App version: 3.3.2, downloaded from Play through Aurora Store
Android version: Unsure, whatever the latest version of GraphenOS is using
Device model: Pixel 7
Expected behaviour: Move podcast folders/files to another directory
Current behaviour: Deleted? podcast files, moved podcast folders to new directory
First occurred: 2 days ago
For those who like sad stories:
I think I made a big mistake and wondering if anyone can help me or at least round out my understanding of the issue.
I have looked around a bit in the forum and now realize I was trying to do something that Antennapod cannot do (without significantly rewriting the app) due to Android limitations. That is, move/copy episodes to another directory in the device. Unfortunately, without knowing this, and without any warning or anything, I selected all my Antennapod podcast folders, chose the general directory “Podcasts” folder, and hit “move”. What it appears to have done is moved all the individual podcast folders to the “Podcasts” folder, but not any of the actual podcast files. Those files and the folders now do not appear to be in the original area when viewing with the file manager.
Based on the amount of freely available space I now have on my phone, it seems that ALL of my podcasts were deleted. I was a bit flabbergasted since I assumed if they couldn’t be moved they just wouldn’t be moved. The reason it’s a big deal to me is that there were about 70GB of podcasts and curating the collection I had took more hours than I’m emotionally prepared to acknowledge.
I don’t have the app refreshing anything when I open it, so without doing anything within the app at this point, nothing APPEARS different… yet. I was thinking that without technical knowhow, my strategy to salvage this collection would be to go through every podcast subscription and filter by downloaded episodes and then screenshot or otherwise record them so I have a guide to expedite the process of starting from scratch. Or maybe this simple action will trigger some kind of refresh and that zombie info will be gone….
So, I’m just wondering if anyone knows if
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Did I ACTUALLY delete the podcast files, or what the heck happened? Is there a way it might be fixed?
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Does the Antennapod backup (.db or otherwise) retain any indication of which episodes were downloaded? My guess is that it doesn’t and I would have had to “favorite” them or something, but it is worth asking I guess. If that is the case I would be able to re-download them in a directed way. Without that I’m starting from square one with finding which ones I had downloaded.
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Would anyone have suggestions for a different method or different podcast app that would allow me to retain independent sound files for posterity and future listening? I don’t really need an interface to organize the ones I’m saving… just the folder and a somewhat descriptive title, just like Antennapod already has. I really love Antennapod, but I was under the uniformed impression, before reading more on the website, that I would just be able to backup everything I had sorted through and downloaded. Even if I go through some process of screenshoting all of my downloaded episodes, and spend all the time to start from scratch, I would still ultimately end up at the same wall… it’s just now I know it is there.
I know nothing about coding… but wonder if it would be less of a project to enable downloads to sync with secure cloud storage than it would to rewrite and allow the app to save to other common directories?
Anyway, thanks a ton to anyone who can shine ANY light on this issue and what might be done now or in the future.