Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source (opens in new tab)

That's a nice and unexpected bit of news for the day.

I've been using Pocket Casts for awhile, it's indeed a very nice app, and other than the UI tumult from a few years back has been pretty reliable.

I was a bit disappointed recently to discover that it doesn't offer a way to export data from it, which is pretty bad (i.e. your listening history and starred episodes, not your list of subscribed podcasts). Hopefully it being OSS means that's something someone can add (heck I'd look into it myself as I was dreading having to manually extract the data myself or MITM the sync service to do it).

Absolutely amazing app, by far the best podcast player I've used. The recent update that (finally!) implemented a folder organization system was just the icing on the cake.

Very glad to see it going open source.

That's insane. I've been holding back from using Pocket Casts precisely because there FOSS alternatives like Antennapod and Podverse - but I wasn't that happy with them.

Props to Automattic for being an incredible force for good!

Edit: Wow 12$/year is a nice price for the Plus plan (vs. Podverse's 3/month, though that's not terrible either). They just got themselves a new subscriber. I'd skip the trial if I could. Take my money!

I use AntennaPod[1] these days, but Pocket Casts was one of the few Android apps I actually ever purchased. It was that good and simply the best podcast app at the time. Glad to see it open sourced.

[1] https://antennapod.org/

I'd be happy if they also open sourced the web app so someone can finally implement their filter/playlist feature over there. It's the main reason I quit using the app a while ago. Being able to sync playlists is such a basic feature.

This is amazing. I'm already a Plus subscriber and glad to see that I backed the right horse.

I switched to Pocket Casts from Overcast because of playback issues and lack of Chromecast support, and stayed for the very polished experience and cross platform support (there's even a desktop app now!).

Your podcast player of choice is like your gang colors, people get pretty passionate about it. In my case Pocket Casts is the one that works exactly the way I expect and gets out of the way.

Selfish, but I was mad at myself that they made it free just a couple or so months after I paid for it. As a college student, I resented them a whole bunch for it because I was on the fence for a little over a year before pulling the trigger only for them to make it free (and I didn’t feel like I could have got my moneys worth because of that). If only I had waited a smidgeon longer!

Glad they are making it open source now though.

I am a fan of AntennaPod on Android which is already free under GPLv3. What features more features Pocket Casts has?

This is one of the few services I subscribe to (Pocket Casts Plus: https://pocketcasts.com/plus/). Happy to hear they're open source now!

Pocket Casts has been fantastic (using it since 2015). May only complaint remains that the maximum playback speed is limited to 3x. I guess Not too many people miss that.

At risk of this becoming a support thread, has anyone else had issues with Pocket Casts for iOS not auto-downloading podcasts in the background?

I just recently switched to Snipd and have not looked back. Pocket Cast were great over the years but I don't see them innovating. With Snipd there is almost always a full transcript available and an AI generated Table of Contents to cue through. I can easily save a transcribed clip I am listening to for export to a TfT program like obsidian. Not sure how I ever lived without these features now I am used to them lol.

Nice to see! Purchased back in 2015 and it’s been a daily driver since then. Props to Automattic for honouring existing purchasers with lifetime subscriptions!

Is Pocket Cast the player that had a rather impressive silence removing feature, and is that part also now free software?

I can't remember which app I used before moving to the free software antennapod, though I remember that being the one feature I missed. Various free software apps now have a version of the feature, but they seem to remove all silence killing any kind of comedic timing.

Uhh is this right? Seems like the vast majority of the main iOS app UI files are all dumped in the same folder along with all the assets. No organization.

https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios/tree/trunk/po...

Oh this is cool! I've been using AntennaPod for a few years because it was open source, but lately started having issues with the media session and was looking for an alternative.

Finally, now I can do a PR, add "Up Next" as a "filter" (playlist) option, and the app will be perfect.

Yay. Maybe I can add a filter so I can skip specific episodes and clean up my new release page.