been reading something else.

• Repeat Last Result (F9) says the last thing Cast told you again, and what you can do about it.
• Activity (Shift+F9) lists everything Cast reported this session, good news and bad, newest first, one sentence a row. Press Enter on a row to take its first action. Retry tries it again, Open Folder shows the file in File Explorer, and Copy Details copies the row for a message to support.
• Recent Problems (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P) keeps the failures from this session and earlier ones: feeds that would not load, downloads that failed, streams that dropped, each with its reason and time. Retry tries the selected one again. Copy All gives you the whole list as text for a message to support, without any passwords. Clear List empties it. Anything Cast tried to do on its own and could not, such as reading a podcast’s chapters, processing a download’s audio or looking at a watched folder, is written here too, even when it was not worth interrupting you for.

A few things take a while, and Cast keeps you posted without chattering. When you press F5 to check every podcast, it says how far it has got every quarter of the way, then one sentence at the end: “Checked 40 feeds: 6 new episodes from 4 podcasts.” Download All Episodes does the same for a batch. Those closing sentences go into Activity, along with your exports and each podcast you follow, so F9 can say the last one again and Open Folder can find a file you just saved.

Cast never leaves you wondering whether a button worked. Every button and every key ends in a sentence: what happened, or why nothing could. When something is busy, Cast says so as it starts, such as “Searching…” or “Fetching The Daily…”, and says how it turned out when it finishes.

If Cast could not save your library when it last closed, perhaps because the disk was full, it tells you once the next time it opens. Retry on that row in Recent Problems tries the save again.

Nothing in Activity or Recent Problems leaves your computer. F9 and Shift+F9 work the same way in QUILL, QUILL Lite and Quill Radio.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called When something breaks. It practises F9, Activity, Recent Problems, undo and F1 with you, before you ever need them.

Learning with the tutorials

Reading about Cast is one thing. The tutorials teach it by having you use it, one step at a time, with Cast right there beside you.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (Help > Tutorials). The QUILL Cast Tutorials window opens.
2. The contents list the tutorials in five tracks: Your first hour, Keeping up, Listening well, One podcast at a time, and Making it yours. Each row says how long it takes and whether you have finished it.
3. Press Enter on one to start.
4. Read the step, go to the main window and do it, then come back. The Tutorials window stays open beside Cast the whole time.
5. Press Next (Alt+N) for the next step, or Back (Alt+B) to go back.

There are 24 tutorials, about two and a half hours in all. A few things make them pleasant to use:

• Try it (Alt+T) does the step for you, such as opening a window, so the lesson can then talk you through what you are looking at.
• Follow me (Alt+M) watches what you do and reads you the next step when you get there, however you did it. Nothing is graded, and Next is always there if you want to move on.
• Say it again (Alt+G) repeats the step.
• Each step names the key you have for the command, even if you changed it.
• Close a lesson halfway and it opens at the same step next time.
• Type here in the contents filter to find the lessons about the window you came from.
• If you would rather read, Read it all shows a whole tutorial as one page.

Forget my progress clears what you have finished, if you want to start the tutorials afresh.

Keeping Cast up to date

Cast checks for a new version once a day when it opens, and says nothing unless it finds one. To check now:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+U (Help > Check for Updates).
2. If there is a newer version, Cast downloads it and reads out the progress.
3. Choose Install and restart now to update straight away and have Cast open again afterwards, or Install when I close (Alt+C) to keep listening and update the next time you close Cast.

Help > About shows your version with a build number, such as 3.2.0 (build 2). The build number tells you which build of a version you have: when a fix comes out without a new version number, it is a newer build, and Check for Updates offers it.

If you are already up to date, Cast tells you so. To turn the daily check off, open Preferences (Ctrl+,), choose When Cast opens, and clear Check for updates on launch.

The user guide, the release notes and the version you have are on the Help menu too: User Guide (Ctrl+Alt+D), Release Notes (Ctrl+Alt+R) and About QUILL Cast (Ctrl+Alt+O).

Release channels: Stable, Beta and Dev

Cast comes in three flavours, and you choose which one your copy follows. They are called release channels.

• Stable is the version we recommend. It has been checked with JAWS and NVDA, and it is what most people use. Every copy starts here.
• Beta gets new features a few weeks early. It is mostly finished, but some things may not work right yet.
• Dev is the work in progress, sometimes several builds a week. Things will break. Only choose it if a developer asked you to, or you enjoy testing.

