I’ve been warming up to switching to GrapheneOS for months. Last month I bought a Pixel 8 (which is the buggiest effing phone I’ve ever owned, good job Google). I’ve just been waiting to have the bandwidth.
But with Google sunsetting Google Podcasts, I’ve decided to make time next week. Podcasts are a MAJOR part of my daily functioning.
Antennapod hands down.
Works great and have been using it for years.
Its also what i’m using. Its the best podcast app I’ve used.
I especially like the volume options for individual podcasts. Some are a standard volume and then others are quiet as fuck and the few are loud as hell.
Knowing these allows me to play different podcasts after another without having to either raise the volume or frantically lower the volume to prevent hearing loss.
I honestly can’t see myself using any other podcast app after discovering AntennaPod
Antennapod is good
Agreed, grab AntennaPod from the f-droid store.
AntennaPod is pretty great. They even have an article on migrating from Google: https://antennapod.org/blog/2023/11/google-podcasts-migration
Have you heard of Escape Pod? It is really simple. And I enjoy it because of its simplicity. Its on fdroid.
Escapepod is the best.
It is paid?
foss
👍👍
Just downloaded it, loads of features, free and doesn’t have a premium option.
I was using Pocket Casts which locks few features behind a paywall and pushes it. I don’t really like having things in the UI that are locked by a paywall, it’s fine if the app has more features and an option somewhere to pay for them but don’t clutter my general day to day use with advertising.
👍👍
AntennaPod is great and Audiobookshelf is my preferred app, if you’re into self hosting services.
Antennapod on Android and Kasts on Linux, synced via Gpoddersync on Nextcloud.
Just recently switched from spotify to antenna pod and can recommend it so far, especially as a lover of any app that will give you stats/graphs.
Only small issue is when playing there are two options: stream, and download. It seems that unlike spotify, stream does not buffer at all, so if you lose connection the player immediately stops. For me I can resolve this by downloading the episodes before I leave for my commute, but something to be aware of.
AntennaPod has been working really well for me.
This is a great combo choice.
My setup as well, and happy with that.
Check out Antennapod.
I use PocketCasts but all of the responses here are making me consider trying out AntennaPod.
I was a pocketcast user for years, switched to antennapod a few months ago. Here’s what’s bothering me:
- Antennapod has a weird separation between new episodes (inbox) and what you’re listening to now (queue). PC has that abstracted away where you only have to check one place for your podcasts.
- There is no simple service to sync your subscriptions and listen progress. Gpoddersync is basically abandoned and the protocol lacks features. Hopefully this will change with openpodcastAPI, but they haven’t managed to secure funding yet.
- I’ve been spoilt by having a server doing the heavy lifting of refreshing my podcasts. It’s a minor annoyance that I need to wait approx. 1.5 second per feed to refresh. It’s just the way it is.
There are also things that antennapod does better:
- chapters actually works in AP.
- episode pictures also works in AP, PC only showed the static image of the feed.
- search is just as good as PC.
- its FOSS and hopefully resistant to enshittification (unless all producers go into a closed ecosystem like Spotify tried with their recent purchases of pod-studios).
Best of luck from another pod-nerd.
I’ve been spoilt by having a server doing the heavy lifting of refreshing my podcasts. It’s a minor annoyance that I need to wait approx. 1.5 second per feed to refresh. It’s just the way it is.
In the podcast settings for each podcast, does “Keep Updated” not handle this for you? I don’t think I ever manually refresh my podcasts. Apologies if I’m misunderstanding.
Antennapod has a weird separation between new episodes (inbox) and what you’re listening to now (queue). PC has that abstracted away where you only have to check one place for your podcasts.
I don’t like the queue myself, though possibly for different reasons than you. Again possibly misunderstanding your concern, but I have “Enqueue Downloaded” and “Continuous Playback” both disabled in the Antennapod settings, and I just pretend the queue doesn’t exist.
Just throwing those things out there in the hopes they may help.
You’re actually understanding my issues quite well 🙂
The “keep updated” works, but I try to keep it to twice a day to have my battery last longer. So I manually trigger in-between. It’s a natural consequence of the technical choice, really.
As for the “Enqueue downloaded”, I stream everything as I have a massive mobile data plan. Due to this, I can stream a lot but I still have to deal with a separation between inbox/queue.
Thanks for those suggestions, I’m sure they’ll be of help for others that’s not part of my edge case 😁
Ah thanks for the reply, and sorry I couldn’t solve any of your issues. 🙂
Thanks for the detailed info!
