While it would be great to have true cross-device/platform syncing, I am sensitive to the potential complexity of such functionality.

Assuming that Xavier isn't close to bringing us a proper bi-directional cross-platform solution, I would like to suggest an alternative which may be acceptable to many of the people who have asked for cross-device syncing at https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997/suggestions/4115735 and a desktop version at https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997/suggestions/6531942.

Namely:
That a primary-secondary model be created.
One Android device would be configured as the primary device. All other Android devices and desktop or web applications would be secondary.
The primary device would be responsible for management of subscriptions, including retrieving new episodes.
The secondaries would only be able to play episodes from the catalogue (podcasts or playlists), and log status updates to those episodes. Perhaps they could be used to request the primary device to add a new subscription. Android devices would run the same app but it would be in a mode which blocks the functions which aren't appropriate for a secondary.

The primary device would periodically write out the relevant data (like a backup) to an appropriate location (perhaps a cloud storage account) and in addition to those main repositories it and also the secondaries would record status changes ("incremental backups" if you like) in a separate pool of data. The primary's updates would include new episodes. All devices would read from all files to determine the current status. The primary would also track the changes from the secondaries and update itself, and every so often clear all the data and create a new set. The podcast update process is a good opportunity to do this as in any case the primary device needs to be on-line for that to happen.

Maybe this "sync" method could be straightforward enough that the secondaries (especially non-Android) could even be third-party programs, exchanging data with the primary via file formats which Xavier determines?

I'm looking forward to seeing if Xavier and the user base are interested in this.

Before resuming the podcast, which timed out through sleep mode, ask if and how much you want to rewind.

Feature could look like this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbXXYrDXgAIRa8y?format=jpg&name=medium (hope Link is consistent)

Picture is out of the Bookbeat app. It has a slider between start timestamp where you activated sleepmode and stopmarker where sleepmode ended. The audio is playing during the slide of the user.

Right now Rewinding is tedious, either you have very small steps and have to hammer the rewind button quite much, or if you try to use the slider it is quite fuzzy and difficult to hit the right place, if the podcast is very long.

This is Spotify's fault, not yours, but I'm worried about losing my favorite podcasts as they switch to Spotify. I'm not sure what the difference is with how they convert... Like, Joe Rogan's feed seems to still be updating in the app, but Last Podcast on the Left no longer updates in the app, only in Spotify.

To piggyback off this idea, is there a way to make friends with Stitcher Premium archives? I wouldn't mind paying for Stitcher Premium to get podcast archives, but I'm never going to use any other app than yours to listen. Is there a way to get those premium archives to play nice?

Basically I never want to acknowledge that any other podcast apps exist but yours.

I'm a bit neurotic about my podcast organization. Say that a podcast has an episode that's really a trailer for another podcast... I want to hide that episode from my view when looking at the episode list. Currently the only way to do that is to mark it as "played", but I know in my heart that I didn't really "play" the episode.

It gets more confusing when podcasts release "from the archive" episodes, which are a duplicate of a previously released one. I usually mark these as "played" so they don't clutter my feed, but sometimes it's confusing if I'm trying to figure out if I *actually" listened to the episode, or if I marked it as played because it duplicated an existing episode.

Adding an autoplay episode feature or making it easier to create a playlist.

I think it would be cool to have an autoplay toggle button in the user setting so that users can either choose to use it or have the playlist. The autoplay episode feature would make it easier to go to the next episode down as the user finishes his/her episode for the podcast. This would make it safer for drivers who use the app to listen to their favorite podcast as they go about their day instead of queuing up the next one manually.

Yes, I understand that there's the playlist feature for this but even that could be improved as well. If you don't want or feel the need for the autoplay episode toggle, just make the playlist better. Allow user to play all for their podcast so that they can place all the episodes into the playlist automatically instead of doing so one at a time, manually.