Best AI Tools for Podcasters in 2026: What Reddit Communities in r/podcasting Actually Use

Reddit threads in r/podcasting break AI use into task categories with different results and community consensus for each.

Filler word and silence removal is the highest-satisfaction use case in Reddit discussions. Tools that remove "um", "uh", "you know", and dead air address a genuinely tedious manual editing task. The consensus from r/podcasting is that automated filler removal works well enough to eliminate 80-90% of manual clip cutting, with the remaining review focused on cases where the AI removed a meaningful pause or cut a word incorrectly. From r/podcasting: "I used to use Riverside's AI to remove umms and pauses. It worked pretty well most of the time."

Audio enhancement for microphone quality improvement is the second most-discussed category, with Adobe Podcast Enhance mentioned in nearly every thread about improving cheap microphone recordings. The tool is free and browser-based, which is why it dominates this category. The Reddit community caveat is consistent: Adobe Podcast Enhance can make a recording sound robotic, particularly on voices with unusual resonance or in recordings with room echo. The documented Reddit position is that "robotic and clear is better than echo-y and unclear" for most podcast contexts, but not for music, highly produced narrative shows, or voices that suffer from over-processing.

Show notes and transcript generation is the most consistently disappointing AI use case in Reddit discussions. The common experience documented across multiple r/podcasting threads: AI show notes tools produce output that "takes at least an hour of editing" because the summaries are generic, miss the specific takeaways that made the episode valuable, and do not capture the voice of the host. VOMO AI is mentioned as a partial exception because its action-item summary format reduces the blank page problem without claiming to produce publishable show notes directly. The practical Reddit workflow is to use AI transcription as a raw text base and write show notes from that rather than relying on AI summarization.

Social clip repurposing from long-form episodes is a growing category in Reddit discussions since 2024. OpusClip and Riverside's magic clips feature are both mentioned, with the consistent criticism that AI clip selection "never picks the most interesting part" because the AI cannot detect humor, emotional resonance, or narrative importance. The Reddit workflow for podcasters using these tools is to generate a batch of AI clips, review them, and select 1-2 that are actually worth posting rather than publishing AI selections without review.

Transcription for accessibility and SEO is the highest-accuracy and most unambiguously positive AI use case in Reddit discussions. Whisper-based transcription tools including MacWhisper and Aiko (Mac-only apps running OpenAI Whisper locally) produce accurate enough transcripts that Reddit users describe them as 15 minutes of editing for a 60-minute episode, compared to hours of manual transcription.

Show notes generation is the most-discussed AI disappointment in r/podcasting, and the community has converged on a clear explanation for why AI tools fail here.

The core issue documented in Reddit threads is that good show notes require editorial judgment that AI tools do not have. A useful show note captures what was specific and surprising about this particular episode. AI summarization tools read the transcript and identify the topics discussed, which produces a list of what was talked about rather than why it was worth listening to.

From r/podcasting (2025 thread): "Automated show notes are always super generic and lame. I tried it for a month and they require at least an hour of editing anyway. Now I write them manually in 20 minutes and they're actually good."

The Reddit consensus on workarounds: use AI transcription to get a clean text base, then write show notes yourself from the transcript using the AI output as reference rather than as the publishable draft. For podcasters who want more automation, the VOMO AI approach of generating action-item style summaries is described as more useful than full show notes generation because it produces structured raw material rather than a polished draft that sounds artificial.

The timestamp generation use case is more successful. AI tools that generate chapter markers and timestamps from transcripts are described as accurate and time-saving, with less editorial judgment required than summary writing. Descript and Podcastpage both receive positive Reddit mentions for timestamp generation specifically.

The comparison between Riverside.fm and Descript for AI-assisted podcast editing appears regularly in r/podcasting, with community preference depending on whether the primary need is recording quality or editing workflow.

Riverside is consistently recommended for recording quality in Reddit discussions. The platform captures local high-quality audio from each participant independently, meaning poor internet connections do not degrade the recorded audio quality the way they do with tools that capture the stream directly. This "local recording" approach is cited as the primary reason Riverside dominates remote interview recording recommendations.

Descript is recommended for editing workflow. The text-based editing approach, where you edit audio by editing the transcript, is described in Reddit discussions as faster for removing mistakes, tightening pacing, and reorganizing content than a traditional waveform timeline. From r/podcasting: "Descript changed how I edit. I spent 3 hours on a 45-minute episode before. Now I spend 45 minutes."

The Reddit community split: podcasters who record solo or with guests in the same room tend toward Descript as their primary tool. Podcasters doing remote interviews with guests who cannot install software tend toward Riverside for recording and then often edit in Descript or a traditional DAW. Using both is a documented workflow in multiple threads, with Riverside handling the remote recording step and Descript handling the editing.

The Riverside "magic clips" feature that auto-generates social clips receives consistent criticism in Reddit discussions for the same reason as OpusClip: the AI selects moments based on patterns it can detect, not editorial judgment about what the audience will find compelling.