I am a long time user of AntennaPod and finally got some time to test various actions to find out why there are more and more downloaded episodes in the cache. (When I had a download limit set, it got reached soon and blocked further downloads…)
Objective
(ok) To get all new episodes from all podcasts added to the queue.
(ok) The episodes are automatically downloaded as per settings (e.g. on WiFi only).
(ok) When I review the queue, I would like to remove some episodes I am not interested in. My expectation is that:
(ok) if the episode has not been downloaded yet (due to episode download cache limit or lack of WiFi), it will not be downloaded also in the future.
(not ok) if the episode has been downloaded already, it would get deleted (now or auto deleted upon refresh to make room for new downloads).
The (ok) means that this part is achievable with AntennaPod.
The (not ok) means it does not work in AntennaPod.
The current solution to achieve the above objective is:
Not-yet-downloaded episodes must be removed from queue.
Already-downloaded episodes must be deleted from the queue.
This is quite unintuitive - I never remember the right action…
I have tried other approaches like marking the episode as played, but surprisingly:
It always remains in queue.
If it has not been downloaded yet, it will get downloaded on the next refresh.
If it has already been downloaded, it will not get deleted ever.
I would assume that marking an episode as played would follow the same rules as actually having played the episode (i.e. followed by automatic removal from queue and deletion as per my preferred settings). But it is not the case.
Should this be converted to a feature request? A bug perhaps?
Or is there other way to achieve the same objective? (I do not need to work with Episodes, Downloads, etc. I am quite happy with a single list to manage all my podcasts - and because automatic playback is based on the episodes in the Queue only, hence I use the queue for that purpose. And when I fall asleep during playback, I occassionally get back to the episode in Playback History in the next day.)
The usual flow for incoming podcasts would be that they appear in the Inbox as a decision point if you want them or not.
There may be some podcasts you want all episodes to, so those could be set to autodownload and go right into the Queue.
From inbox, you can have it not download by long press on a particular entry, and choose Remove from Inbox. Or, the … in the top right and Remove all from inbox.
I send my casual, not every episode subscriptions to inbox this way as a decision point for me to inspect the episode and see if it’s worth my time.
For those entries already in your queue, whether they are downloaded or not, a long press should indicate what to do. I delete them. And your delete actions may play a role here as to what actually happens.
Thanks for the feedbacks. I have installed AP in the work profile to test the workflow, unfortunately it seems complicated to use the inbox on top of the queue.
I want all episodes of all subscriptions to be downloaded automatically when on WiFi - because later on, when I would like to listen to any of the episodes, I may have only mobile data available.
Downloading automatically means, the episode skips Inbox and it is added to the Queue.
When download limit is reached, the episodes “wait” in Inbox.
However, the automatic download does not mean I will want to listen to all of the episodes - I make the decision when I start listening (while commuting or going to sleep).
Therefore, now I would have to manage two lists - Inbox and Queue as well. This is unnecessarily laborious and does not solve the original problem (of two types of actions to be done in the Queue based on the download status).
I could turn off the automatic download for all of the subscriptions, but then it means I have to plan in advance to review the Inbox. Which is troublesome - I am not so well organised, so effectively I would do the review only when I want to start listening - and if there’s no WiFi, well bad luck and no listening…
And even if I were on WiFi connection, it still means to wait a few moments till download completes and then switch to the Queue to deal with the playback order.
Oh, I have spent a bit more time testing and there seems to be sort of usable way for me, thanks to feature which I have not fully comprehended initially:
Set new episodes to be added to Inbox.
Set automatic download to some number of downloaded files.
Set deleted episodes to be removed from Queue.
Set automatic cache clean up to “When finished”, or even better to “12 hours after finishing”, so that I can still re-play episodes from Playback history for some time.
Now, I can work with the Queue only (and ignore Inbox): anything I do not plan to listen to, I can swipe to Delete in the Queue view. It gets removed from the Queue and because there is a room for new downloads, AP will download new episodes, which will automatically be added to Queue and removed from Inbox.
I will obviously not see new episodes, which could not be downloaded yet, yet I think I can live with that - just increase the download limit and cleanup the Queue more often.
The number of downloaded files would be equal to number of episodes in the Queue plus the temporary cache after playback. No need to worry there would accumulate some leftovers.
, unfortunately.