Participating in the AP community, I realised that some users have very precise and elaborate workflows set up, whereas others need more help discovering available features. The upcoming 3.0 release is a nice opportunity to advertise new and existing features via the blog, and to showcase what can be done with AntennaPod.
I suggest to use this thread to identify suitable topics and invite community members to come forward with their creative ideas enabled by AntennaPod.
Some examples that come to mind:
[edit: see first reply]
@keunes perhaps you can create a wiki-style reply? I don’t think I can!
Thanks for starting the list @loucasal. I updated some the ones that ByteHamster added to make them a bit more focussed on a use case, in line with your suggestions. And I added yours to the wiki list as well.
It would be great if we could start brainstorming about the content for a home screen blog post, so we can link to it form the press release.
Here you have a first draft, as discussed. Screenshots still to be added. @keunes, @ByteHamster: fact checking on the underlined bits is particularly appreciated.Edited.
Introducing AntennaPod’s Home screen
One of the largest new features in AntennaPod 3.0 (already available for download on Google Play and F-Droid) is the Home screen. This screen introduces a new way to quickly perform a range of actions which until now required you to move between different screens.
What’s in it for you?
The Home screen encourages you to discover and interact with content from podcasts you have already subscribed to. By doing that, it makes the app experience more personal while respecting your privacy.
More in detail, the Home screen currently contains five sections, each of which displays items to interact with directly, but also provides a shortcut to the related screen (e.g. your queue). Let’s look at each section one by one.
The first section allows you to quickly and easily ‘continue listening’ queued episodes, beginning with those you have already started listening to, but haven’t finished just yet.
In the second section, you will be able to ‘see what’s new’, i.e. the episodes which have landed in your inbox when refreshing subscriptions.
The third section allows you to ‘get surprised’ with a random selection of episodes from your subscriptions you have not yet listened to. Pro tip: if you don’t see anything that fits what you feel like listening now, tap the arrow button to refresh the selection.
The fourth section – ‘check your classics’ – allows you to interact with the subscriptions you listened to the most. Warning: this might take you on a trip down memory lane.
In the fifth and final section, you will be able to ‘manage downloads’, that is to say interact with the episodes you downloaded on your device.
Configuring your Home screen to best suit your needs
The Home screen, which is now set as AntennaPod’s default page, already supports swipe actions and allows you to enable/disable its different sections via the three-dot menu. You can also still set a different screen as default if you prefer so.
In the words of an early user
“I barely open any screen other than the Home screen anymore.”
What’s next?
What can you expect next for the Home screen? Support for reordering sections and more advanced features are already planned.
This post is part of a series highlighting some of AntennaPod’s new and existing features. Do you have any feedback on the features described in this post? Please let us know via the forum.
In 3.1, the inbox will get an option to change the sort order. Then the ones displayed on the home screen might not be the most recent ones, depending on your setting.
Not sure if that’s worth mentioning, but only episodes that have been released less than a year ago (I think, maybe it was 2 years). The reason is that very old episodes have a higher risk of containing broken cover art.
It’s not random. It’s simply the subscriptions with most time played overall.
3.1 can change that as well, so they might not be the most recent ones.
It’s the default for all users if I remember correctly.
Is that me? That still hasn’t changed much. I still mostly use the home screen, and sometimes the queue. Everything is available immediately without additional clicks. That’s pretty nice.
Thanks @ByteHamster - I amended the post in line with your feedback. I hope you don’t mind being the testimonial - it’s a great quote for promoting this feature.
Then we might have a bug, because my ‘classics’ don’t entirely match my most listened subscriptions as displayed on the Statistics screen. Filed #6388.
That still hasn’t changed much. I still mostly use the home screen, and sometimes the queue. Everything is available immediately without additional clicks. That’s pretty nice.