What are /r/pocketcasts' favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Not to be a dick or anything, but use this as a reason to change your app update rules. Also, feel free to swing by the play store and let them know through a review that you're upset about the lack of transparency and heads up that this feature that you heavily rely on isn't there anymore.

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https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts

If you look on the Play store at the reviews sorted by newest, it's not just a few nerdy redditors leaving bad reviews, but pages and pages of 1 or 2 star mentioning that the new version ruined a well loved app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts&hl=en_US&showAllReviews=true

Anyone that reads reviews before they buy something as most of us do, that's going to scare away alot of potential buyers.

I am investigating podcastaddict seems less polished, more things to adjust so longer to get 'just right' but seems essentially to do what I want (ie be like old PocketCast!)

This worked, once I managed to track down the RSS feed link! Thank you.

Still strange the name doesn't show up in the search, so if anyone who manages the app is looking at this please do take a look. Maybe it's because it's a fairly new podcast? It's hosted via Anchor, this is the RSS https://anchor.fm/s/be67a0c/podcast/rss

go to the search page in the app and copy this into the search field: https://anchor.fm/s/7b41e1c/podcast/rss

it can take a few tries to get it to show up, so you may have to search multiple times, but doing this let me add it!

I've had success with adding authenticated feeds through this page:

https://www.pocketcasts.com/submit/

Just make sure to tick "Private" before you Submit.

Found this app to be better:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.razorlabs.cpumeter

Also, to be honest this is quite hard to monitor since I see this CPU is spending most of it's time on 100 wherever I do ANYTHING.

Which I guess is an Android thing (optimization).

so I'm not really sure... Will keep checking though.

Overall my phone does feel way better. But I can't say I know for sure it's PC.

I just discovered Podcast Guru. This person or persons has been working on this one for free. It reminds me of the original PocketCasts in terms of cut down no bloat. It's currently in beta but it popped up just in time for this. lol

Oh it also has Automatic Downloads and you can set them to only download on wifi, or on wifi and data.

I use voice for audiobooks. Should also work for you.

You can get it from github under ~~releases~~ assets, or download from the play store.

Issue 870 about not advancing to the next file? Haven't faced that issue yet.

If you don't mind proprietary and are Ok with paying for it, I've seen many pple recommend Listen Audioplayer.

Actually its a big feature. Its the second one on their bulleted list on their website "Up Next syncing" and at the top of not one, but two feature categories on their Play store page.

>Sync: Subscriptions, Up Next, listening history, playback and filters are all securely stored in the cloud. You can pick up where you left off on another device and even the web.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts

Anecdotally, I moved to a new phone last year, sometime before the buyout acquisition, and didn't have to touch a thing. Also Anecdotally, I lost hours of meticulous work to v7.

I use Castbox (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.castbox.audiobook.radio.podcast)

They have a webapp, Android and iOS clients. The first thing I noticed once started using it is that it does not lag. PocketCasts is a beautiful app, but often would behave weirdly, freeze up and stutter.

Give it a try if being cross platform is an important thing for you. I have a "zoo" of devices across platforms, and it does just what I need.

Please jump ship to podcast addict link android

I was a fan of Pocketcast but they are lacking A LOT of options. It is a good looking app but I prefer to have the number of episodes i listened to synced in the cloud (when i have to buy a new device etc) Podcast addict has it all

bubbleupnp (paid) has an "Audio Cast" feature which diverts audio from your phone to a DLNA renderer. Requires a rooted phone with XPosed. This worked well for me with a couple of exceptions (Amazon Music wouldn't work).

There is also AirAudio (also paid) that apparently does something similar although I have not tried it.

100% agree! I love Pocket Casts but I had to jump ship to Player.fm when I got sick of scrolling through my growing list of subscriptions. It's a feature that Player.fm does well, but I find that app to be a bit buggy (especially with private RSS feeds), so I'd love to come back to Pocket Casts if they ever implement this feature.

yeah. had to look at the page source to find it. it was a random podcast on anchor.fm witch puts you on spotify and google podcasts but not on itunes. so i searched for it on the discovery page with the name and couldn't find it.

im glad its possible but still annoying knowing shifty jelly and google are big collaborators on ux design

I coded this Python script which generates an RSS feed for the MP3s subfolders of where the script is. And it's hosted from a Raspberry Pi via a public DynDNS name. Works like a charm.

My new version is going to either be Podcast Republic or Player.FM. It will not be Pocket Casts after they fucked up the product beyond repair and refuse to treat their customers with a shred of respect.

