My goal is to be able to sync podcast episodes (the actual audio files) and their play state (played or unplayed, how many minutes I’ve already listened to) between devices, so I can stop listening to an episode on my phone, for example, and continue listening to the same episode on my desktop computer (continuing from the point in the episode where I stopped listening on my phone).
I’m using AntennaPod on GrapheneOS (Android 14), and for desktop podcast listening I’m using Podfetch (self hosted). I’m also self-hosting a GPodder instance, and in Podfetch I have GPODDER_INTEGRATION_ENABLED set to true.
In AntennaPod, I’m able to configure Synchronization to GPodder.net (though my own instance of GPodder is at a different domain, AntennaPod calls the GPodder configuration “GPodder.net”), enter my self-hosted URL and credentials, and AntennaPod logs in, but it fails to sync. I don’t know where AntennaPod’s logs are so I don’t have any details about why the sync fails.
Also confusing to me is how to manage podcast subscriptions. It seems I can manually add podcasts to either GPodder or Podfetch, but adding a podcast to one doesn’t add it to the other. The same happens with episodes: if I manually add the same podcast to both GPodder and Podfetch and download an episode in one environment, the episode isn’t also downloaded in the other.
Has anyone successfully got these 3 apps working together? Can you help me figure out what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks!
Not what you’re asking but want to share what I’m using with great success. Audiobookshelf has podcasts feature and it’s all in one solution for managing downloads and playing on multiple devices with sync. It has search feature so it’s really easy to add podcasts.
You beat me to it, ABS is great.
Looks interesting, gonna check it out. Thanks for the tip. I wonder why the all is only on Google play thought.
Likely because it’s still early development. It’s very functional though.
iOS is still in beta available through TestFlight.
ABS works pretty well for me. Thanks!
The only way I see to sync play-state is if you use the ABS app or the web page. In ABS you can create an RSS feed for a podcast and you can subscribe to that feed in Antennapod, and the podcasts sync but their play-state doesn’t. So I’ll use the ABS on my phone instead of Antennapod. ABS is missing some nice features common in good podcast players, but it works well enough for me.
I checked out ABS a while ago, but i t didn’t fit my needs. I don’t remember why, now, though. I’ll check it out again. Thanks.
I should add that I’m not sold on AntennaPod, Podfetch, and GPodder. I think AntennaPod is a great app and I hope I can use it to do what I want here. Podfetch seems nice, with room to grow in terms of features and Ux. GPodder seems pretty terrible (though I hardly know it) but also seems to be the defacto standard in syncing podcasts and play-states (or perhaps the only game in town?).
But I’d ditch any or all of them if I was able to sync podcasts and play-states between devices. My only caveat is that the solution needs to be FOSS and self-host-able.
I’m with you on this. I’ve been trying to get podcasts synced in this way for a long time
Me too, I thought that gPodden was supposed to do that, but it doesn’t even do it between two AntennaPod instances. Syncing podcasts works if you select the same name as an instance when you’re starting syncing, but syncing where you’ve been listening doesn’t.
I basically gave up on podcasts on the desktop and only use AntennaPod on my phone. When I’m at my desktop, I have my phone paired with my computer via Bluetooth and play that way. I can pause it on my computer via KDE Connect (GSConnect on GNOME).
Bluetooth audio from phone to desktop works on Fedora Linux quite well. It probably works on other Linux distros too. I’m guessing it might also work on other OSes like Windows and macOS.
KDE Connect is available on Android, iOS, KDE (and can run on other desktops too), GNOME (via the GSConnect extension), Windows, and macOS.
This solves the syncing problem by sidestepping the need for it. My podcast state is always correct and I always have my podcasts with me, even when out and about.
I also gave up on Podcasts on the desktop and only listen from the phone.
Yep. Same here
I run gPodder sync via Nextcloud with the AntennaPod Google play store edition (also on grapheneOS) and AntennaPod on my Nvidia Shield. It’s my understanding that the gPodder protocol does not sync episode progress or your queue. Because of that, I stopped using multiple devices and just use my phone and cast to my Shield (the play store version has google cast functionality).
The AntennaPod devs are working with others to put together a replacement for gPodder, and I’m excited for it. https://openpodcastapi.org/index.html
GPodder does sync episode progess.
With antennapod? Or just with the gpodder app?
Doesn’t Podfetch integrate gpodder, so you don’t need a separate gpodder instance? Or did I misunderstand that. Otherwise there is also a gpodder sync plugin for nextcloud I think. But yeah, I haven’t found a satisfactory solution that works on Android and iOS myself
I’ve tried everything from using the official service to self-host gpodder server, using the NC “app” you mentioned, a ton of different client on both mobile and desktop.
Never managed to sync anything besides the subscriptions. I just given up and use AntennaPod on Android for now, no sync only occasional backup.
I’m looking at other sync solutions like downloading and converting directly on my NC server and share the folder to my user, but that’s equally useless only in different ways. 🫠
I think I managed to sync playback position (or maybe it was just played status?) with Antennapod and the NC app at some point, but it seemed slow and unreliable, and I couldn’t use it on my iPad, so I stuck with Pocket Casts for now :(
