8 ms·

Modernizing the AntennaPod Code Structure

157 points by moasda 2y ago

wildrhythms 2y ago
Glad to have a FOSS podcast app. I switched to Antennapod after Google Podcasts shut down. I have about a dozen podcasts I listen to, half of them from Patreon RSS feeds. Works great!
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I spotted Podcini <https://github.com/XilinJia/Podcini#readme https://github.com/XilinJia/Podcini#readme> on f-droid <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ac.mdiq.podcini/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ac.mdiq.podcini/> over the weekend and it is the first contender to remove Podcast Addict from my phone. I just need to fix a few UX bugs (for my workflow) but I'm stoked about it
  - keunes 2y ago
    Why is it your first contender, rather than AntennaPod? Podcini is a fork of AP and it seems that at this point they're still quite the same.
    - mdaniel 2y ago
      I stand corrected! I installed the latest AntennaPod build from f-droid in order to give specific examples but had no idea that AntennaPod had gotten so much better. The last contact I had with it was an indescribably miserable experience
- onislandtime 2y ago
  I had to use an iPhone for a month when I lost my Android phone so I tried Spotify for podcasts. I can't describe how bad it is, impossible to control what you want to play, complete garbage. AntennaPod is an example of what software can be when you remove greed from the equation.
  - hedora 2y ago
    I miss AntennaPod from Android. It's on a list of about 5 things. Having said that, Overcast for iOS is great. The main missing feature vs. AntennaPod is that I can't browse + select podcast episodes using the job wheel / touchscreen on my non-CarPlay car. That feature barely works with Apple Music (and not at all for other first-party or third-party apps), so I suspect it's an iOS issue more than an Overcast issue.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    If you're on an iPhone then Apple's own Podcasts app is what you want. It's basically identical to AntennaPod in normal usage, and that's a good thing.
hiddencost 2y ago
I've encountered this kind of poor encapsulation in other open source projects quite frequently. It's often one of the main blockers to contributing, for me. Congratulations to AntennaPod for spending three years to clean this up.
brunoqc 2y ago
Semi related. I wonder if they are planning to use the open podcast API https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3390-introducing-the-open-podcast-api/ https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3390-intr...
- parineum 2y ago
  From your link... > Over at AntennaPod, we often get requests and comments about synchronization of listening data. The existing gPodder API has some fundamental flaws and misses capabilities. So we took the initiative together with Funkwhale to develop a new standard to sync your listening data. What do we do differently & why, where are we at, and what calls are in the planning?
  - brunoqc 2y ago
    I'm an idiot. I searched the new blog article, but not the other way around. Thanks.
planede 2y ago
Love the data driven approach through graph clustering, instead of jumping into opinionated refactoring.
imglorp 2y ago
Daily user of this wonderful app. Thank you to all the contributors.
freedomben 2y ago
This is great! Major refactors like this are always such a difficult prospect for a number of reasons, and take real dedication and love. For people doing this for open source like Antenna Pod, my gratitude for you is immense! Interestingly though, depending on your perspective can be good or bad. For example, the improvement for new contributors and for the people doing the refactor will be huge and lovely. So much easier to work in! For the people who were familiar with the tangled mess before though, it can be a real set back. I've been in that boat before, and it basically wipes away all your prior knowledge and puts you at least back at square 1, sometimes at like -15 because you have to unlearn all the old stuff and that can be really hard to do. If all the older contributors were gone then this is not really a problem, but if I were one of them I probably wouldn't contribute anymore, not out of irritiation or spite or anything like that, just that it's too much of an uphill battle and there are other projects where I could contribute more efficiently. Definitely not a reason not to do the refactor, but it is something I had never considered before until I was on that side of it. So if the only contributors are older contributors, and they are still around, it can be difficult. If the older contributors have moved on or are the ones doing the refactoring, or if most contributions are from newer members, then it's a huge win.
thepill 2y ago
Loving this >AntennaPod doesn’t need a lot of money. Our (annual) costs are already covered by our existing donation funds. Therefore, we’d much prefer it if you donate to your favorite podcast(er), orhelp us with a non-monetary contribution.
threemux 2y ago
Great article - it's always interesting to see refactoring tools like that used in real life. I'm a daily user of AntennaPod and it is the best podcast app I've ever used.
IAmLiterallyAB 2y ago
AntennaPod is my favorite podcast app. I use it for all my podcasts that have RSS feeds. Highly recommend
bastawhiz 2y ago
I love this! My startup and I have been contributors to Antennapod for a while now and I'm always eager to see them ship improvements.
VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
How is antenna pod? My experience with these kinds of open-source apps aimed at end users is that unless there's any kind of actual product or design direction saying yes/no to every little thing someone in the community wants to add, it turns into a bloated mess for everyone except for the community experts in open-source podcast apps. It's pretty much always developers that are the main contributors in communities like this and they want everything to be configurable. So you get things like a bunch of inputs and sliders for configuring various buffer sizes and timeouts and whatnot. I use Pocket Casts and love it because it's simple and looks nice and works great. How is antenna pod?
- jabroni_salad 2y ago
  Podcasts are just syndicated audio feeds and in that respect, Antennapod is pretty serviceable. That said I've tried it a few times and always bounce off for two issues: 1. If you want to discover new podcasts, you will have to do that somewhere else. 2. Playlisting is not as good as others. If you follow a few podcasts and aren't too opinionated about it then AntennaPod is a perfectly good app. I also use pocketcasts as I am married to my different filters and ability to sync playback status to PC.
- fluidcruft 2y ago
  For the most part I like it but there are some annoyances in queue/download management and playlists. They're known issues that they are working on. Currently there's just one queue which can get extremely annoying when mixing episodic and news podcasts. They're working on supporting multiple queues which should be a great solution. I don't think that feature has been released yet (but I could be wrong). Hopefully this restructuring makes things easier.
  - doutupudonktan 2y ago
    You're right, this feature hasn't been released yet. See https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/2648 https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/2648 if you want to follow the work in progress.
- 2y ago
pmayrgundter 2y ago
Thanks for the work guys! It's been growing in quality of the years and is one of my regulars.
freguencey 2y ago
[dead]
gnuvince 2y ago
I absolutely loved AntennaPod back when I had an Android phone -- I actually never really "attended" to it though: I installed it, it worked, never gave me any issue. Now that I own an iPhone, I really miss having a quality app like AntennaPod.
easyKL 2y ago
Still waiting for them to catch up and join the revolution of sat streaming, boostagrams , and other Podcasting 2.0 features. Still my app of choice (due to F-Droid availability and many years of playback history).
- noman-land 2y ago
  Lotta new words here.
- keunes 2y ago
  Discussions are ongoing: https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22Area%3A+Podcast+Index+%2F+Podcasting+2.0%22 https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues?q=is%3Aopen+... & https://forum.antennapod.org/t/improve-podcasting-2-0-coverage/3138 https://forum.antennapod.org/t/improve-podcasting-2-0-covera...
noman-land 2y ago
I love love love AntennaPod. Top 5 apps for me and there's a GPodder Sync app for Nextcloud so you can easily use it across devices with no third party clouds.

