I use Funkwhale for my music collection and had my podcasts in there for a while. However, I ended up not listening to my podcasts very much since they were hidden among my much larger music collection.
So I moved my podcasts feeds to FreshRSS, which I was already using for RSS feeds. I like the simplicity of using something that I already had, but it doesn’t have any podcast-specific features like being able to resume where you left off.
Do you have any podcast listening apps that you like?
*edit: I should add that I originally meant “self-hostable applications for storing your podcast subscriptions,” but these phone app recommendations are great to have, too. I might just ditch the server-side of this entirely and just use a separate app on my devices for listening. It would be nice if I only had to subscribe in one place and be able to pick up where I left off across multiple devices, though.
I used to use Airsonic. Suporte auto downloads of podcast episodes.
It worked for me as I mostly listens to music and 1 or 2 podcasts once and a while. Not listened to podcast for a while so might use just Antenna Pod.
I have also moved on from Airsonic to LMS (Lightweight Music Server) and use Ultrasonic on mobile.
You asked for a podcast client, so here’s AntennaPod.
I have it on auto backup and share the backup with all my other devices over Syncthing.
No need to self-host anything.
I don’t understand the point of self hosting for podcasts. The whole point of podcasts is being able to stream or download them directly from the source.
Until someone makes a self-hosted podcast caching server that can strip the embedded ads using AI, I’ll have no idea why people do it.
AntennaPod
What I’d like to know: For anyone using some app other than AntennaPod: Why? How is it worth it?
Never heard of antennapod before I’ve just stuck with pocketcast since day one, what makes antennapod special?
The ui is clean and intuitive and it actually handles podcasts with multiple feeds (patron/free) well (other apps I’ve used were quite annoying with that). Being able to tag all your podcasts is also really nice for organization, especially if you have a lot of podcasts that you aren’t listening to every episode of. My only complaint was that the default settings are to download a podcast when you click on it instead if stream, but that is easily changed with one setting switch
I can’t say I’ve thought about how paid versions of a podcast would work on pocketcast
I’ve never used Antenna Pod, but I’ve used Podcast Addict for more than a decade, I’ve paid for the pro app, and I’ve been really impressed by what it can do.
I like to have many podcasts downloaded to my phone, and Podcast addict has really granular controls for what to download and keep for how long, in the general case, and for each podcast you can dial in custom settings, for example not auto-downloading or deleting. It helps me have plenty of audio to listen to at all times without blowing up the storage on my phone.
The various automatic playlists for downloaded episodes, new episodes, and recent episodes are also very useful to me.
I’ve found the developer to be really nice and he will personally respond to bug reports and support requests if anything doesn’t go as planned.
The settings are way too complicated and defaults are not intuitive. Took me forever to figure out how to purge old downloads I hadn’t listened to. Constant errors when trying to download. Does not want to play video podcasts as audio-only.
Fucking love that app.
Same for mobile.
I’ve used so many podcast apps including paid and have never had anything anything anything that comes CLOSE to AntennaPod. I love that it’s foss, libre, all that good stuff.
I just wish I’d tried it sooner.
Same, I stuck with podcast addict for so long - once I tried antennapod I didn’t have to switch anymore. I do sync with a selfhosted gpodder though - just to not get hooked on a single app.
Best podcast app I’ve ever used.
I would only switch to another app if that could remove the ads from downloaded podcasts :')
Thanks! Haven’t heard of Audiobookshelf before, and that’s the kind of thing I was looking for.
+1
Also really love that app and they use it to automatically archive podcasts in a darker container.
I primarily use antennapod but tried abs out of curiousity. How did you get around the queue issue? I found it to be a dealbreaker
I duct taped together some API calls and a config file to get some smart playlist features. I find it very helpful for the slow pace I listen to some podcasts. I have it set up to put daily and weekly episodes first and then serials. Super niche , but it’s just how I like to listen to my podcasts. https://github.com/TunaLobster/PyAutoABSPlaylist
This looks cool! I was yearning for a similar feature just a few days ago. Thanks for sharing.
Let me know if you hit issues. It was a very thrown together thing that is very lacking in customization without hacking python logic together.
I use Podcast Addict on Android.
I use Podcast Addict too. Found it well over six years ago and never bothered to look for another.
