Pinecast changelog

Site Builder 2.0

Matt — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:42:00 -0000

We've redesigned the Pinecast site builder to be cleaner and easier to understand.

The site builder is one of the most feature-rich parts of Pinecast, but its sheer size and complexity has made it hard for many folks to fully take advantage of. This month, we took a pass at cleaning up the design and making the UI more intuitive.

First, there's no longer multiple layers of tabs and dropdowns: there's one clean sidebar. Click into a section and drill down to find what you need. The back button at the top returns you to the preview section instead of immediately leaving.

Next, the Layout tab:

Before, the Layout tab grouped related parts of the site design together: header and footer, homepage and episode lists, episode pages, etc. This makes sense logically, but making simple changes to what you can see in the preview area required you to navigate between tabs and sub-tabs.

Click between pages in the preview, and the Layout tab will follow you, updating to show what's on that page.

Now, the Layout tab shows all of the parts of the page you can currently see, top to bottom. Not sure what you're looking at? Hover over a module in the sidebar and it'll highlight the corresponding area in the preview.

Click on a module in the sidebar, and we'll show you all of its options.

Run into trouble?

This is a big change, and the site builder has hundreds of features with millions of combinations of layouts and theme options. We've done our best to avoid any regressions, but accidents happen. If you run into any trouble, be sure to reach out so we can get things patched up for you right away.

Pinecast is translated

Matt — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:24:00 -0000

Starting today, Pinecast is available in four languages other than English: Danish, French, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

From the beginning, Pinecast was built with localization in mind: we've followed best practices for formatting text so that when we inevitably decided to launch in another language, we'd be able to hit the ground running. Thanks to ten years of planning ahead, we were able to launch four new languages this month.

Changes to your dashboard

If you're an existing customer, your dashboard will probably continue showing you English text. If you'd prefer to use one of the translations, you can change the language we use for your account by visiting the Settings page.

The langauge that you set in the dashboard is the language shown for you. The language of your podcast is always set on the settings page for your podcast specifically, and your podcast can have any language, not just the ones Pinecast is translated into. Your language preference affects:

The dashboard
Emails you receive from Pinecast

We do not use your language preference to identify you, and your language choice remains private.

Changes for your listeners

Your content

If your podcast is in one of the languages Pinecast is translated into, you'll notice some improvements:

We'll automatically start using the appropriate translations for text included in your show notes, like when you add a link to your Tip Jar.
If you use our podcast websites or short links features, the text in the preview images you see when sharing a link on social media should be translated.
The embeddable players for your show will be translated into the language of your podcast.
Podcast websites hosted on Pinecast will show some translated text as appropriate. Note that some English text may still appear: this is likely customizable in your Site Builder.

Your Tip Jar

If you have paid subscribers who use your show's Tip Jar, they'll start seeing translated text in emails and in their tip dashboard. They'll also have the option to change their language preference after logging into the tips dashboard.

Feedback

We've done our best to translate Pinecast well, but we may have made some mistakes. If you notice any issues with the translations, please don't hesitate to reach out to support@pinecast.com to let us know.

Also, please let us know if you speak a language that you'd like to see Pinecast translated into. We're keen to expand our localization coverage in the future!

Tip Jar subscriber updates

Matt — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:13:00 -0000

You can already send special episodes to paid subscribers through your Tip Jar. However, if you just want to send a quick update—such as why you haven't posted an episode—there's not been a way to do that.

Now, under the Communication > Paid Subscriber Updates tab on your podcast dashboard, you can send email updates to your subscribers.

Subscribers to your Tip Jar will receive your updates at a scheduled date and time, which you can set. If you're not ready to schedule an update, you can save it as a draft to publish later.

All Pinecast customers on the Starter plan can send five updates per month per podcast. If you have our Growth add-on, you can send unlimited updates.

When replying to an email, subscriber responses will end up in the following locations:

If you have listener feedback enabled and your listener feedback email address is turned on, responses will be collected on the Communication > Listener Feedback tab.
If you have email privacy enabled (on Settings > Email Privacy), responses will be forwarded to your email inbox. Your personal email is masked with the email privacy address.

Otherwise, responses are not collected.

Last but not least, listeerns can read all of your email updates from their subscriber dashboard at https://tips.pinecast.com.

Remove feed redirects

Matt — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:00:00 -0000

We've made a change to make it easier to move your show back to Pinecast. When you set up a feed redirect from Pinecast to another podcast hosting service, it previously required customer support assistance to remove the redirect if you decided to move back. This is no longer the case: on the same Settings > Feed Redirect tab where you set up the redirect, you can now cancel it.

