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.
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I’ve actually been fighting with this since yesterday.
Pocket Casts is one of my last things that I’m not self-hosting, and I’m trying to change that.
My list of requirements was:
- Multi-device sync
- Be able to play seamlessly from either a web UI or my mobile device, picking up where I left off on either device.
For my Gpodder backend I chose to use the GpodderSync NextCloud app, since I’m already running NextCloud.
I tried PinePods and PodFetch for the web interface, both of which had various issues with sync.
Supposedly there’s a big update to sync coming for PinePods in a couple days, but I wasn’t able to get it working at all.
PodFetch has its own internal gpodder server implementation, but for the life of me, I could not get it to keep listen state in sync. Also, I initially set it up to use OIDC authentication since I’m also running Authentik - but don’t try to do that if you want to use the Gpodder integration. The two are essentially mutually exclusive, at least in its current state.
What I’ve settled on for the moment:
- AntennaPod for mobile playback. (Be aware that there are additional steps for Android Auto support if you install it from F-Droid as I did)
- NextCloud GpodderSync to keep track of listen state and subscriptions.
- NextCloud NextPod app for web UI playback. I’m not exactly happy with this, as it’s a very ugly and basic UI, but it does work, and it does keep track of where I left off the way I want. Hopefully the PinePods update fixes my issues with it, as the web interface for that was much more slick.
feedbin, I just use the web app on my phone/laptop
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.
I’m self hosting audiobookshelf with tailscale. Also use home assistant with music assistant to play my podcasts on all my home speakers as well.
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
Podcast Addict.
My only gripe is that it only works on mobile, so I can’t have all my settings shared with my laptop. Otherwise, it’s nearly flawless and the premium is cheap as hell.
Yep, podcast addict premium user for several years now. Rock solid app, though I do wish it supported the full podcasting 2.0 feature set, all of the namespace, V4V, wallet integration, ect. But for now I just use fountain for my 2.0 shows and it works, it’s just annoying.
I use podcast addict as well, I use tailscale and scrcpy to listen when I’m on my laptop, I find it works pretty well.
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.
There seems to be a lot of fun checking out Podcast apps, but I couldn’t find a lot of these on iOS App Store sigh
I like PodAura. It doesn’t have as many features as AntennaPod, including discovery, but it has the ones that are useful to me, and I like the layout.
with shame I will say Spoty is my only subscription…
AntennaPod
What I’d like to know: For anyone using some app other than AntennaPod: Why? How is it worth it?
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.
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
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.
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.
Fucking love that app.
Same for mobile.
I have Podgrab setup, but I mostly just use PodcastAddict on my phone
Same, it would be great to have a trove of podcasts saved on my media server but the medium is very geared towards passively receiving episodes, listening once at most, and deleting.
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 primarily use antennapod but tried abs out of curiousity. How did you get around the queue issue? I found it to be a dealbreaker
+1
Thanks! Haven’t heard of Audiobookshelf before, and that’s the kind of thing I was looking for.
Also really love that app and they use it to automatically archive podcasts in a darker container.
Audiobookshelf.
I’ve just found out how to setup audiobookshelf for podcasts and I’m a bit annoyed that I won’t be using antennapod anymore.
I let audiobookshelf serve rss feeds for podcasts which I sub to in antennapod.