1. Open the Help menu, then choose Release Channel… (press Alt+H, then L). You can also open it from Preferences (Ctrl+,): under When Cast opens, choose Change release channel.
2. Arrow through Stable, Beta and Dev. The box below tells you what each one means and what choosing it would do. Nothing changes yet.
3. Press Switch to move, or Close (Escape) to leave things as they are.
4. For Beta or Dev, a short warning comes first: what could go wrong, how your podcasts are protected, and how to come back. Read it, check the I understand box, and choose Move to Beta (or Move to Dev). Stay on Stable, or Escape, changes nothing.

Beta and Dev versions aren’t signed, so when you install one, Windows SmartScreen may warn that it comes from an unknown publisher; that’s expected, and choosing More info, then Run anyway, installs it.

Before it moves, Cast saves a copy of your subscriptions, playlists, listening places and settings. If it cannot, it stays where it is and tells you why. Downloaded episodes are not copied, and updates do not change them. Then it checks for updates on the new channel straight away and offers you the newest version there, if there is one. Nothing is installed unless you say so.

When Quill Radio or QUILL Lite is installed too. These apps run on one shared engine on your computer. When an app moves to Beta or Dev, it gets its own copy of that engine, so the apps you leave on Stable are never touched. You can still move several at once: check them under “Also move my other QuillVille apps on this computer” and choose Switch.

A note about disk space. That second copy of the engine takes about 335 MB. It goes away by itself when your last app comes back to Stable. A portable copy carries its own engine, so it needs no extra space.

Updates on Beta and Dev. On Beta and Dev, Cast downloads a new version quietly when its daily check finds one, so it is ready when you are. It never installs anything without asking: when the download is done, it says so and shows you what’s new, and you choose when to install. It waits instead of downloading on a metered connection, during Quiet Hours, and while Quill Radio is recording. Update History tells you why it waited. On Stable nothing changes: Cast tells you about a new version and downloads it only when you ask.

If an update doesn’t start. After an update, Cast checks that the new version really opens. If it doesn’t open within two minutes, the update undoes itself and puts back the version you had, and the next time Cast starts it tells you so. Nothing of yours is changed, and Update History has the details. To make this possible, Cast keeps a copy of the installer for the version you have: on Beta and Dev for as long as you have that version, and on Stable for a week or three starts after each update. That copy takes about 200 MB of disk space, which Stable gives back once the week or the three starts are up. After an update, the previous installer is kept until the new version has started three times, or for a week, and then it is deleted.

Coming back to Stable. Open Release Channel again and choose Stable.

• If the version you have is already a Stable one, you are back straight away and nothing is installed.
• If you have a newer Beta or Dev version, Cast checks whether Stable can read everything you have saved. If it can, choose Go back to (the Stable version) now. Cast downloads Stable and offers to install it, and your subscriptions and settings come with you.
• If Stable can’t read something yet, Cast says so and gives you two safe choices. Wait for Stable keeps the version you have, stops test versions, and moves you to Stable by itself when Stable catches up. Use the copy from (the day you joined) puts back the copy of your subscriptions and settings saved when you joined, then installs Stable. Anything you added since then won’t be in it, but a copy of how things are right now is saved first, so nothing is thrown away.
• If there is no saved copy, waiting is the only choice, and the window says so.

The Update History button in the same window shows what the updater has done for Cast. Switching sends nothing about you: the only thing Cast ever sends when it checks for updates is a request for the list of versions.

When a media tool is missing

Cast uses a tool called FFmpeg to trim silence, even out volume, find chapters in episodes that have none, and for Sound Enhancements and Smart Speed. It comes with Cast, so you will probably never think about it. If it ever goes missing, Cast tells you once when it opens.

Help > Media Tools (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M) checks for it whenever you ask, and Help > Get FFmpeg (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F) puts it back. Both are Advanced rows. Following, downloading and playing all work without it.

Getting help from support

Support is run by Community Access, and a person reads every message. If something is wrong, or you have an idea, write to us.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 (Help > Get Help from Support).
2. Choose what kind of message it is, add a subject, and say what happened. Add your email address if you would like a reply.
3. If you can, say what you expected and how to make it happen again. Those two help more than anything.
4. Press Send.

Your own mail program opens with the message ready to go, with Cast’s version and your version of Windows at the bottom. Nothing goes until you send it from there, so you can read it over first. If you have no mail program, Cast puts the message on the clipboard so you can paste it into webmail.

The address is support@community-access.org, and you can always write to it directly. Say that you were using QUILL Cast and what happened. If you have something from Recent Problems or Activity, paste it in.

Troubleshooting

Here are the snags people run into most, each with what to do about it.

