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gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

gpodder.github.io

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Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#32
post #5

I'd immediately switch to any podcast app that automatically skips ads like the Youtube Ad Skipper Chrome extension.

Might I humbly suggest supporting creators who offer paid, ad-free feeds? Full disclosure, my employer facilitates offering paid private feeds to podcast audiences.

I love paying for content like that (when the content is good of course). It’s one of the few mediums where some creators allow me to be in control of how they monetize my viewership.

It drives me crazy that on YouTube I pay for premium and still need to sidestep ads. It makes sense; the creators don’t get paid directly from my membership and if they did it would be fractions of pennies. But that’s the problem; I want to support them directly. The platform is nice, but it’s mostly fungible. The excellent content often isn’t.

I think an hour+ podcast is absolutely valuable. Some are incredibly thoughtful and well-produced. I hope more podcasters adopt this model!

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#33
post #16

Cool to see this still being developed. I used to use gPodder back in the 2000s to tag and organize podcasts, rename the files based on the feed metadata and tag the genre as 'podcast' so that I could segment that content on my Sansa Clip mp3 player. Sort of wish I'd more carefully archived some of those old episodes, especially Wiretap. In that era it felt like there less than a dozen high-quality podcasts and it se…

CBC re-released some episodes recently: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/426-wiretap

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember gpodder working well on the Nokia N900.

I used gPodder on the N900 long after after it was useless as a phone (because of the network upgrade), until downloading broke because I couldn't update ssl easily (and the internet had upgraded.) It integrated with Panucci, which for me has an ideal (although a little unfinished) interface for playing podcasts/ebooks, I don't know what I'm going to do without Panucci when the N900 finally goes kaput. I heard its co…

Yes, on the N900 (and the N800/N810) before that, gPodder was sharing most of the UI code even with the Gtk Desktop version (with some special-casing for the touch-friendly Hildon UI), and initially the "system" music player was used to play back podcasts. Panucci added support for resuming playback and a UI tailored towards audiobooks and podcasts.

Panucci is still around and should be usable on the Desktop, but the last commit was several years ago: https://github.com/gpodder/panucci

Starting with the N9 and later Sailfish OS, the UI of the mobile app was re-done in Qt/QML (so don't name your project after the toolkit of the day...). There, audio playback was integrated into the main application, so there was no need for a separate app like Panucci (this also made it easier to sync fine-grained playback positions between devices using gpodder.net, although this also works with MPRIS2 and e.g. VLC on the Desktop these days).

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#35

When I first got into podcasts I didn't like that every client had a UI. I just wanted the files and use my audio player of choice (Music Player Daemon). So I wrote one myself. It breaks a lot though.

gPodder does ship with a command-line interface "gpo" that can just do the subscribing and downloading part which might suit your needs (while still retaining the possibility to bring up the GUI if needed, the on-disk format is the same).

If you roll your own, https://github.com/gpodder/podcastparser is a neat little Python library that has been split out from (and is now used by) gPodder, as dealing with all kinds of RSS (and Atom) specialities is kind of something you want to outsource if possible.

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#36

It's desktop only (no Android or iOS support) which makes me wonder: what percentage of overall podcast listening occurs on a desktop computer? Polls on this are all over the place, but I would guess maybe 10-15%? For me, podcast listening has always been an inherently mobile activity, and it would drive me nuts if I had podcatchers on multiple devices that were out of sync with each other.

gPodder started in 2005 when I needed a tool on Linux to download podcasts and sync it to my iPod mini, so even back then it was mostly about downloading on the Desktop, and my phone of the day didn't have much storage space for audio, let alone a 3.5mm headphone jack (I remember getting a "MP3 player phone" with 3.5mm headphone jack and dedicated media player buttons, the 5310 around 2006 or 2007 at which point the iPod as a dedicated device starting to become redundant).

At some point though, phones (and "mobile Internet devices") became powerful and programmable enough that it made sense to port gPodder to "Desktop Linux Userland"-based devices and phones (N800, N810, N900, N9, Jolla) and run it directly on the phone.

These days, my day-to-day podcast consumption happens with the built-in Podcasts app on the iPhone, but gPodder (on the Desktop) is still useful for downloading and archiving (hoarding) YouTube subscriptions (especially since there are so many ads on the web and TV versions of YouTube), mixes from Soundcloud and others and just interesting podcast episodes that might not be available in the future.

I even recently submitted a patch to re-introduce iPod support, so the current version can sync to iPod minis again if you want to have a distraction-free retro podcast listening experience on the go :)

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#37

It's desktop only (no Android or iOS support) which makes me wonder: what percentage of overall podcast listening occurs on a desktop computer? Polls on this are all over the place, but I would guess maybe 10-15%? For me, podcast listening has always been an inherently mobile activity, and it would drive me nuts if I had podcatchers on multiple devices that were out of sync with each other.

It's right there in the name "pod" cast. In the early days of podcasts I listened to them on my computer (downloaded over precious dial up time, where the time to download the episode was longer than the time required to listen to it), but as soon as I got an iPod they were a mobile thing for me.

[deleted]

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#38

It's desktop only (no Android or iOS support) which makes me wonder: what percentage of overall podcast listening occurs on a desktop computer? Polls on this are all over the place, but I would guess maybe 10-15%? For me, podcast listening has always been an inherently mobile activity, and it would drive me nuts if I had podcatchers on multiple devices that were out of sync with each other.

Today, there‘s an adaptive variant of GPodder[0] so that people with PinePhone, Librem 5 or ported Android phones running Linux Mobile can use GTK-based GPodder on mobile.

(This does not matter in terms of numbers, as that‘s at best a few thousand people, but still.)

[0] https://github.com/gpodder/gpodder/tree/adaptive

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#39
is there a ~/.config or file-based way to configure gpodder?

i listen to podcasts on a variety of devices. when i find a new podcast, it's nice to be able to add the RSS URL to a single dotfiles repo and then deploy it to all my devices. i see the option to manually OPML import via the GUI: can i just stash an OMPL file somewhere and have it auto-load that on start?

Re: gPodder: A simple, open-source podcast client

#40

is there a ~/.config or file-based way to configure gpodder? i listen to podcasts on a variety of devices. when i find a new podcast, it's nice to be able to add the RSS URL to a single dotfiles repo and then deploy it to all my devices. i see the option to manually OPML import via the GUI: can i just stash an OMPL file somewhere and have it auto-load that on start?

You can use `gpo import FILENAME|URL` to import an OPML on the command line, or `gpo export FILENAME` to export and OPML on the command line. The "import" command doesn't delete any subscriptions, you can use `gpo list` to get a list of current subscriptions and `gpo unsubscribe URL` to remove a subscription.

The `gpo` command-line utility can do most of the tasks of the GUI that you want to automate.

If you are missing anything, please file an issue over at https://github.com/gpodder/gpodder/issues

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