If you take a look at https://librivox.org/rss/615 again (which is working), you can see that it is all wrapped up in CDATA too: <itunes:duration><![CDATA[00:49:23]]></itunes:duration>. Or does it show you something different?

$9.99 to CDN is $13... They're basically no different from Castbox.fm and Castbox looks way more developed than Pocketcasts. Plus, $13 a year is already pretty steep for me in 3 years time. I heard that Podcast Addict has a web feature, but I haven't been able to get it to work yet as all I get is one screen of "loading podcasts"...

I have also considered having a PC app like Grover Plus and a phone one like AntennaPod. Have my laptop play one set of podcasts and my phone play another set so I don't need to have web sync.

They're really going to have to step up and stand out if they want me to fork $13 CDN per year after my premium's up. And from the looks of things, I have little hope of this.

I also want to export a list of episode URLs that I have listened to - I would then use Obsidian.md note taking app and the Podcast Note plugin to get the podcast episode information.

Pretty similar use case to you, what app are you using?

That APK downloader would have been Raccoon. Just search with it for "pocketcasts", click on the app, open the "Market|Direct Download" dialog, and tick down the versioncode.

I think it's because their service needs a manual input of the rrs feed so that it can prioritize it, once it's in their system it's not toto bad but ya it can be improved, regardless if you have the iTunes or the RRS submit hear and help improve the search:) https://www.pocketcasts.com/submit/

On a battery powered device, "killing your CPU" over a decent period of time is going to burn your battery.

Looking online briefly, I found a couple of other options worth investigating:

https://mobileinternist.com/cpu-usage-android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glgjing.stark&hl=en\_US&gl=US

Update 4, perhaps the most important so far: I tried to add both RSS feeds to Podcast Addict, and surprise, surprise, they add just fine:

https://i.imgur.com/E4XPVK7.jpg

And more than that, they play just fine too! And yes, it shows the duration for unplayed episodes as them being --:-- long, which is fine by me here, and would be fine in pocketcasts too.

Having tried this, we can conclude, that however much blame may or may not lie with LibriVox's feed, the problem is not insurmountable for other podcast players. Or maybe this is just a downright bug in pocketcasts? At any rate, I would hate to have to use 2 apps, so I am still interested in a solution that works with pocketcasts.

Not sure why it doesn't work. According to the website it should.

If you want to listen to audiobooks that you have stored on your phone, Smart AudioBook Player is the way to go. It can play all the files that you listed.

I like my Oontz Angle 3XL... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DK3RTX9/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_G7d-Db87FRZY9 Depends on your use case. (Usually around $100)

Currently I'm trying Podcast Guru. It's in beta and some people have reported bugs but it's free.

It supports the features I wanted, Automatic downloads, import OPML, etc.

Podcast Republic is free. I started using it when Pocket Casts went to shit and I really don't have any reason to go back.

PocketCasts needs Android 5.0 and higher, so you should be fine.

You can visit Google Play website to see if it is compatible with your device - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts

If it is, then there is different problem unrelated to compatibility.

> maby request it that podcast settings sync across devices because people wouldn't mind haveing it

This is a core feature of the app: Check the feature list. This is the feature most of us purchased Pocket Casts for.

> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts&hl=en > > Sync: Subscriptions, Up Next, listening history, playback and filters are all securely stored in the cloud. You can pick up where you left off on another device and even the web.

In your defense, there are many other features listed there that are currently not available or are broken, so I can understand how you may have gotten that idea.

I don't normally feel the need to comment on updates on apps I use.

Today I do. I feel offended by this update. I hate it. Which is a damn shame, as I've spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours using this app over the last few years. It's always been there and just worked easily.

I am confused and betrayed. Hopefully this version gets reverted, but that is being optimistic indeed.

I'm going to give Podcast Republic a try for now.

I find Player FM to be good as a free option.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.player

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Some of the upgrade features are what you would expect but for how i consume podcasts its now better than pocketcasts for me. I don't listen to every podcasts episode, i just like to have the most recent 3 downloaded ready to go for my subscriptions.

Sure, first install this app from the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yschi.MyAppSharer then at the top make sure it's toggled to APK, not link. Find the app you want the APK for and toggle the tickbox, then tap the Share circle button that appears in the bottom right corner. Choose where you want to export the APK to and there you have it.

I've been trying out Player FM and loving it. Reminds me of the old PC with a more modern skin, does everything I need. Cannot stand Castbox so for now I'll keep using Player FM.

Until they add support, NavCasts works pretty well on Wear OS. You'll have to manually mark the episodes you've listened to in NavCasts played in PocketCasts, but that's not a huge deal.