A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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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
Best podcast app I've ever used.
I would only switch to another app if that could remove the ads from downloaded podcasts :')
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'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.
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.
+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.
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.
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/
I download my podcasts from YouTube through pinchflat to strip out the ads then mount the RSS feed(s) into antennapod
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 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
Rss feeds to download the mp3. VLC to play them. I like to relisten to some series so building a library makes it easy.
Honestly I just use Apple Podcasts, crucify me.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
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.
Pocket Cast, because it is the only option to have my queue synced along all my Android, iOS and even Alexa devices (I don't pay the subscription so I am missing out on the desktop and website ones), if there is an alternative for it, please enlighten me.
I use Podcast Republic, nice interface, active developer, good library tracking. Search function is nice, can go by podcast name or description so you can search for guests. Subscription can auto download (I don't) lots of options for playback and bookmarks etc. I think it's very solid. *Just read the edit, but still a good app :)
DoggCatcher
My earballs!
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 use Podfetch for gpodder sync with the previously mentioned AntennaPod. I had to wrestle it a bit with permissions, but I think it covers your use case of syncing listening history.
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:
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:
UPDATE: I recently discovered RePod which is also a NextCloud app, but the interface is much better than NextPod.
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 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.
I used to use Overcast but the UI refresh that happened last year caused me to switch to Pocket Casts, which I’ve been very happy with
I have Podgrab setup, but I mostly just use PodcastAddict on my phone