Be aware: feed redirects move your subscribers, and removing the redirect does not move those subscribers back to Pinecast. You'll need to set up a redirect from the RSS feed you had redirected Pinecast to (pointing back at your Pinecast feed) to move your subscribers back to Pinecast. Please reach out to support for help; we know this can be a bit tricky.

Change slugs

Matt — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:00:00 -0000

Up until now, it's not been possible to change your podcast's slug on your own. The slug is the bit of text that appears in your show's feed URL, website URL, short links, and elsewhere. It's a lowercase, alphanumeric (along with hyphens) bit of text that uniquely identifies your show on Pinecast, and it's used in places where we need a machine-friendly way to identify your show.

Changing your slug was previously fraught because it required some non-trivial checks to be done before the change could be made. We made the call to put this burden on our customer support team, since they could make sure everything was done correctly and to help Pinecasters understand the consequences of this change.

Nearly ten years later, we've ironed things out so this process is not fraught. Visit the Settings > Change Slug tab in your podcast dashboard to be walked through the process of updating your show's slug—no customer support interaction needed.

After changing your slug, there's no need to take further action on your end, like updating apps and directories with new URLs. Most apps and directories will automatically update within about 24 hours, and your listeners will continue to hear your show as you'd expect.

YouTube integration

Matt — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0000

We've made it easier to drive listeners to your podcast on YouTube. On the Distribution tab, you'll find a new YouTube entry with the ability to link your YouTube channel.

After submitting your podcast to YouTube, you'll have the option to link your YouTube account. Once linked, we'll do our best to detect and reference your podcast automatically—no extra setup required.

There are a few cool benefits to linking your YouTube channel:

Short Links and Subscribe Widget

Your Short Link pages and embeddable subscribe widget will now include a link to your podcast on YouTube.

With just a few clicks, you'll automatically start driving listeners to your YouTube channel.

Podcast reviews

We'll start pulling YouTube comments from your podcast and aggregating them in the Podcast Reviews section on your dashboard (under the "Communication" tab).

As with Apple Podcasts and Podchaser reviews, you'll get an email notification when a new review is indexed. You can also use the Notifications feature (part of the Crew add-on) to get Slack, Discord, or webhook notifications when a new review is indexed.

Timecode support in WordPress

Matt — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:28:05 -0000

In the Pinecast WordPress Sync Plugin, adding timecodes to your show notes now links them on your site. For example:

# Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:45 Topics covered
01:21 First topic

In the example show notes above, 00:00, 00:45, and 01:21 will be linked to the corresponding timecodes in the player. This works with both the WordPress built-in player as well as the Pinecast embeddable players.

This functionality is available as of version 2.3.0 of the plugin.

Newly imported shows alert you when a redirect is active

Matt — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:21:28 -0000

For folks bringing their podcast over to Pinecast, we'll now check the feed you've imported from to make sure that it gets redirected properly. When the redirect is active, you'll get an email confirming it. If the redirect does not become active within a few days, you'll get an email reminder.

Updated Podcast Reviews

Matt — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:33:44 -0000

Podcast Reviews has gotten a fresh new look.

Now located under the Communication tab in your podcast dashboard, Podcast Reviews now has a cleaner, simpler interface. We've made it more obvious how to filter reviews, we've made the review list less visually distracting.

We've also added a new Analytics tab:

This new tab shows a numerical overview of your podcast reviews, showing you a breakdown of ratings, how many ratings you've over the past 90 days, a breakdown of which service your reviews are left on, and a map of where the reviews originate from.

Network player

Matt — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:49:06 -0000

The Crew add-on just got a new feature: the network player.

The network player is a variant of our existing playlist player that's available on individual podcasts. This version of the player shows episodes from all of the podcasts in a network. If you run a website for your podcast network, this is a simple way to allow your audience to see what's new—and all it takes is copying and pasting some simple HTML.

The network player has the same limits as the podcast playlist player: 100 recent episodes shown (up to Unlimited when combined with the Hi-Fi or Growth add-ons). And of course, you can customize the colors used.

Listener feedback got an upgrade

Matt — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:21:21 -0000

Listener feedback allows your listeners to leave messages for you. The messages they type are shown on your podcast dashboard. There's also episode-specific feedback URLs which can be included in your show notes as an auto-include.

This feature has been a part of Pinecast for almost a decade. Originally part of the legacy Pro plan, it was moved to the Growth add-on. In recent years, we've added a feedback section to the Tip Jar, allowing your paid listeners to leave feedback for you directly.

Today, we have a few announcements:

More availability

First, we're making listener feedback available to everyone with a Starter subscription. If you're a paid subscriber, you now have access to listener feedback.

