{"id":3390,"date":"2024-05-05T02:13:03","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T02:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/?p=3390"},"modified":"2024-05-05T02:13:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T02:13:06","slug":"in-search-of-the-perfect-android-podcast-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/?p=3390","title":{"rendered":"In Search of the Perfect Android Podcast App"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I subscribed to Club Twit (twit.tv<\/a>), which includes ad free videos for their tech shows.\u00a0 I loaded these shows up into Pocket Casts<\/a> without any problems.\u00a0 I, however, wanted to watch these on my computer full screen.\u00a0 I blissfully logged into Pocket Casts on the web to see if I could play my podcasts there, then I was greeted with this message: that will be $40\/year.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 They have a \u201cdeal\u201d where the first year is $20, then year 2 and beyond is $40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Podcast apps are just aggregators of RSS feeds and there\u2019s no way I\u2019m paying $40\/year for the ability to watch videos hosted by a 3rd party.\u00a0 Researching around, I found Bluestacks <\/a>which can run Android apps on Windows and indeed, I could load Pocket Casts and have it go full screen without any problems and it would sync my progress of watching the show to my phone.\u00a0 They even created an icon for Pocket Casts on my desktop, so all I had to do was click on the icon and it would auto-launch Bluestacks and Pocket Casts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this $40 cash grab attempt left a bad taste in my mouth with Pocket Casts. In addition to that, I have issues with their playlist feature.  I can add 3 episodes of a podcast to the queue, but it never plays the last item in the playlist automatically.  So annoying when you are in the shower and not near the phone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to hunt around for a new podcast app.\u00a0 Podcast Addict<\/a> was highly recommended on Reddit, so I loaded it up.\u00a0 It offered to restore my backup from the year 2011: yes, I had used this app in the past.\u00a0 Apparently, it saves the app data in a secret backup location on your Google Drive that you can\u2019t see.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Podcast Addict doesn\u2019t appear to sync between multiple devices, so I uninstalled it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then tried Podurama<\/a> which looked very promising.  They offer syncing between devices and their free tier allows playing of your podcasts on their website.  Unfortunately, I could not get the syncing to work between my computer and phone, so I uninstalled that one as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then stumbled onto Podcast Republic<\/a>.\u00a0 While they do not offer playing podcasts from a website, they do offer syncing between devices and right from the get go, they say it\u2019s free. \u00a0I loaded it up into Bluestacks and I was able to sync my podcast progress to my phone.\u00a0 Hooray!\u00a0 The sync, however, does not seem to be \u201creal-time\u201d, but I was able to do it on demand from Settings>Account & syncing>Sync now.\u00a0 The app has ads which were not obtrusive at all, just a small banner at the very bottom of the app. \u00a0 I went ahead and paid the one time fee of $4 to remove the ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an added bonus: I see they support streaming radio stations.\u00a0 I listen to a radio station on iHeartRadio using their official app.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they started putting ads on the screen in their app: annoying! \u00a0 I went to radio-browser.info<\/a>, found the streaming URL for the station I listen to and added it in Podcast Republic.\u00a0 No more screen ads!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Soli Deo Gloria<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I subscribed to Club Twit (twit.tv), which includes ad free videos for their tech shows.\u00a0 I loaded these shows up into Pocket Casts without any problems.\u00a0 I, however, wanted to watch these on my computer full screen.\u00a0 I blissfully logged into Pocket Casts on the web to see if I could play my podcasts … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “In Search of the Perfect Android Podcast App”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wiG8-SG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3390"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3392,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390\/revisions\/3392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}