QUILLBee’s tip: Most of these start the same way. Press F9 to hear what Cast said, then Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P for Recent Problems, which keeps the reason and the time for anything that failed, earlier sessions included. Between the two, you often know what went wrong before you read any further.

A podcast will not add

Check that the address is the feed itself, and not the podcast’s web page. Typing its name in Add Podcast usually finds it.

Cast asks for a username and password

The feed is private. Enter the ones your podcast provider gave you. For Patreon-style feeds they are next to the feed address on the provider’s site. If the question keeps coming back, copy both again.

A private feed says “feed sign-in failed”

The publisher may have changed your sign-in, or you are on a different computer. Open the podcast’s context menu, choose Feed Credentials, enter the password again, and refresh with F5.

A download keeps failing

Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V (Downloads > Resume All Downloads). If it still fails, check that Reconnect and keep downloading automatically is on in Preferences, under Fetching. Recent Problems will have the reason.

Episodes vanished from the Play Queue

They waited longer than the podcast’s queue limit. Go to Recently Expired (Ctrl+Shift+X) and press Restore. To change the limit, use Queue Expiry… on the podcast’s context menu. Chapter 5, Keeping up without keeping watch, explains queue expiry and Inbox limits.

The Inbox is missing episodes

A podcast’s Inbox limits can move older episodes out of the Inbox. They are still unheard in the podcast’s own episode list, and nothing is deleted.

A download disappeared

A cleanup rule in Preferences, under Data, removed the file. The episode is still there, ready to download again. Cleanup never touches an episode in your Play Queue or one you have started.

Cast did not pick up my episode when it opened

Resume Last Episode on Launch (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L) only works when the episode is still in your library. If you unfollowed the podcast or removed the episode, press Enter on something new.

A letter key does something unexpected in a list

Letters in the main library and episode lists jump to matching rows. Winamp playback letters are available only in Now Playing; if a main list does not respond, check which control has focus and return to the list with Tab.

A command or a whole menu is missing

It may be an Advanced row, or a feature switched off in Customize Features (Ctrl+Alt+C). The Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) finds it either way and tells you which.

What you learned, and where to go next

You now know where to turn when you are stuck. F1 explains whatever you are on, the Command Palette finds a command you have forgotten, Ctrl+Z takes back a mistake, and F9 says the last thing again. When none of that is enough, a person at support will help.

If you would like to practise this before you need it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called When something breaks.

Chapter 9 is about QUILL Lineups, lists that fill themselves in an order you chose. After it, the Keyboard reference lists every key Cast comes with.

Chapter 9: QUILL Lineups

A Lineup is a list of things to listen to, in an order you chose, that keeps itself up to date. Most of mine are episodes, but one Lineup can hold any mix of podcasts you follow and their episodes, radio stations and saved places from Quill Radio, YouTube videos, playlists and channels, and Quill Radio’s Local Media files and recordings.

Things come into a Lineup two ways. You can add them yourself, from any episode or podcast in Cast. And you can give a Lineup rules: “every unplayed episode from my News folder published since yesterday”, or “the newest unplayed episode of every podcast I follow”. Each rule also says when its items go: once you have heard them, after some days, when they stop matching, or never. And whatever the rules say, your hands win. What you add stays, what you keep stays, and what you remove never comes back.

A weekday might look like this: open Lineups, arrow to Commute, press Enter on the first episode, and Cast plays its short unheard episodes one after another through the Play Queue, with yesterday’s already gone because you heard them.

Your Lineups are shared with Quill Radio. Make one in Cast and it is there when Radio opens, and you can edit it in either app, even with both open.

If you would rather be walked through it, Help > Tutorials has a lesson called Build a lineup that fills itself, in the Keeping up track. It takes about nine minutes.

Open Lineups

Press Ctrl+U (Episode > Lineups…). The Lineups window opens. It is a window of its own, like Now Playing, so it is on the Window menu and in the Ctrl+Tab order, it has its own menu bar, and Ctrl+1 takes you back to the main window.

You can also reach it from:

• Go To (Ctrl+G). Lineups waits in the pool, so nobody’s numbering moves: add it to your list with Settings inside Go To.
• The Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P): Podcasts: Lineups… opens the window, and Podcasts: Add to Lineup… adds the episode or podcast you are on to a Lineup.

If the window is already open, Ctrl+U brings it to the front rather than opening a second one. Close it with Escape or Ctrl+W (Lineup > Close). Whatever is playing carries on.

Lineups is one of the switches in Customize Features (Ctrl+Alt+C), called QUILL Lineups, under Playing. Switch it off and the Episode menu row and the Go To entry go away, and the Command Palette says the Lineups commands are switched off. The Play Queue and your playlists keep doing everything they did, and your Lineups are kept for when you switch it on again.

