Awesome app!

[Mr_Magoo]

I’ve used Podcast Addict for years, across two phones, more than 5000 hours of listening time.

I recently got a de-Google’d /e/Solutions Teracube 2e, so I didn’t want to use Podcast Addict because it’s got 10 trackers in it, and I didn’t want to have to go through and neuter all the trackers as I’d done in my old phone (which I de-Google’d and got rid of the ads myself).

I tried Tsacdop but with the 130 podcasts I listen to, it bogged down so badly that it literally took 4 minutes between the time I pressed the ‘Play’ button and the time that the podcast started playing.

AntennaPod looked good on F-Droid, so I tried it. It’s light, it’s fast, it can handle the insane number of podcasts I listen to… and the setup was super easy.

I couldn’t export an OPML file from my old phone (a Blu Life One X3), the battery was so bad that every time I tried, it’d shut down even though it was plugged into a 2 amp USB source.

But AntennaPod’s search function is fast (faster than Podcast Addict), comprehensive (more comprehensive than Podcast Addict) and accurate (far more accurate than Podcast Addict).

And the setup of the podcasts after subscribing was especially nice… subscribe, the podcast comes up with a list of episodes, press and hold to get the menu, tap on “Multi select”, press and hold to get the menu and “Select all below” to select all the podcasts which I’d already listened to with my old phone, mark those selected podcasts as read, then click the ‘hamburger’ icon in the upper-left, select ‘Queue’, drag down to refresh the podcasts and let it download the episodes I hadn’t listened to yet.

Four issues:

1. Can there be a separate Queue for audio-only and for video podcasts?

2. When playing a video podcast, the player screen doesn’t automatically come up, you have to tap the player along the bottom edge of the screen to bring it up. Can it come up automatically?

3. When playing a video podcast with the player screen open, and that podcast finishes and an audio-only podcast starts playing, if you tap the ‘Back’ arrow to exit the video player, the audio podcast stops playing. Can you automatically close the video player and return to the previous screen unless another video podcast starts playing?

4. When finished playing one podcast episode, can you set it so it jumps to the top of the Queue and plays from there?

Otherwise, this thing rocks!

[cos]

Great to read that you like AntennaPod!

As for when it comes to adding features; my understanding is that good ideas are welcome, but with currently more feature requests than people available to implement them contributions are even more welcome.

Would you be able to in any way help out with those suggested features? Perhaps a good start could be to break down and analyze one of them in greater detail? For example the one about separate queues; Should that be hard-coded for always separating on media type, or would it make more sense to allow users to also have multiple queues for other reasons? How would one best design the UX to make it powerful, yet never confusing?

Impressive listening history btw! Over my last four-five years I’ve only reached 2755 hours, but then I’ve never done my video watching in AP.

[Mr_Magoo]

I got #3 above fixed… it’s a setting that I’d somehow overlooked.

And I’m getting used to not having the ‘jump to top of queue’ feature, it just required a slight tweak in my listening habits… in Podcast Addict, I kept the main screen up (which would be akin to the Subscriptions screen in AntennaPod), whereas in AntennaPod I keep the Queue screen up.

One bug, but I’m not sure if it’s AntennaPod-related or not… it didn’t happen until AntennaPod was installed, though.

After listening for awhile (the time seems to vary without my being able to pin down what causes it to vary), the top-of-window controls stop working… so the hamburger menu item at top-left, the ‘three-vertical-dots’ menu at top-right, etc.

It does this for all apps, system apps, etc., not just AntennaPod. But it did start with AntennaPod’s installation, and it doesn’t occur if I don’t run AntennaPod.

Turning off the screen, then turning it back on seems to fix it. So I’m thinking it’s a graphics subsystem memory leak that’s somehow reset when the screen is turned off.

As to the separate queues for audio and video, that’s because it’s not convenient to have a video start playing sometimes… they should be held in a separate queue that can be played when desired. For instance, when working, I listen to audio-only, at lunch I watch one of the videos.

If you haven’t checked out Public Domain Movies (Public Domain Movies), you definitely should… all the great old movies… Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney, Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, all the greats.