AntennaPod is an open-source podcast player. It’s a free, open-source, ad-free application with a clean and elegant design, featuring all the functions I need in a podcast player/subscription manager.
It’s the player I’ve been testing for some time now, and it works wonderfully for me. I use it with F-Droid on Android, although you can also find it on the Play Store.
Until now, I was using iVoox, and I’ve replaced its over 100MB size with AntennaPod’s little more than 10MB. Besides the ads, iVoox was constantly crashing, which made it unbearable. AntennaPod is a great alternative to many commercial players.
This way, everything runs smoothly for me, I have no ads, and I’m using an open-source option available on F-Droid. So far, it’s all advantages.
Here are its features and some usage tips.
Features
Things We Can Do with AntennaPod
- Subscribe to millions of podcasts. Those that are on networks like…
- Add podcasts using an RSS URL or by importing OPML files.
- You can listen to episodes live, download them, or add them to playback queues.
- Adjustable playback speeds and sleep timer.
- Schedule episode downloads at specific times, only when on Wi-Fi networks, automatically delete episodes after listening, and more settings.
- Keep track by marking episodes as favorites.
- Browse through your history.
- Usage statistics.
- Share episodes on social networks.
- Synchronize between devices with gpodder.
- Configure the amount of podcasts stored on the device and its cache.
- Configure gesture actions to interact with the application.
- System notifications, volume control, and Bluetooth support.
There are more features and many configuration options; the best thing is to try it out and see if it’s what you’re looking for. The good part is that it continues to be updated and improved constantly.
For dark mode enthusiasts, there’s a dark theme and another black one for AMOLED screens. I’m not a big fan and always use light themes.
If you think any important feature is missing or if you know a good alternative for playing podcasts, feel free to leave a comment.
How to Add Podcasts
In its search engine, podcasts from Podcast Index, iTunes, and Fyyd appear. You can subscribe to them, and if you want, you can add your own feeds and import OPML files. This is an indispensable function.
You can listen to podcast episodes online or download them to your device. But you can’t download YouTube videos. If you’re interested in doing that, check out NewPipe.
How to Synchronize Your Podcasts Between Devices
If you need to synchronize the podcasts you’ve listened to across multiple devices, you can do it via gpodder.net.
gpodder.net is a free web service that allows you to manage your podcast subscriptions and discover new content. If you use multiple devices, you can synchronize your subscriptions and listening progress.
Activate it from Settings > Synchronization. Of course, you’ll need to create an account on gPodder to synchronize, and you can use this service in more places.
One criticism of this application is that it doesn’t sync between devices, and although it doesn’t do it by itself, it does have the gpodder option, which perfectly covers users who have this need.
Privacy
This feature is very interesting for all privacy and anonymity enthusiasts. If you want, you can listen to episodes and download them using a proxy or the TOR network.
Activate it from Settings > Network.
Images and Screenshots of AntennaPod