Finding your way around the window

When you have no Lineups yet

The first time, the window says “You have no lineups yet”, and your cursor is on the New Lineup… button. Beside it is Start from an Example…, which gives you a ready-made Lineup with rules.

The two lists

Once you have a Lineup, the window has two lists. Tab moves from the Lineups list to the Show filter and then to the Items list.

• Lineups (Alt+L): your Lineups, in your own order. Each row says how many items it holds and how long they play, such as “Commute, 6 items, 44 minutes”. A Lineup whose rules brought in new things while you were looking at another one says how many, such as “2 new”, until you choose it. The Lineup that opens when Cast starts says “start lineup”.
• Items (Alt+T): what is in the Lineup you are on, in the order it plays. Moving through the Lineups list fills it straight away.

Each item reads as one sentence, always in the same order: the name, the kind of thing, the length, where it comes from, and, only when there is something to say, its state. For example, “Tuesday’s Episode, episode, 32 minutes, The Daily”. The name comes first, so typing the first letter of a name jumps to it. The states you may hear are:

Above the Items list, Show (Alt+O) narrows the list to one kind: All kinds, Episodes and podcasts, Stations and places, YouTube, or Local media and recordings. If you only ever add episodes, you will never need it.

The status bar sums up the Lineup you are on: how many items, how long they play, and when the rules last ran. Lineup Summary (Ctrl+T, Play > Lineup Summary) says the same thing and then reads you each rule.

The menus in the window

Every item on the menu bar shows its key:

• Lineup (Alt+U): New Lineup, New from an Example, Duplicate Lineup, Rename Lineup, Delete Lineup, Edit Rules, Start Here, Removed Items, Recently Left, Import Rules, Export Rules and Close.
• Edit (Alt+E): Undo, Cut, Paste Before, Paste After, Keep This Item, Remove from Lineup, Remove Missing Items, Select All, Why Is This Here and Refresh Now.
• Arrange (Alt+A): Move Up, Move Down, Move to Top, Move to Bottom and Move to Position.
• Play (Alt+P): Play, Pause or Resume, Next Item, Previous Item, Play This Lineup, Play Next, Add to Up Next, Stop After This Item, Skip Live Items and Lineup Summary.
• Window (Alt+W): your open Cast windows, as everywhere in Cast.

Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, on an item or a Lineup, and everything you can do with it is right there.

QUILLBee’s tip: The Lineups window has the same menus and keys in Quill Radio, so learning it once is enough. That also means its keys are its own: in the main window Ctrl+Right skips forward in an episode, and in Lineups it is Next Item. The full list is in Keys in the Lineups window, near the end of this chapter.

Make your first Lineup

Start from an example, step by step

The quickest way to see a Lineup working is to start from one of the examples. Each one shows a different way of choosing how long things stay.

1. In the Lineups window, press Ctrl+Alt+N (Lineup > New from an Example…), or choose the Start from an Example… button.
2. Arrow through the examples. Each one says what it does.
3. Choose New This Week and press Enter.
4. You hear “Made New This Week. Its rules are running now.” A moment later, its episodes arrive.

The examples are:

The four that are only episodes, New This Week, Latest From Each, Commute and Finish These, work with nothing but Cast.

The example becomes yours, a copy you can change however you like. If an example names a folder you do not have, such as News, its rule finds nothing and its sentence says so: ‘in folder “News”, which does not exist’. Change the folder in the rule to one of yours (see “Write a rule” below).

Make an empty Lineup, step by step

1. Press Ctrl+N (Lineup > New Lineup…), or choose the New Lineup… button. In the Lineups window Ctrl+N is New Lineup, not Add Podcast.
2. Type a name, such as Sunday, and press Enter.
3. You hear “Made Sunday. Add to Lineup in any list fills it; Edit Rules, Ctrl+Alt+R, gives it rules.”

Two Lineups never share a name, whatever the capitals: a second Sunday is called “Sunday (2)”.

Rename, duplicate, delete and arrange Lineups

These work on the Lineup selected in the Lineups list:

• Rename Lineup… (F2).
• Duplicate Lineup (Ctrl+D) makes a copy with the same rules, settings and order.
• Delete Lineup… (Shift+Delete, or Delete in the Lineups list) asks first and names what goes: “Delete Sunday, its 2 rules and 14 items? The items themselves are not deleted.” No episode, download or podcast is ever deleted by this. Ctrl+Z brings the Lineup back.
• Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down, in the Lineups list, move the Lineup you are on, and Alt+Shift+Home and Alt+Shift+End move it to the top or the bottom.

