Live data from Hacker News

Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

blog.pocketcasts.com

61–70 of 74 posts

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). Maybe overlooked? Settings -> Import & Export OPML. Can't recall if it includes listening history and starred episodes but subscriptions for sure. This is the case for Android -- can't speak for iOS.

OPML usually is just your list of subscriptions, OP specifically wanted everything else, I don’t know of any app that shares that unfortunately.

Overcast produces an export with everything, but warns they don't know of any apps that import it. The nice thing about OPML though is it's XML. An importer will just skip what it doesn't understand and import the subscriptions.

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#62

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.

I've been using it since it was owned by the original developers, Aussie indy outfit Shifty Jelly (along with their late, and definitely lamented, Pocket Weather). It's the one app that has gone with me as I've shifted between iOS and Android over the years. It's probably the only app I regularly use that I've never checked out alternatives for, as it's just so good.

Time really flies... I paid $2.99 for Pocket Casts on Android in 2011 and $3.99 on iOS in 2014. Glad they are sharing this under MPL. Just a great app.

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve switched to Podverse recently, how’s Pocketcasts wrt podcasting 2.0 features? Life streaming badges, chapters, sats streaming, boosting etc? I have to say, Podverse was rough some months ago but it’s improving very fast. I have the feeling they are more friendly towards the decentralized nature of podcasting whereas NPR may have mixed motivation. It’s important to choose wisely imho, the once quite open podcast…

I emailed the Pocketcasts dev team 2 years ago, and they said then that they had no plans to implement any podcasting 2.0 features.

I don't know about all of these features, but PocketCasts definitely has Chapter support, and has had it for a long time.

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using it since it was owned by the original developers, Aussie indy outfit Shifty Jelly (along with their late, and definitely lamented, Pocket Weather). It's the one app that has gone with me as I've shifted between iOS and Android over the years. It's probably the only app I regularly use that I've never checked out alternatives for, as it's just so good.

Good to know I’m not alone. I’ve used it since (according to the app) 1/14/17 and have amassed 51d 7h of listening time. I feel like I’ve used it since around 2014 or so, but I could be wrong. I know somewhere around that time there was a platform switch and stats got lost. In any event I was overjoyed when they grandfathered me to a lifetime subscription after switching to a paid model. I truly, deeply appreciate th…

It's nearly 400 days for me, but the key feature is the "127 days" I've saved using their speedup features (intro skipping, ~1.5x playback, silence reduction).

The latter two don't just save time, but make hosts sound more lively. Podcast hosts are trained to speak slowly and carefully, which is good for most audiences, but I prefer it a bit tighter. I listen while running or driving and it helps me stay engaged.

Pocket Casts has some remarkable algorithms which do the speed-ups while remaining natural-sounding or forced (at least at the speeds I listen).

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know I’m not alone. I’ve used it since (according to the app) 1/14/17 and have amassed 51d 7h of listening time. I feel like I’ve used it since around 2014 or so, but I could be wrong. I know somewhere around that time there was a platform switch and stats got lost. In any event I was overjoyed when they grandfathered me to a lifetime subscription after switching to a paid model. I truly, deeply appreciate th…

It's nearly 400 days for me, but the key feature is the "127 days" I've saved using their speedup features (intro skipping, ~1.5x playback, silence reduction). The latter two don't just save time, but make hosts sound more lively. Podcast hosts are trained to speak slowly and carefully, which is good for most audiences, but I prefer it a bit tighter. I listen while running or driving and it helps me stay engaged. Poc…

Antenna Pod has these features.

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#67

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 i…

> 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). Maybe overlooked? Settings -> Import & Export OPML. Can't recall if it includes listening history and starred episodes but subscriptions for sure. This is the case for Android -- can't speak for iOS.

As the other comment mentioned, yes, this only contains a very short and not very useful list of the podcast subscriptions which if you have ~50 podcasts you subscribe to is easy to even manually resubscribe to, it doesn't have any of the useful data which isn't as easy to reconstruct.

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#68

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 i…

Pocketcasts has an API with a history endpoint, which I scrape regularly: https://api.pocketcasts.com/user/history With the help of the web-player and the developer console I could copy the necessary auth-headers. I built a little deno project recently which scrapes my Spotify and PocketCasts history regularly and stores the history to a Supabase PostgreSQL database. So I have access to my own listening history: http…

Very nice! Will check out your repo, but this requires Pocket Casts Plus, right? (I don't have one, I purchased the Android app a long long time ago, but do not have access to the web player at all AFAIK).

Re: Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source

#70
post #29

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.

Out of curiosity, which podcasts do you listen to at 4x or more?

None currently. Would like to listen some at 3.3x however.
Post reply on HN