Thoughts about UI : keep it simple but allow powerful features

Project management
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AntennaPod UI is good because overall it’s light and easy to understand.
Yet there is some point to think about it so it can stay that way but make it possible to address big requests.

Before elaborating please note that this discussion is only to give ideas for a more logical UI and which will allow future features if there is some developments to implement them.

In my opinion there’s 2 main / frequent requests which will make AntennaPod a lot more powerful but would make it hard to keep things nice and simple :

  • subscriptions folders or tags
  • alternative queues list

Right now I feel there is an historical part of the UI which is in the way : podcasts list in lateral menu.
This list take a lot of space and leave limited place to other entries.
IMHO subscriptions screen should become the way to access and manage podcasts.

About folders / tags subscriptions screen could be improved to address this request.
For instance you could have 2 tabs : first one as it is now (all podcast) and a second one to present folders / tags to access podcasts.
Or maybe keep one tab only and user could tag podcasts. The screen would allow to filter based on these tags. There could be a synergy with filter abilities on podcasts with auto downloading on.

With podcasts list out of the way on lateral menu it would be less a problem to add more entry. Statistics could be reallocated there if subscriptions screen become too crowded.
Above all it leaves space to address alternative queues. User could use this space to create them. It should be less populated than what was used with podcasts list.

Please give your own opinion. I think it’s important to have ideas to keep Antenna simple but allow powerful features. :slightly_smiling_face:

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We could start by adding an option to have 1 column view for subscriptions which includes the title of the podcast like the slide out subscriptions scrolling list.

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Please do not get rid of the podcast list in the side menu! This is honestly one of my favorite features!

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Welcome to the forum. Thanks for joining us.

I completely agree with you!

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I’d like to see better use made of the spacing on the main playing screen (I am biased as a user of smaller phones)

  • Reduce the space taken up by the podcast artwork and dedicate more of it to the other controls
  • Allow the controls shown at the bottom to be removed individually
  • Arrange the controls in a crescent rather than in a straight line. This would allow larger controls and / or more controls / and or greater spacing between controls
  • Move the progress / scrub bar above the controls; make the thumb used for dragging larger
  • When the progress is being adjusted show the current numeric position in a larger font, and overlaid at the top of the screen for better visibility
  • When the thumb is being dragged, make the speed of scrubbing slower the further away your finger is away from the progress bar. This would allow fine control over position
  • +1 for a list view of the podcasts; make the podcast list appearing in the slide-out menu optional
  • more options generally to turn fiddly indicators off; I think I’d end up turning most of the controls off as long as there was a generic hamburger menu to resort to, it’s just easier on the eyes

Great player though, I particularly like the way the sleep timer reset has been implemented