Over time, many unheard episodes accumulate in the playlist as you’re constantly adding new ones (in my case almost 500 with around 1500 hours of playtime, which I’ll never be able to listen in this life). Such a long “to do list” is not only frustrating, but I guess also slowing down the app.
Similar for subscriptions: The more you have, the longer actualization takes, the less overview you have. Many podcasts cease to exist or being updated, but they’re still searched for new episodes.
The solution:
It would be nice to have a “cleanup function / feature” within settings or within for ex. the playlist and episodes list menus.
The function should allow to define criteria for to be cleaned (or optionally moved to archive) elements, then on “start cleanup” the cleanup process runs.
I tend to check the Inbox at least once a day and decide which episodes I want to play that day or so, which I want to mark as read / ignore and which to keep for a later date but do not have them added to the Queue - these latter I can dip into the subscription page to find something to listen to as and when. Doing this mean there is only a handful of new episodes to look at in any one day.
As for dormant subscriptions you can always set them to be not included in the new episode refresh. So you keep the existing episodes for them without there being an impact on time/data needed to refresh the active subscriptions you are still wanting to keep up to date.
You could multi select episodes and remove the old ones.
Yet I believe a better workflow is to let new episodes go to inbox, actively choose which one you want to listen soon and remove other from inbox.
If you want an old episode from a specific podcast it’s easy to go to subscriptions, select it and add episodes to queue.
If you want a full list of old episodes which would have been in your queue you can go to episodes screens and maybe filters them so only unread are shown.
Of course it’s up to everybody how to manage their playlist but from your description I believe it’s more the one you’re using doesn’t suit you and so it requires a cleanup later on.
I don’t have a problem with the inbox, I actually love it since knowing AntennaPod!
My use case: I usually manually check for new episodes once or twice a day => over 100 episodes go to inbox => I swipe the ones I wanna hear (which usually can’t be done within a day) to the playlist => then I clear the inbox => then I usually sort the playlist in the order I wanna listen to the latest episodes (most interesting first)
For sure I’m not the only one who adds more episodes to the playlist as can be listened, that’s why the playlist gets longer and longer - and that’s why my feature suggestion!
According to prior attempts, I think there’s no easy way to bulk deactivate inactive subscriptions. I’ll check that again, but still I would find an “archive” folder useful. This way, the (active) subscriptions list would be cleaner and we’d have former subscriptions still available in the archive folder (for nostalgic reasons - or in case they get alive again, which could be marked with a colored new episodes notificaton sign or so).
I think my use case is very common (as mentioned in my reply above): people add episodes they wanna listen to to their playlist (queue), but end up not having time to listen to all in time before adding new ones. This way the playlist naturally gets longer and longer, even if listened to episodes are automatically deleted from the playlist (like in my case - so I don’t keep episodes there eternally, as you supposed, but only until I’ve listened to them).
Multi-select and delete unfortunately is difficult within the playlist for several reasons:
There is no filter like “show me episodes older than XY days / months / from before 1/2025)”
Even if there was such a filter, there’s no way to “select all” and “remove from playlist” - this would solve the problem, but then I wouldn’t have to suggest the cleanup feature
The inbox is great and I don’t have a problem with it (see my use case in the reply above), but thanks for your ideas
Thanks, but I don’t want to delete all episodes in the playlist, but - as mentioned initially in my suggestion - only those that meet specific criteria (like older than xy months).
That’s why I STILL think a cleanup setting would make sense
For deleting all I could as well use the clear playlist function!
Sounds like you are oversubscribed for the number of listener hours you have available on a typical day. Need to be more choosy about which podcasts you really want to listen to and dump / sideline the rest.
Thanks for the advice on changing my habits I think I’m quite average, though, regarding subscriptions. Most I’m listening to regularly, and I’m listening for sure far above average as I can listen besides work
Adapting behavior is a workaround, not a solution - we should always consider “bad” behaviors / worst case scenarios…
It was a pleasure seeing all those accumulated old episodes go
Thanks for this advice and cool to see what AntennaPod is capable of.
I would have never found this function, though, even as an experienced mobile and computer user.
When choosing multi select, first the app got stuck several times. Then only by chance I found out where the “select all below” can be found.
That’s why I assume that most users won’t find this (quite well hidden) function and that a cleanup function (that even the most inexperienced users find) would make sense! Don’t you think?
Also, it doesn’t solve the mentioned problem of outdated subscriptions. Is there also a hidden solution for that?
I personally really like cleanup tools (where they make sense), also for psychological reasons (mental overload versus cleaned up digital environments). Even more if they can be set as automatic, regular tasks.
There are many nice settings in AntennaPod and I think this would be a nice addition.
For instance, in Windows there’s a (also too hidden) system setting where you can define a repetitive task of garbage elements to be cleaned automatically if older than xy months.
And I believe in very easy to use digital products, which even the most inexperienced users can handle.
I checked the currently given options and they don’t work for me. I can’t filter out subscriptions with errors (not being updated for xy months). Also seldomly heard subscriptions are not a good criterion, as some (interesting) podcasts are simply updated seldomly.
So, to sum up:
=> adding a “cleanup” section / function within settings would be a helpful addition, imho, especially if cleanup tasks could be set as repeated and executed automatically on a regular basis (like “delete episodes older than xy months” and “delete podcasts not updated for xy months” every week).
At some point I want to make multi-select the default, so even if you just long-press a single episode, it enters multi-select mode. That should make it easier to discover that there even is multi-select. We get these “now I have to click every single episode” requests regularly even though there is multi-select.
That might be caused by a long queue All other screens have “lazy loading” where it only loads 150 episodes at a time until you scroll down. This makes multi-select a lot more efficient. Doing that for the queue, however, is a lot more difficult because we have to remember the position, so the initial position might be somewhere in the middle of the list or at the end of the list.
This supports my assumption and suggestion that things should be made for the most inexperienced users
I didn’t have a problem with finding multi select and found this quite intuitive. My problem was finding (or firing) the “select all below”.
Maybe this could be solved by adding “select all”, “select all below” and “select all above” already in the first context menu that pops up after long tabbing on an item?
I guess the queue / playlist has the highest potential to be long, so it would be good to have some lazy load or pagination, no?
In my probably quite average case my playlist was over 1500 episodes long, podcasts / subscription list only about 400, inbox daily about 150, but I also clear it daily.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean - and yet another creative workaround too complicated for average or below average users - or people not having that much spare time
If a function is useful and potentially popular, I believe it should be made available in an easy to use way (thus enriching the overall user experience and product popularity).
Making this part of the suggested cleanup function within settings, it could (should) automatically detect both (currently) inactive and reactivated podcasts (without having to search them out and tag them manually, as suggested in the nice blog article).
This would save even such organized users a lot of time and could make the download process much faster.
In my use case, I wouldn’t be in the mood to manually check around 400 podcasts for being inactive, not interesting anymore, or “maybe interesting later again”. I’d appreciate if the system automatically takes care of that, like by moving “currently inactive” podcasts to such a folder and regularly check back if they’re active again.
As mentioned before, a cleanup function could allow us to delete subscriptions “not updated for xy months” (or move them to an archive folder).
I think I’m quite average, though, regarding subscriptions. Most I’m listening to regularly, and I’m listening for sure far above average as I can listen besides work 
Wow, that’s so cool, and it worked!