Add episodes and podcasts by hand

Anything you add yourself stays in the Lineup until you remove it, whatever the rules say.

Add to Lineup, step by step

1. Go to an episode or a podcast anywhere in Cast: the Podcasts place, the Inbox, New Episodes, the Play Queue or any other list of episodes.
2. Press Shift+F10, or the Applications key, and choose Add to Lineup….
3. A short list of your Lineups opens, with New Lineup… at the end. Choose a Lineup and press Enter, or choose New Lineup… and type a name.
4. You hear “Added to Sunday. Ctrl+Z undoes this.”

The Command Palette’s Podcasts: Add to Lineup… does the same for the episode you are on, or the podcast if you are on a podcast. Add to Lineup is also one of the Quick Actions for episodes and for podcasts, so you can give it a Ctrl+number in Quick Actions (Ctrl+Alt+Q); see “Quick Actions: what Enter does” in Chapter 6.

If the Lineups window is open, the new item appears in it straight away. Adding something the Lineup already holds makes it stay until you remove it, and adding something you removed earlier takes it off Removed Items.

A podcast in a Lineup stands for its next episode: playing it plays the podcast’s next unheard episode, so a Lineup of five podcasts you follow is always five things worth hearing.

Arrange the items

Moving an item changes the order, never how long it stays. And the rules never move anything: when they run, items they bring in arrive, items they let go leave, and everything else stays exactly where you put it.

• Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down move the selected items one place. Cast says where they landed, such as “Moved to 3 of 14”. At the edge you hear “Already at the top”.
• Alt+Shift+Home and Alt+Shift+End move them to the top or the bottom.
• Move to Position… (Ctrl+J) asks for a number.
• For a long move, press Ctrl+X (Edit > Cut), go to where they belong, and press Ctrl+V (Paste Before) or Ctrl+Alt+V (Paste After).
• Ctrl+A selects every item, Shift with the arrows selects a run, and Ctrl+Space selects or deselects one item at a time, as in any Windows list.

Write a rule

A rule says what to look for, where to look, which ones, in what order, how many, and how long they stay. A Lineup can have as many rules as you like: anything any rule finds is in the Lineup.

The Rules window, step by step

1. In the Lineups list, arrow to a Lineup and press Alt+Enter, or press Ctrl+Alt+R (Lineup > Edit Rules…) from anywhere in the window.
2. The Rules window opens on the list Rules for and the Lineup’s name. Each rule is one sentence, including how long its items stay and how many it finds now, for example: ‘Podcast episodes in folder “News”, where Played is no and Age is at most 1 day, newest first. They go once finished, or after 2 days. Finds 3 now.’
3. Use the buttons beside the list: Add Rule…, Edit Rule…, Remove Rule, Move Up and Move Down. Moving a rule changes where its new items go, not what it finds.
4. Below the list, in This lineup, are three settings for the whole Lineup:
   • New items go: with the other items from the same rule (the usual choice, so each rule’s items stay together), at the top, or at the bottom.
   • Play-through budget in minutes: playing the Lineup through stops adding rule items once this many minutes are used. 0 means no budget.
   • Skip live items when playing through, the same as Play > Skip Live Items (Ctrl+Alt+K).
5. Press Enter for OK, or Escape to change nothing.

Nothing changes until you choose OK. Two questions may come first, so that a rule change never takes something away silently:

• If the change would let items go, you hear how many: “This change lets 4 items go. They will be in Recently Left. Make the change?”
• If you removed a rule that had brought items in, you are asked what to do with them: keep them as items you keep, or let them go to Recently Left.

Edit Rule, step by step

Edit Rule is laid out in the order the rule’s sentence reads, in labelled groups.

1. What it looks for. Look for (Alt+L) chooses one kind: Radio stations, Saved places, Podcasts I follow, Podcast episodes, YouTube videos, YouTube playlists, YouTube channels, Local media, or Recordings. The change takes effect when you leave the box. If the rule already has tests or places to look in, Cast asks first, because those belong to the old kind.
2. Where to look. Narrow by (Alt+N) chooses what to look in, such as Folder, Podcast or Label. It starts on “Choose what to narrow by”, which means everywhere. Then Values (Alt+V) lists every one you have: press Space on each one to look in, and any selected one counts. Filter values (Alt+F) shortens a long list as you type.
3. Tests. The Tests list (Alt+E) holds what an item must be. Add Test… (Alt+A) asks for a field, a test and a value, such as “Length”, “is at most”, “40”. Match (Alt+M) chooses whether an item must pass All of the tests or Any of the tests. With no tests, everything in the places you chose is found.
4. Order and amount. Order (Alt+O): as the source orders them, newest first, oldest first, shortest first, longest first, by name, or most listened first. Then three limits, each 0 for none: Count limit, Per group limit (at most this many from each podcast) and Up to minutes in all.
5. When they go. Keep (Alt+K), and the boxes it needs; see “Choose how long things stay” below. Rule switched on (Alt+S) turns the rule off without deleting it: off, it finds nothing new and lets nothing go.
6. Try it. Press Try It (Alt+T). Your cursor moves to the matches list, whose label carries the count, such as “Matches, 7 items”. Nothing is saved by trying.
7. Press Enter for OK.

