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.
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.
feedbin, I just use the web app on my phone/laptop
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. 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.
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'm guessing that most iPhone users just use Apple Podcasts, and Apple themselves probably want it that way. (E.g. less promotion of third-party podcast apps on the app store.)
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
with shame I will say Spoty is my only subscription...
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.
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 use Gonic, does exactly what I need. It’s in a docker container and hasn’t let me down in over a year.
To listen to Podcasts from it I use play:Sub on iOS
That minimalist UI looks very nice.
Simple to use and when I’ve had an issue in the past the developer was responsive and pushed a change out to GitHub within an hour
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/
Pinepods looks so cool! I just created an account on the demo instance. The "smart playlists" feature just absolutely sold me.
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.
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.
I have a slightly overcomplicated setup, but I use audiobookshelve to download all my podcasts for archival purposes and then antennapod on android to listen to them (the rss feeds generated by aufiobookshelve) which syncs everything to gpodder for nextcloud. I also occasionally listen to the pods via Kasts on my desktop, also synced with gpodder.
I specifically use audiobookshelve inbetween, since I have some paid podcast subscriptions and I don't want to loose that content if I ever stop paying or they go under.
This is also kinda like my setup, nice!
I think you could probably skip antennapod and gpodder sync by using only audiobookshelf
I know, but the mobile client is lacking in features and I like antennapod (and gpodders client independence)
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 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.