Last covered here on April 2nd, Podcast Lounge UWP (still technically in beta) continues to improve apace. I make no apologies for dipping into its beta period with multiple Flow stories here on AAWP - the developer has been incredibly communicative in terms of what's new and changed, as well as really getting involved with readers and users. (And if other devs were to do the same then they'd get similar coverage.)

From the developer, Richard Castle:

This is one of our “tick” builds which carries some new functionality as well as bug fixes based on the awesome reports you’ve been sending through. Keep them coming as we review and act on every one of them.

This version brings more refinement to the Top 100 list, allowing genre to be selected and even country. We’ve also brought an old favourite from Podcast Lounge: Collections. Curated lists of podcasts from some of the most prolific podcast publishers in the industry. All of these enhancements help you find new content quickly and efficiently.

We’ve also quashed some of the most common exceptions you’ve been getting and also streamlined many of the database operations to make your experience even smoother.

Here's the changelog for Podcast Lounge UWP version 1.2.40, since build '38':

We’ve started posting the update history on the website (available from within the app under Help + Feedback > Update History). You can view it directly from here.

• New: Added menu functionality to "Select All" 
• New: Added additional playback speeds
• New: Added a check for an excessive number of downloads in order to warn user
• New: Top100 listing can now be customised by genre and country
• New: Added collections section for discovery of podcasts from the most prolific publishers
• Enh: Optimised the database method for making episodes as played in full
• Enh: Optimised the methods for generating downloads to make them much faster
• Fix: Restoring a backup would conclude by erroneously writing an exception log file by mistake.
• Fix: Restore routine optimised to avoid writing out unnecessary token files
• Fix: Downloads approved on a restricted network via user response were still being paused due to network costs.
• Fix: Play history menu did not allow horizontal scrolling meaning some menu options were obscured
• Fix: Application startup crash when active downloads list were being built on the wrong thread
• Fix: Podcasts encoded in Latin ISO-8859-1 were being read incorrectly as UTF-8 causing corrupted text
• Fix - Addressed issue with a crash when deleting a Smart Playlist which had generated playlists in the playlist history
• Fix - where opening an entry from the directory and returning, lost the position in the directory
• Fix - where opening a podcast directory item twice resulted in an exception in certain circumstances
• Fix - where right clicks were not being properly processed in directory view causing an exception
• Fix - where opening an entry from the top100 and returning, lost the position in the results
• Fix - Background sync wasn't resetting the FavouritesRefreshTime, causing UI to perform unnecessary refreshes in some instances.
• Fix - Tightened up Favourite removal method to better cope with null results.
• Fix - Updated UpdateEpisodePlaybackStatus as in some cases it could be driven from a non UI thread
• Fix - CancelAllDownloads routine updated to better cope with null entries
• Fix - cancelling all active downloads did not work in some circumstances
• Fix - Downloads page cancellation routine often failed.
• Fix - Playlist entries cancelled from the downloads section still showed as downloading from the player page if user returned.
• Enh - Added code to trap .OGG podcasts which aren't supported on phone API. RSS parser now checks for alternatives.
• Enh - Added ability to email database via the About page
• Test - Experimenting with a different means of clearing the backstack

As you can tell, development is just rocketing along - it's a shame that it started so late in Windows 10 Mobie's life cycle, but there we go. Of course, this also works on desktops, tablets, Xbox, and so on, but my gut feel is that its home is on Mobile, just as with its WP8.1 predecessor.

Browsing the top 100, across all genres but for GB; (right) viewing podcast collections. And no, AAWP isn't in any of them (sob!), I think? Still, another useful discovery tool.

Aha, AAWP's in the top 100 under 'technology' - phew! The genre and region filtering works really, really well; (right) also added are more playback speed options, as shown here.

The beta is here in the Store. Go to it, and make sure you use the built in Feedback section to report any issues or make any suggestions.

PS. It's true that I've already done a big podcatcher round up for Windows 10 Mobile, so at some point I need to update it to add Podcast Lounge. And do see my top picks there, for comparison against this new contender.