Feedback over email

We previously announced @listener.email addresses to protect your privacy. Now, we're announcing @listener.feedback email addresses: every podcast on Pinecast gets its own email for feedback.

If your show's slug is my-show, your listeners will be able to reach out to my-show@listener.feedback with their messages. Those will be collected on your podcast dashboard.

All of the moderation features available with the web-based listener feedback tool are available as part of the email listener feedback tool.

New Growth add-on benefits

Making feedback available to Starter customers takes away one of the perks of the Growth add-on. We didn't forget about you! We're introducing a new Insights tab that offers an report on listener sentiment and offers suggestions on future topics.

Note: this report is generated in part with generative AI.

More configurability

You can now individually enable and disable listener feedback in each place it's available:

On the web
Via email
In the Tip Jar

Improved transcript editor

Matt — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:09:28 -0000

We've shipped some big improvements to the transcript editor! The new UI is simpler to use and far cleaner.

Changes now auto-save, avoiding awkward pauses as you switch from field to field. We'll also make sure the transcript is fully saved before you leave or close the browser tab.
For folks who use screen readers, the change should mean that there are fewer jarring transitions as you move from utterance to utterance.
The text fields for each line of dialog grow vertically as you type rather than getting scroll bars.
If you add a paragraph break into the transcript, we'll show a button to split the line into two.

New Episode page gets cleaned up

Matt — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:19:45 -0000

A big focus of our most recent release has been cleanup. The "New Episode" and "Edit Episode" pages are two of the most critical UIs on Pinecast, but neither has gotten an overhaul in a very long time. We've taken time to pick apart the UI visually, and the result is a cleaner look. Here's what you'll see:

You might say "That doesn't look very different!" And you're right! We've put a great deal of energy into making sure it's familiar. Let's talk about what's new.

The fields have more room to breathe

We've spaced out our fields more. This comes with a trade-off: some fields are now below the fold. That's okay! Almost every field that's visible by default is something you should pay attention to, and so we expect you'll scroll down regardless.

The improvement, though, means groups of components like "Episode type", "Season number", and "Episode number" aren't bunched up and/or wrapping on mobile devices.

Scheduling is more obvious

We now have less boilerplate around the "Episode release" section of the form.

There are fewer borders, labels, and explainer text. We've tried to make it more obvious what you're looking at and why it matters, and reduced the amount of visual noise. If you use a screen reader, it should be slightly more intuitive to tab through options.

Artwork and metadata

One of the most common places for folks to get stuck while uploading an episode is at the artwork and metadata step.

This has been one of the most-refined UIs on all of Pinecast. Folks have written in about getting stuck at this step dozens of times in the last decade, and we've made tweaks consistently to help improve the wording and appearance. This is our latest iteration:

We have clearer directions on where to look and what to do.
The option to skip looks less like a call to action and more like an alternative.

We think this is going to eliminate a lot of confusion for users and hopefully make it easier to get started with a new podcast.

Better colors

Matt — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:16:53 -0000

We've gone through all of our UIs with a fine-toothed comb. In the process, we discovered a number of problems, primarily around dark mode. Notably, we found a bunch of colors that were murky or hard to read: as the code shifts, changes were unintentionally made that caused the way our UI looks to drift from what was intended.

A lot has gone into cleaning this up, but the result has had two notable outcomes:

Dark mode is now much more visually pleasant, with many colors being easier on the eyes.
Our UI is more accessible, with far more colors meeting WCAG AA contrast requirements.

Clips ❤️ Transcripts

Matt — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 01:22:55 -0000

Clips and transcripts haven't played nicely with each other up until now. This week, we're starting to roll out transcript support for clips.

What does it mean?

Previously, transcripts were disabled for episodes with clips.

Now, episodes with clips will correctly show transcripts. We do the hard work of getting the transcribed text to have the correct timestamps: when your clips change, we update the transcript to match.

Not only that, clips now support transcription. Transcribe your clips a single time, and the transcripts will be used in any episode where the clip is placed.

Pricing

No costs change. Every two weeks, we'll start including five transcripts up to five minutes for clips with your Starter subscription at no extra cost (ten for Growth add-on subscribers). If you'd like to transcribe more clips than that, you can use transcription credits ($0.03/minute).

Transcripts in WordPress

Matt — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:08:05 -0000

On the latest version of the Pinecast WordPress Sync plugin (2.2.0), you can now choose to add your transcripts to your synced posts.

Transcripts can be shown with one of four options, defaulting to off:

A link to the transcript short link page is shown below the player. This requires short links to be enabled for your podcast.
The transcript can be displayed in a collapsible section below the player.
The transcript can be shown inline in the post above the show notes.
The transcript can be shown inline in the post below the show notes.

