AntennaPod is Amazing

I’ve used Pocket Casts on Android for years. When I’m on the iPhone, I usually stick with Apple Podcasts. Neither app is all that great. It does the job, but nothing more. When Pocket Casts was bought by Automatic, I had hopes that they would take it open source and try to be good stewards. They didn’t do that; instead, they created a Plus or premium plan that is exorbitantly expensive.

I put up with Pocket Casts because it was the least smelly out of all the ones I’ve tried. But no more. In my ongoing quest to do as much of my life with open-source software as is possible, I’ve moved to an app called AntennaPod. This thing is great.

The UI

The first thing that has impressed me is the UI. It is very customizable without being too KDE about things, if you will. And, for being a FOSS app, it’s very modern. Many open-source developers couldn’t design their way out of a paper bag, so it’s nice to see one that is both FOSS and pretty. The bottom of the app has a customizable button bar. You can reorder the icons so that you control where the app launches to. I’ve changed it to my subscriptions because that makes more sense than the Home tab.

The Home Tab is their try at curation. It takes your subscriptions and puts them in sections like “What’s New?” and “Continue Listening.” There’s also a section that will let you shuffle between pods that you subscribe to. I like the Home Tab, but I don’t use it. I usually know pretty well what I want to listen to when I pop into my podcast app.

Like you’d expect, there are loads of ways to customize, even beyond the nav bar at the bottom. You can change how things are sorted, how the times are shown, what the podcast pages look like, and so much more. You can even change what buttons appear in the notification shade, so you can control the app when you’re not in it. I’m trying out a layout now that turns the nav bar off altogether. It is pretty sharp.

Actually Listening to Podcasts

The UI doesn’t matter much if the thing sucks at actually playing podcasts. I’m pleased to say that AntennaPod is full-featured here as well, and that it does a fine job. You can either stream or download your chosen episode. You can add episodes to a queue or to your favorites list. You can share it with others, which is great. And the best part is you can do all of these things on multiple episodes at once, making managing a large queue much easier. You also have great choices when it comes to settings for individual podcasts. You can set customized playback speeds per subscription, which is outstanding. This means if you want to do 2x for The Linux Cast but 1.5 for This Week in Tech, you can. All without having to change that setting each time you listen to an episode.

AntennaPod also has auto-skip, which will try to skip introductions and end credits. It does a decent job. Not perfect, but pretty damn good. I also love that I can tag specific shows and then search for those tags. It makes it easier to find all my Linux stuff.

There’s sleep mode, casting to Chromecast, chapter support, and all the rest of the stuff you’d see in any good podcast application. I’ve had such a good time with it. There’s not a single feature that I feel like is missing, and several that I didn’t know I needed.

Discovery and Transfer

If there is one thing I could say negative about AntennaPod, it’s that discovering new podcasts is a bit hidden. By default (I believe I’ve changed it so it’s difficult to remember), the discovery tab is hidden under a dropdown menu. But, like everything else, this can be changed. Looking past that one minor gripe, it’s actually pretty easy to add new pods. They have access to the Apple Podcast archive, so they have access to most things. If you can’t find it there, you can easily add via RSS or from a file. All of that is surface level, making it effortless to find.

I was also able to import all of my pods from Pocket Casts to AntennaPod. Normally when I’ve tried this in the past, and usually, it does okay, but there are one or two it can’t find or just doesn’t even try to transfer. This time, that didn’t happen. Everything came over in one try. That was mightily impressive given I have like 100 podcasts I subscribe to.

Open Source For The Win

I love this app. I wish there was a desktop version, to be honest. I probably wouldn’t use it much, but it would be cool to manage my pods on the desktop. Even still, this thing is outstanding, and the fact that it’s FOSS just blows my mind. If you want to download it, you can do that here.

Have you tried AntennaPod? Please let me know on Mastodon or in the comments below.