Google Podcasts app gets support for Apple's CarPlay

Google Podcasts, the company's audio show app that has steadily evolved from a barebones offering to something more sophisticated, has finally added support for Apple's CarPlay automotive platform. With this support, iPhone owners can use the Google Podcasts app to stream their favorite shows in their vehicle using CarPlay, making it a bit more useful for those who often listen to content while driving.

Google Podcasts is, as its name suggests, Google's own app for browsing and playing podcasts. The app has been around for a while at this point, having slowly grown from a very basic offering to one that covers most of the major bases that podcast enthusiasts look for in a streaming platform.

Users have the ability to explore shows, which includes personalized recommendations; in addition to subscribing and listening to content, users can also automatically skip over silent parts of the audio, speed up the playback, queue new episodes for seamless playback, download episodes, browse one's listening history, and more.

The app is also compatible with Google Assistant, which is a bonus for users who want to stay within Google's ecosystem. For the users outside of it, however, there's also Google Podcasts for iOS, which now works with the company's CarPlay platform. The new support gives Google Podcasts a fighting chance against Apple Podcasts, at least when it comes to iOS users.

The big benefit of using Google Podcasts over Apple Podcasts mostly resides in which devices you own. If you're faithful to Apple's hardware, you'll probably be best off sticking with Apple's own podcasting platform. However, if you have Google Nest speakers, use a Windows laptop, and have an Android tablet in addition to your iPhone, it may ultimately be easier to use Google Podcasts instead.