We’ll - we’re all volunteers doing this in our spare time, and autodownloads is a super complicated topic.
If it’s essential for you and you can’t contribute anything to get this actually implemented, you’re most welcome of course to use any other podcast app. No-one forces you to use AntennaPod.
Sorry - my tone was a bit harsh. I’ve been made Redundant from my old job, on edge since Trump was re-elected, and had to bury a beloved family cat all in the same week! Finding out I’d switched to the wrong podcast app (for my own purposes I admit) was the final straw in a week that felt like every single effort I made was futile.
Let me say I appreciate what the Open Source community have achieved in Antennapod so far - and love the ideals of FOSS. But one frustration I have is that it seems like there are so many different FOSS projects covering the same ground. I wish there was a way to generate a bit more cohesion and unit so that programmers did not keep reinventing the wheel.
But seriously - it’s a tidy app for FOSS - and I wish you guys all the best!
Hi @Eclipse_Now,
Thanks for your message & explanation - sorry to hear.
I hear you - I have that same feeling when I see forks of AntennaPod, or other Open Source projects which seem overlapping in their goal. But (talking from experience): collaborating is hard - especially if you’re doing stuff in your own spare time and for your own pleasure. And a bit of competition is healthy, also between open source apps (we do take inspiration from other projects that take different directions).
Anyway, let’s hope that the active AntennaPod contributors will find a way to make autodownload & keeping the latest episode downloaded possible. Maybe in a year or a few you might find in AntennaPod the perfect app 
Just a vote of confidence in the app and its developers, maintainers, supporters, contributors and users from the guy who started this issue almost 4 years ago.
I understand your frustration @Eclipse_Now . Your freedom to switch to another app for a feature that is important to you is a wonderful aspect about FOSS. I am especially impressed by you personally for sending the second message explaining the “harsh” tone of your first.
@keunes wrote an interesting explanation about the dynamics of supporting AntennaPod and of FOSS apps in general. Worth all of us to keep in mind and to appreciate those volunteers involved in this mostly thankless task - unsung heroes as it were - consider this a thank you!
BTW - I too still want this issue addressed - but to me it’s not as critical.
There is also the option of using an alternative app just for those podcasts where this feature would be useful. Though of course that means losing the convenience of having “one playlist to listen to them all” and having to manually switch apps as and when but of course that is already what many of us have to do to listen to platform exclusive content or to switch to listening to some music as a break from podcasts.
(now wondering if a clever Tasker routine could do the app switching once the user has set up their priorities for listening order etc)
I love the ideals of FOSS - but I also love the idea! It scratches the Sci-Fi part of my brain - in that it is the ‘unintended consequences’ of connecting up a bunch of computers - but in a good way. (Not so “Black Mirror” but more positive.)
I would like at the subscription level to be able to enqueue the most recent episode automatically download and queue and remove prior episodes that are currently in queue
The most-recent-only setting would be perfect for keeping on top of a frequently updated news podcast.
For the download part you can activate auto download in settings then set your subscriptions to auto download or not.
But I don’t think you can control how many episodes per subscription with option to remove old one.
You can only set global number of downloaded episodes available. And auto remove episodes no longer in queue or already listened.
Can I reopen this request?
There is NPR news now. This is the news every hour on the hour.
So if I don’t listen every hour, I end up with a queue of 10 news hourly updates in the feed. Same over night as I don’t listen because I am asleep.
It would be great to have a new download automatically delete the old one. Basically an option for a maximum number of one podcast in a feed. I guess it could also be set to other number (five, ten, etc.). If you hit that number, any new podcast in the feed, deletes the oldest one. Repeats until set otherwise.
Any change this could be possible in the next update?
Cheerz
With a couple steps, I handle a similar case.
The inbox gets several entries. I’ll download one or two that I want. The rest? I don’t want.
While in the Inbox: (actually works in the Queue as well)
Long tap the highest entry, choose Multiselect
Long tap again, Select all below
Then “Remove from Inbox” on the menu appearing at the bottom.
You have a few other options on that last menu.
I’d like to move to AntennaPod from Pocket Casts. This is keeping me from doing so. I’d love to make the switch but I need this feature that seems pretty standard amongst other podcast syndicators.
limit episodes to the most recent or the 2 most recent… like pocket Casts does
This is convenient for podcasts that are broadcast several times on the same day, such as news, and there is no need to have old ones in the queue or in the inbox.
Thank you
This issue has been around (on Github) for over 10 years (!!) as it is complex to address while being low priority with an easy workaround.
Just a thought . . .
How about, if simpler, addressing it differently? Rather than making it generic (Keep X latest episodes) go for the (perhaps) low hanging fruit of only having the most recent episode in designated podcasts, thus satisfying the users who listen to news bulletins and only want the most recent. Is it possible to, on downloading a new episode, having it overwrite the previous one downloaded? Would this be easier to do rather than deleting X old episodes?
BESTEST
David