I use pocket casts and I tried switching to antenna pod because of a thread like this one and came right back to pocket casts. The deal breaker for me was no skip forward 30 seconds (e.g. ads) from the lock screen.
For you or others who are curious and want to do this:
AntennaPod settings > User Interface > Set playback buttons.
You can decide what shows up in your notification on your lock screen.
Also make sure to toggle Persistent Playback Controls on.
I did the same. I haven’t switched back yet, but I’m very close. Audio doesn’t continue playback when connecting to Android Auto, the screen shows suggestions instead of the queue, and silence trimming is all-or-nothing. Also, and this is just personal preference, the UI isn’t as intuitive.
Same
I have Podcast Addict, I think its free but I paid a few dollars because of the great selection of settings and options I never knew I needed.
(For example I have it configured so that after 5pm the Sleeptimer automatically makes the podcast fade down and pausing after 10’ of listening, unless I move/shake the phone during the fade down-part, then it extends for another 10’. Perfect for using it in public transport or in bed and dozing off.)
I also have been using podcast addict, probably for over 10 years now. You can autodownload new episodes (mine checks daily at 7a and 7p), create custom playlists for juggling multiple podcasts at once, has android auto support, and you don’t have to deal with the bs of Spotify.
I’m sure there are a 100 other features I don’t know about, but that’s what I use.
I like the ability to adjust playback speed. I listen to everything at 1.1 and it just feels like everyone tightened up their delivery a little bit and took out dead air. There was one podcast where the subject was interesting but the delivery was agonizingly slow, so I turned it all the way up to 1.5.
The History of English podcast is like that… I think I had it turned up to 2x just to make it sound normal.
PodcastAddict is the way, but only if you’re tolerant/patient with nerd knobs. I know a lot of people get turned off by those.
Not my wife
You lucky bastard. 😁
Shit I’ve been using PA forever too but I feel like I should try that other one everyone keeps posting about
Antenna Pod is great. Podverse is also pretty decent, especially for downloading as an .mp3
I’ve been trying podverse, but for some reason it uses Google Admob. So if he’s trying to degoogle it’s not a viable alternative
@podverse@podcastindex.social
Is this accurate? Last I recall, the F-droid version was free of any of Google’s tracking?
Daaammn, good to know, thanks
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Antennapod is good
AntennaPod.
Just search fdroid
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Hard disagree, unless I’m missing something. I just set up ABS in the last week to have all of my podcasts self hosted along with my audiobook collection. So far, I’ve seen multiple features missing that make it untenable for podcasts on my phone, including:
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App on my phone doesn’t auto-download episodes
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App doesn’t autoplay the next episode
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- Hitting next only plays the last few seconds of my last episode
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Default sort is newest first, haven’t figured out how to permanently set it to oldest first
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No automatic playlist of all episodes of a series downloaded
I like it for audiobooks, but the podcast side feels very much like an afterthought. I’ll probably be moving to another podcast platform at some point. ABS is usable for podcasts, but at this point I wouldn’t recommend it for that feature unless they’re ok with lack of standard features or already have it set up.
Yeah I think you might be missing something tbh. My Audiobookshelf auto downloads new episodes, playlist features work fine, sort features work fine. I don’t know if there’s a way to throw every downloaded but not yet listened to episode in a playlist, but I haven’t ever needed that feature. For keeping up with my podcasts though across platforms and for all my day to day podcast needs it has excelled.
Is it downloading them to your app, or just to your server? My server downloads just fine, I’ve just had a couple instances where I haven’t been able to continue what I was listening to after leaving the house.
As for playlists, I really don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I created one playlist but it was more work to use than just using the feed. Haven’t been able to get it to play next tracks on podcasts at all, which has been rather frustrating. Might just be an issue with the app.
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Antennapod is really great, but I found that it’s more complicated than I like. So I found another player called escape pod on fdroid that I really, really enjoy because of its KISS approach.
Edit: Oh, and congratulations. I have been degoogled entirely for about 2 years now and mostly degoogled for about 3 years before that.
I use AntennaPod on my phone and Castero (TUI) on my computer.
Good job, you’re making a good choice! I’m on a Pixel 6 running GrapheneOS, love it. Takes a bit if TLC at the beginning, but it’s really nice and functional for me now.
For podcasts, I use Podverse. Works well for me, and runs well on GrapheneOS.