This is what I used before work took away my nice phone and replaced it with a bullshit iPhone. Switched to Overcast since PA is not available for iOS.
AntennaPod. Can allegedly sync via gpodder.net or gpoddersync. Personally never got it to work quite right, but I didn’t try very hard either.
I got mine working with sync on my nextcloud self hosted instance
Pocket Casts on Android.
Audiobookshelf.
I download my podcasts from YouTube through pinchflat to strip out the ads then mount the RSS feed(s) into antennapod
Hey! I’m the Developer of Pinepods. It really aims to be the ultimate podcast solution that’s as self-hosted as possible. I’m trying to make it as fleshed out feature wise as any paid or android specific podcast application while allowing for server sync and access everywhere on any device. Its getting better and better all the time! https://pinepods.online/
This is a pretty interesting concept as a self-hosted. Sadly integration with android auto is important to me, and my understanding is that forces you into needing an app
Curious if car play on your radar at all - my brains telling me it’s be a PITA to solve for in a wep app unless you also maintained android/iOS apps that wrapped the webui justnto implement carplay
Edit: I see you’ve got a android beta and auto on the readme milestone - I’ll keep an eye on this project and probably toss it on my homelab for testing once it’s a nix package.
Pinepods looks so cool! I just created an account on the demo instance. The “smart playlists” feature just absolutely sold me.
GPodder is the FreshRSS equivalent for podcasts.
Does it sync play times and listened episodes?
Yep
Nice. I asked because gpodder.net does not sync that with antennapod. What client do you use?
I don’t use it. I only listen to podcasts on my phone.
Just checked it out. That UI really does not look like any other contempoary app though. :|
Doesn’t matter, you don’t need the UI. You just connect it to AntennaPod or other supported client(s).
I don’t think I understood what gPodder is. The website says gpodder.net is a sync service, but doesn’t seem to indicate that it can be self hosted. The list of clients has gPodder listed as a desktop PC client to gpodder.net. Does the desktop client also work as a server?
AntennaPod can sync to gpodder.net (only at that url?). When I tried it I got a load of timeouts. Instead I enabled the gpoddersync NextCloud app to my own server. That worked like a charm between AntennaPad and kasts on PC.
I also use AntennaPod on Android and sync it to my self-hosted Nextcloud instance using GPodder Sync, where I can access my podcast subscriptions and episodes using NextPod.
It is both a sync service and a client.
That doesn’t clarify anything for me. Is the client application also the service, or are they (as I believe) two different things with the same name?
What I’m really getting at is that FreshRSS is self-hostable and as far as I can tell - gPodder isn’t.
Oh cool, I wasn’t aware of gpodder.net. I actually thought you were talking about the desktop gpodder application, which I had used before. Didn’t realize there was a server-side component to it as well. Thanks!
I see. mygpo is the code that runs gpodder.net. I guess it could be self-hosted, but it doesn’t look straight forward to do so. I missed it since in the docs it’s under the developer section, not the user section. gpoddersync seems much easier as long as you’re ok using Nextcloud. It would be nice if mygpo were packaged for Nix or docker. Maybe I’ll give that a go at some point.
I’m using antennapod. It syncs to a selfhosted gpodder instance and some podcasts are hosted on my audiobookshelf. I like some exclusive podcasts from podimo but their player is shit. Selfhost a tool that creates rss feeds for those walled podimo podcasts and they get downloaded and served by audiobookshelf.
That’s a very slick setup, nice.
Rss feeds to download the mp3. VLC to play them. I like to relisten to some series so building a library makes it easy.
I’m using AntennaPod but it’s annoying me that I can’t sort and autoplay oldest to newest. Unused to use podcast addict but I’m keeping google play services outta my main profile in grapheneOS which means I cant use my pro licence for pocketcasts…
The queue can be sorted by date. If you hit date again it reverse the order.
Yes, however it wont auto-download oldest-newset, and more annoyingly it wont play next in that reversed order, it just stops the ep and I have to manually find and select the next ep in that podcast. I sorta don’t grok the AP workflow with queue and inbox - most of my podcasts are story/investigative journalism style and I want to just click on a podcast, press play to resume where I was at, and auto roll through the podcast in whatever order it should be.
APs workflow seems very much aimed at listen to a jumble of whatever’s been recently released’ so I feel like I’m fighting it to work like I expect
