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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

Fix podcasts.

I was helping someone set up her android phone for podcasts and noticed how problematic the whole process is. First, the android apps aren't very good. More problematic is the process of getting a feed into it. Sometimes searching by name works. Often it doesn't. Getting from podcast's website to the app is a problem. Discovery is also quite poor.

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I am using http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts. That is really amazing. And the discovery have not failed me yet.

Seconded. Pocketcasts is amazing, especially the settings. For example I have have mine set to keep only latest 2 podcasts pershow, auto download on wifi, and auto delete those I've listened to. It's a well built app worth way above $3.99. Don't bother buying other podcast apps or even show apps like This American Life.

Yup.

I switched from iOS 6 months ago and podcasting was one of the initial problems I had. I trialed a handful of apps before properly purchasing pocketcasts. As good as the iOS app.

Plus, the devs are awesome and have fantastic release notes. :)

A couple if German podcasters are about to fix this: the have crowd sourced an antenna pod fork to make it a single purpose app. Toby Bayer is the main organizer. Alle the code is open source: https://github.com/tobybaier/Einschlafen-Podcast-App

Latest commit by tobybaier about 2 years ago

Most free podcast android apps are pretty terrible, but PocketCast (paid) is really awesome (at least it have a great UI). I don't even listen to podcast that often, but I bought it without hesitation.

But it's true that there's a problem with podcast, so take my +1.

I've been using BeyondPod for a couple years now. It has a paid and free one and the free one has suited my needs, but its a relatively cheap upgrade for some nice features.

On iOS it's not much better, most apps are too granualar (e.g. Downcast) or not enough (Apple Podcasts). Pegging some hope on http://overcast.fm/ fixing the situation but it's not a great ecosystem...yet.

The built in iOS podcast app is the worst app I've ever used. It's not that it fails to be great, it actually seemed to go out of its way to delete podcasts just before I left home. I bought downcast and I'm happy with it except for the problem of discovering podcasts.

Throwing in a mention for PodKicker[1], since you mentioned searching/discovery. The UI needs a lot of work, but it is nice to have the search engine built-in (they claim an index of 250,000), instead of trying to grab RSS links from a podcast's homepage. The search itself is even available as a separate app[2].

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.podkicker

[2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ait.podsearch

That's the one I use and helped her get started with.

I work on an iOS app called AGOGO that takes a different approach than most podcasting apps. Instead of subscribing to shows you browse channels podcasts, tv clips or text to speech audio. Would be interested to hear what you guys think www.agogo.com

I nearly worked on an idea like this 4 years ago. End-to-end podcasting which helps people make good quality, listenable podcasts. +1 from me

Maybe just the idea of podcasts is broken. RSS has dying a slow death for quite some time. Why not just build a better podcast?

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