What a test can ask

A text test can be: contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, is, is not, fits the wildcard, matches the regular expression, or does not match the regular expression. Capitals must match makes it exact. A number test can be: is at least, is at most, is, or is not, and the box says the unit, such as “In minutes.” A yes-or-no test is yes or no.

A number test never matches something that does not say. A podcast that publishes no length is never “at most 10 minutes”, so a short-episodes rule never fills up with episodes of unknown length. This is the same rule Episode Filters and smart playlists follow.

What episodes and podcasts can be tested on:

Rules over Quill Radio’s kinds, such as stations and Local Media, have fields of their own. Quill Radio’s user guide lists them.

Choose how long things stay

Tests decide what comes in. The rule’s Keep choice decides when it goes. The same episode can come in because it is new and leave because you have heard it, and the rule’s sentence always says both.

A few things worth knowing:

• What counts as finished. An episode you mark as played always counts. Otherwise it counts once you have heard past Percent heard that counts as finished (Alt+P).
• A podcast is never finished, and neither is a station or a channel. Rules over those offer only While it matches, For a number of days, and Always.
• Max kept (Alt+X) caps a rule: it keeps at most that many, and the oldest arrivals go first. A busy podcast cannot fill the Lineup.
• Days are real days. “For 3 days” means 72 hours from when the rule brought the item in, however often the rules run.
• The usual choice follows the kind. A new rule over episodes starts on Until finished, or 7 days. A rule over podcasts starts on While it matches.
• Two rules can find the same item. It appears once, and stays while any of its rules still wants it.

Your hands outrank the rules

• Keep This Item (Ctrl+K, Edit > Keep This Item) holds an item whatever its rule says. You hear “Kept. It stays whatever the rules say.” The row says “kept”, and the menu item is checked. Press it again to give it back to its rule: “No longer kept: its rules decide again.”
• An item you added by hand stays until you remove it.
• Remove from Lineup (Delete) takes an item out now, and no rule ever brings it back, however well it matches later. You hear “Removed. Removed Items can bring it back.” With several selected, you hear how many. Nothing is deleted from your library: the episode is still in its podcast, and its download is still on disk.
• Remove Missing Items (Ctrl+Shift+Delete) removes every item that no longer exists.
• Undo (Ctrl+Z, Edit > Undo) takes back the last change: a move, a remove, Keep, a rename, a deleted Lineup, a rule change or an add. Press it again for the one before. It is the same Undo as the main window’s, so Undo History (Ctrl+Shift+Z in the main window) lists these too.

QUILLBee’s tip: Delete never asks, because it never loses anything. Removed Items keeps the list, and Ctrl+Z puts the item back in the very same place.

Why Is This Here

Press Alt+Enter on an item (Edit > Why Is This Here…). A short window says why the item is in the Lineup and how long it will stay. Read it with the arrow keys, and press Escape to close it. You might hear:

• ‘In Commute because rule 1 found it: Podcast episodes, where Played is no and Length is at most 40 minutes, oldest first. They go once finished.’ and, for an episode you have started, how much of it you have heard.
• “In Commute because you kept it. It stays whatever the rules say, until you remove it.”
• “In Commute because you added it. It stays until you remove it.”
• When two rules found it, it names both and says which one keeps it longest.

Alt+Enter means “tell me about this” everywhere in Windows, which is why it is the reason on an item and the rules on a Lineup.

Removed Items and Recently Left

Nothing leaves a Lineup without trace. Two lists, both on the Lineup menu, remember what went:

• Removed Items… (Ctrl+Alt+Z): what you removed yourself.
• Recently Left… (Ctrl+Alt+L): what the rules let go, newest first, each with its reason and when, such as “finished”, “2 days passed” or “it no longer matches rule 1”. It remembers the last 100.

