Decent podcast player…. Google app is switching off.

Got a message that the Google Podcast app is closing down in June. They’re recommending YouTube Music, but even they say that not all podcasts are available on YT Music.

Any decent, free and user friendly apps that I should consider?

I’ve got Global Player, yet they seem only to have their own podcasts on there.

I use Castbox. Works well, has AA support and auto downloads. The “podcasts you might like” is a bit much but easy to ignore.

Would recommend Podbean, except they’ve just started sticking adverts in the middle of podcasts now. So I’m watching this thread with interest now…

Pocketcasts. I’ve used it for years, not tied to any publication platform.

Pocketcasts here as well. Used it for ages and seems fine.

pocketcasts for me too, also works with Amazon Echo and Sonos as well. Works fairly well as you listen on different devices keeping on sync.

I use Spotify, but pay for a subscription.
I think the free version would still work for podcasts, but not sure if the amount of ads you receive would be any different.

+1 for Spotify

No idea how well it covers the world of podcasts though, I assume most things are available.

I’ve been using Player FM for years with zero issues.

The annoying thing about Spotify is that I listen to podcasts in bed and as far as I can tell it’s impossible to only play one episode at a time. When I fall asleep it plays all night. I’ve woken up 4am listening to godawful shouty American sports-arguing with no idea how I got there.

with no idea how I got there.

They do seem keen on auto playing things they think you would like after finishing whatever it was you actually selected.

Generally I quite like it for music, discovered lots of bands through it….

I like Podcast Addict but I’ve not really had much experience of anything else – that’s the drawback of using something that just works for me, I don’t flit about from one app to another unless there’s something that bugs me about my current choice.

They do seem keen on auto playing things they think you would like after finishing whatever it was you actually selected.

Definitely don’t want that!

Don’t want Spotify or anything apple.

If it works with Android Auto that’s a big bonus.

Will check out some of this mentioned… Cheers!

Before I started using Google Podcasts I used Podcast Republic. I’ll probably go back to that.

sharkattack

The annoying thing about Spotify is that I listen to podcasts in bed and as far as I can tell it’s impossible to only play one episode at a time.

I haven’t tried it, but in the settings there is an ‘autoplay similar content’ button that I think defaults to ‘on’.
It’s the button that means when you get to the end of an album, it will keep playing you similar music.
Maybe that will stop it in it’s tracks if you turn it off?

I use podcast addict. It’s a bit clunky compared to the premium stuff but does everything you need.

Sometimes I’ll use Spotify to find new stuff because they have way better search algorithms.

Pocketcasts. I’ve used it for years

Same.

There’s probably better out there, but at the time it was one of the few players which would accept feed URLs from Patreon subscriptions.

I’ve tried a few podcast apps and I’m currently using AntennaPod which seems best so far, with a good balance of features and easy to use interface

Another pocketcasts user here, find it pretty decent having transitioned from Acast when it stopped its player.

I was using Player FM for many years before switching to Pocket Casts because so people were raving about it and Player FM went effectively paid-for.  I’ve honestly been rather disappointed by Pocket Casts, the interface is not very intuitive and the auto-downloading options aren’t very good.  Can’t really complain as a free app though.  The Spotify interface is even worse, so I won’t use that despite being a subscriber.

It may be too much to expect a good podcast app for free, I just wish there was a reliable one with a one-time fee, rather than a subscription model which seems to be the way these things go once an app becomes popular enough.  I’ll have to try some of the other suggestions in this thread.

Pocketcasts. I’ve used it for years, not tied to any publication platform.

Pocketcasts is generally fine but for some reason it totally mangles ‘The News Agents’ – skipping back and forwards, repleting elements and sometimes just loosing the end of the program entirely. If you rewind to re-listen it glitches in exactly the same place

It’s always been otherwise fine – but that persistent glitch on that one podcast (which given its 5 times a week is a lot of glitching)  is making me want to look at another app. Up til today everything else I’ve listened to has been fine but 99PI was glitching today as well

Update…..

Been using Pocket Casts for a while now.

Found it annoying that any episodes you’ve listened to disappear and you have to click through the app to get to “Listening History”, but I found if you go into settingsy> general you can select “Show archived” so that all episodes appear in the list of podcasts.

Getting it to play downloaded episodes whilst on Android Auto is a bit fiddly.

So far, so good.