Email privacy

Matt — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:44:33 -0000

We're starting to roll out a new opt-in feature to protect your privacy. Starting this week, you can opt to replace your email address with a forwarding address in your public feed. This hides your personal email from the public, and replaces it with a sort of "podcast PO box".

Forwarding addresses look like this:

your-show@listener.email

To opt-in, visit your podcast dashboard and click Settings > Email Privacy. Flip the switch to enable the feature.

More details are available in our knowledge base: https://help.pinecast.com/article/196-email-privacy

"Serial" podcast ordering now requires automatic episode numbering

Matt — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 06:02:38 -0000

In the past, Pinecast allowed podcasters to set custom episode numbers on episodes for podcasts set to Serial episode ordering (versus Episodic episode ordering). Serial ordering causes a podcast to show episodes in episode order rather than reverse chronological order. This option was initially added by Apple Podcasts some time ago, but is used by fewer than 10% of podcasts on Pinecast.

The trouble with Serial ordering is that it is not a default feature of podcasts. That is, because it was added many years after podcasts were invented, support in the podcast ecosystem is mixed (but improving).

Rather than simply ordering a show chronologically, Serial ordering displays your show in episode order. For apps that support serial ordering, episodes are shown in the order which their episode numbers appear in, generally ignoring their publish date. Consider these episodes:

Episode 1, published June 1
Episode 2, published January 1
Episode 3, published December 1

A "default" ordered episodic podcast will show these episodes as 3, 1, 2 (reverse chronological order). A "serially" ordered podcast will appear as 1, 2, 3 in an app that supports serial ordering. However, in apps that do not support serial ordering, the same serially ordered podcast will still appear as 3, 1, 2.

This causes a couple of painful problems:

Many people are confused why their episodes appear in an unexpected order when they set an episode number.
Podcasters commonly publish episodes in unusual orders, which leads to many podcast apps appearing "wrong".
Some apps implement serial ordering, but use different behavior than Apple Podcasts for choosing how to order episodes that lack numbers.

Moreover, the "Podcasting 2.0" specification defines similar-but-incompatible RSS tags to Apple's season and episode RSS tags, but does not define a mechanism for changing the ordering of the episodes. There's no universal way to solve this problem that works with every app and covers every use case.

Our solution is "automatic episode numbering" for serial podcasts. With automatic numbering, episodes receive an episode number based on their reverse chronological ordering. The first full episode that was published becomes episode 1, the second becomes episode 2, etc. For shows that already have episode numbers set, the previously-defined episode numbers will persist. New episodes will be numbered based on their publish timestamp after previously-numbered episodes.

The original intention for serial ordering is documented by Apple:

Serial shows are designed to be listened to in sequential order — from the first episode to the last. These include documentaries, investigative reports, scripted dramas, and fictionalized narratives. When you set your show type to serial, episodes are presented in sequential order with the first episode at the top of the show page and the final episode at the bottom.

In the spirit of this, we do just that: the first episode published becomes episode 1, the second becomes episode 2, and so on. We do not believe that this is perfect, but it has a number of compelling benefits:

There's no undefined behavior. You can reason about where an episode will appear in your feed for every listener on every podcast app.
Backdating an episode changes the episode number as you might expect. It would be very unusual for episode 1 to be published after episode 2.
Serial podcasts are "correct by default" in this way. It shouldn't ever take extra effort to make your show appear as you intend.

If you have a show that uses out-of-order episode numbers intentionally or skips episode numbers, we recommend switching from Serial to Episodic ordering. Episodic ordering will continue supporting custom episode numbers indefinitely.

If your show has had incorrect episode numbers set in the past, you can edit them in bulk on a desktop computer by visiting Episodes > Tools > Episode Renumbering.

This is a disruptive change, and we understand that it may change your workflow. If you have questions or concerns, or need help adjusting the order of your episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're glad to help.

Automatic podcast website HTTPS support when using a custom domain name

Matt — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:41:28 -0000

Historically, setting up a custom domain name required you to use Cloudflare to have HTTPS be available on podcast websites. This is no longer necessary: all podcast websites using a custom domain will automatically have HTTPS available.

When setting up a new podcast website, you'll get an email when we've seen that your custom domain name is set up correctly. We'll also send you an email if we discover a problem with your DNS settings.

All analytics are now available in tabular format

Matt — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 05:23:40 -0000

For all analytics charts, you can now switch from "Chart" to "Table" view. This shows you a tabular version of the analytics. If you use a screen reader or just want to see numeric data, this will avoid having to download episode data as a CSV so it can be opened as a spreadsheet.