In either one, select one or more items and choose Bring Back (Alt+B). They come back at the end of the Lineup as items you keep, so the rules do not let them straight go again, and you hear how many came back. Clear the List (Alt+L) empties the list after asking first. Clearing Removed Items means a rule could bring those items in again.

When the rules run

The rules run:

• when you open the Lineups window;
• when something they read changes, in Cast or in Quill Radio, such as a new episode arriving, an episode being played, or a favorite being added in Radio;
• every ten minutes while the window is open, so days pass on time;
• whenever you press F5 (Edit > Refresh Now).

The rules run while the Lineups window is open, and each time it opens. They do not run in the background with the window closed. Opening the window always brings every Lineup up to date first.

What you hear:

• With the window in front, a change is said once, without moving your cursor: “2 added, 1 left.” If the item you were on is the one that left, you hear that first, such as “Your item left: finished.”, and your cursor moves to the item that took its place.
• When nothing changed, the rules say nothing, unless you pressed F5, which always answers: “No changes.”
• Changes to Lineups you are not looking at show on their rows as “2 new”.

Some promises the rules keep, whatever happens:

• Nothing leaves because something could not be checked. If your library cannot be read for a moment, the items it would have checked stay exactly as they were and say “unavailable”.
• Nothing leaves without trace. Everything the rules let go is in Recently Left, with the reason.
• Your order is never changed by the rules.
• A big loss is never silent. If one refresh would take away more than half of a Lineup, and more than 10 items, for example after a long time away, it says so plainly and tells you Recently Left can bring them back.

Play a Lineup in Cast

Cast plays podcasts, and it plays a Lineup through its own Play Queue, the same queue Chapter 5 describes. That way a Lineup carries on by itself, even with the Lineups window closed, and Next in Queue works as it always does.

Play from an episode, step by step

1. In the Items list, arrow to an episode and press Enter, or Ctrl+Enter (Play > Play).
2. Cast puts that episode, and the Lineup’s episodes after it, at the front of the Play Queue, in the Lineup’s order, and plays it. Episodes you have already heard, and ones no longer in your library, are left out. The rest of your queue waits behind them, in its own order.
3. When the episode ends, the queue carries on with the next one from the Lineup.

To play from the top, press Enter on the Lineup in the Lineups list, or Ctrl+Alt+P (Play > Play This Lineup) from anywhere in the window.

While it plays:

• Ctrl+Right and Ctrl+Left (Next Item, Previous Item) move through the Play Queue, the same as Next in Queue and Previous in Queue in the main window.
• Pause or Resume (Play > Pause or Resume) holds and continues what is playing. Its key, Ctrl+Space, works everywhere in the window except the Items list, where Ctrl+Space selects or deselects the item under the cursor.
• Play Next (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) puts the selected episodes right after the one playing, and Add to Up Next (Ctrl+Alt+Enter) puts them at the end of the Play Queue. These two work on episodes.
• Stop After This Item (Ctrl+Alt+S) answers that in Cast the sleep timer does this: choose End of Episode in the Sleep Timer (Ctrl+Alt+T), or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T in the main window.
• A podcast in a Lineup plays its next unheard episode.

What Cast sends to Quill Radio

Stations, saved places, YouTube items, Local Media files and recordings are Quill Radio’s to play. When you press Enter on one in Cast, Cast sends it, and the Lineup’s items after it, to Quill Radio, opening Radio if it is not running, and says “Sent to Quill Radio to play.” Radio then plays them through.

When you play from an episode and the Lineup also holds things only Radio can play, Cast plays the episodes through the Play Queue and tells you how many other items there are: “The lineup’s episodes are at the front of the queue. Its other 3 items play in Quill Radio: Enter on one of them sends it there.”

Save Lineup and Apply Lineup on the Play Queue

The Play Queue place has had Save Lineup… and Apply Lineup… on its Applications key for a long time. They now make and use QUILL Lineups, so there is only one kind of lineup in Cast and Quill Radio.

Save the queue’s order, step by step

1. Arrange the Play Queue the way you like it.
2. Press the Applications key on the Play Queue place and choose Save Lineup….
3. Type a name, such as Tuesday, and press Enter.
4. You hear “Saved lineup Tuesday: 5 episodes, in this order.”

The new Lineup holds the queue’s episodes as items you added by hand, so they stay until you remove them. Saving under a name you already used replaces that Lineup’s items, and you hear “Replaced lineup Tuesday” instead. If that Lineup has rules, they are kept.

