I swapped my podcast apps for YouTube Premium for a week. Here’s why I’m not going back

For almost a decade, my daily podcast routine has been split between two apps. If I wanted to watch a video podcast, I would open up the main YouTube app, but if I just wanted to listen to audio while walking or doing chores, Pocket Casts and Spotify were my go-to combo.

While YouTube Premium does support background listening, it’s never been designed for pure, screen-off listening, even though the platform has quickly become the biggest home for podcasts, with almost every creator moving toward a video-first format. And so, I stuck to my tried and tested combo.