I have a limited data plan, and I noticed antenna pod uses high data usage therefore I run out of data way before my next billing cycle, Spotify has a low quality audio option of 24kbit/s but I do not like Spotify for podcasts due to limited customization, and audio quality shouldn’t matter when it comes to podcasts since it’s just dialogue and will still sound clear in lower bitrates:
Add a setting to choose a lower audio quality bitrate:
AntennaPod loads podcasts directly from the creators (as all actual podcast apps do). You can download episodes when at home (AntennaPod can even do that automatically). Alternatively, you can ask the podcast creators to reduce their file size.
I have really slow internet at home thats capped at 15gb per month, it would ages to download multiple podcasts for on the go with my phone data, and I don’t want to wait for podcasts to download so I can listen to them, since my internet is capped that would waste my home internet data which is shared with other people I live with so it gets even smaller, the download size of podcast is probably the same as if you streamed it.
This is not something that is under AntennaPod’s control as it depends on the file size encoding used by by the publisher of each podcast you subscribe to and which is accessed directly by the app as pointed out above. Spotify and similar host the “podcast” files themselves and can offer to serve them with different quality / size options.
One suggestion is to find a cafe or pub that offer a reliable, reasonably fast free wi-fi connection and do all your downloads there while you have a daily coffee.