Apply a Lineup to the queue, step by step

1. Press the Applications key on the Play Queue place and choose Apply Lineup….
2. Choose a Lineup. Only Lineups with episodes in them are offered.
3. The Lineup’s episodes that are still unheard move to the front of the queue in its order, and the rest of your queue waits behind them. Nothing is thrown away.
4. Cast tells you how many it applied and how many it skipped because you had already heard them or they are no longer in your library.

Any Lineup with episodes can be applied, not only the ones you saved from the queue, so a Lineup built by rules can fill the front of your queue too.

Lineups you saved before

Lineups saved by Save Lineup before QUILL Lineups were kept as playlists. The first time this version of Cast starts, it copies each one into Lineups, once, under the same name. The playlists stay in Playlists exactly as they were, so you can delete them there when you no longer want them.

Start Here: open Cast in a Lineup

You can choose one Lineup to open every time Cast starts.

1. In the Lineups list, arrow to the Lineup, such as Commute.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+H (Lineup > Start Here).
3. You hear “Commute opens when Quill Cast starts.” The menu item is checked, and the Lineup’s row says “start lineup”.

Next time Cast starts, the Lineups window opens in front of the main window, on that Lineup, and its rules run as it opens. The main window is still there behind it. Close the Lineups window, or press Ctrl+1, and you are back in it.

• To stop, choose Start Here again on the same Lineup. You hear “Quill Cast opens as usual.” Choosing it on another Lineup moves it there, because Cast can start in only one place.
• The very first time Cast runs, its welcome comes first. Start Here applies from the next time.
• If the Lineup was deleted, Cast says once “Your start lineup no longer exists. Quill Cast opened as usual.” and forgets the choice.

Quill Radio has its own Start Here, so each app can start in a different Lineup, or neither.

Sharing Lineups with Quill Radio

Cast and Quill Radio keep their Lineups in one file, lineups.json in the shared data folder. The same Lineups, rules and order appear in both apps, and the Lineups window has the same menus and keys in each, Ctrl+U included.

• Both apps can be open at once. An edit in one appears in the other within a couple of seconds, and neither app ever undoes the other’s change. If you move an item the other app removed a moment ago, nothing is guessed: you are told so.
• Each app plays what it can, and hands over the rest. Cast plays episodes and podcasts and sends everything else to Radio. Radio plays every kind.
• Backups. A Cast backup (see “Backing up your podcasts” in Chapter 7) includes your Lineups.

Share a Lineup’s rules

Export Rules… (Ctrl+Shift+X) saves a Lineup’s rules and settings, not its items, to a small file you can send to a friend or take to another computer. Import Rules… (Ctrl+I) makes a new Lineup from such a file, whose rules then find the same kinds of thing in your own podcasts.

What Lineups cannot do yet

• Rules never use the internet. They read what is already on your computer, so they are instant and work offline. An episode rule sees the episodes Cast already knows about; it does not check feeds itself.
• YouTube rules see what you saved and follow. They see the videos and playlists you saved in Quill Radio and the channels you follow. The newest uploads in a channel are fetched from YouTube as you browse and are not kept on your computer, so a rule cannot see every new upload.
• The rules run while the Lineups window is open, and each time it opens, not in the background.
• Cast does not play stations, YouTube or Local Media itself. It sends them to Quill Radio, so those items need Quill Radio installed.

Keys in the Lineups window

These keys belong to the Lineups window, in Cast and in Quill Radio alike.

From the main window, Ctrl+U opens Lineups.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can now make Lineups from examples or from nothing, fill them by hand from any episode or podcast, and write rules that bring episodes in and let them go when you choose. You know that your own hands outrank the rules, how to ask why something is there, and how to bring back anything that left. You can play a Lineup through the Play Queue, save the queue’s order as a Lineup and apply one later, open Cast in a Lineup, and share them all with Quill Radio.

The Keyboard reference that follows lists every key Cast comes with, for the days you want them all in one place. Happy listening.

Keyboard reference

These are the keys Cast comes with. If you change one, the Keyboard Shortcuts Sheet (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) shows the key you have now. Rows marked Advanced appear on the menus only when Advanced Features is on.

The main window and menus

Places

In the Places list

In the Podcasts place

In Favorites, Enter opens a podcast’s episodes and Backspace goes back. In Playlists, Enter opens a playlist.

In an episode list

In Notifications

Playing

Winamp keys in Now Playing

These work in the Now Playing window while Winamp playback keys are on, which they are to start with. In the main window, letters jump through the focused list, and arrows navigate its rows or tree.

Episodes

In the Lineups window

The Lineups window has keys of its own, the same in Cast and in Quill Radio. They are listed in full under “Keys in the Lineups window” in Chapter 9.

Podcasts and your library

Downloads and your data

Making Cast yours

Help

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