157 points by moasda 2y ago

Glad to have a FOSS podcast app. I switched to Antennapod after Google Podcasts shut down. I have about a dozen podcasts I listen to, half of them from Patreon RSS feeds. Works great!

mdaniel 2y ago
I spotted Podcini <https://github.com/XilinJia/Podcini#readme https://github.com/XilinJia/Podcini#readme> on f-droid <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ac.mdiq.podcini/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ac.mdiq.podcini/> over the weekend and it is the first contender to remove Podcast Addict from my phone. I just need to fix a few UX bugs (for my workflow) but I'm stoked about it
- keunes 2y ago
  Why is it your first contender, rather than AntennaPod? Podcini is a fork of AP and it seems that at this point they're still quite the same.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    I stand corrected! I installed the latest AntennaPod build from f-droid in order to give specific examples but had no idea that AntennaPod had gotten so much better. The last contact I had with it was an indescribably miserable experience
onislandtime 2y ago
I had to use an iPhone for a month when I lost my Android phone so I tried Spotify for podcasts. I can't describe how bad it is, impossible to control what you want to play, complete garbage. AntennaPod is an example of what software can be when you remove greed from the equation.
- hedora 2y ago
  I miss AntennaPod from Android. It's on a list of about 5 things. Having said that, Overcast for iOS is great. The main missing feature vs. AntennaPod is that I can't browse + select podcast episodes using the job wheel / touchscreen on my non-CarPlay car. That feature barely works with Apple Music (and not at all for other first-party or third-party apps), so I suspect it's an iOS issue more than an Overcast issue.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  If you're on an iPhone then Apple's own Podcasts app is what you want. It's basically identical to AntennaPod in normal usage, and that's a good thing.

hiddencost 2y ago

I've encountered this kind of poor encapsulation in other open source projects quite frequently. It's often one of the main blockers to contributing, for me. Congratulations to AntennaPod for spending three years to clean this up.

brunoqc 2y ago

Semi related. I wonder if they are planning to use the open podcast API https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3390-introducing-the-open-podcast-api/ https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3390-intr...

parineum 2y ago
From your link... > Over at AntennaPod, we often get requests and comments about synchronization of listening data. The existing gPodder API has some fundamental flaws and misses capabilities. So we took the initiative together with Funkwhale to develop a new standard to sync your listening data. What do we do differently & why, where are we at, and what calls are in the planning?
- brunoqc 2y ago
  I'm an idiot. I searched the new blog article, but not the other way around. Thanks.

planede 2y ago

Love the data driven approach through graph clustering, instead of jumping into opinionated refactoring.

imglorp 2y ago

Daily user of this wonderful app. Thank you to all the contributors.

freedomben 2y ago

This is great! Major refactors like this are always such a difficult prospect for a number of reasons, and take real dedication and love. For people doing this for open source like Antenna Pod, my gratitude for you is immense! Interestingly though, depending on your perspective can be good or bad. For example, the improvement for new contributors and for the people doing the refactor will be huge and lovely. So much easier to work in! For the people who were familiar with the tangled mess before though, it can be a real set back. I've been in that boat before, and it basically wipes away all your prior knowledge and puts you at least back at square 1, sometimes at like -15 because you have to unlearn all the old stuff and that can be really hard to do. If all the older contributors were gone then this is not really a problem, but if I were one of them I probably wouldn't contribute anymore, not out of irritiation or spite or anything like that, just that it's too much of an uphill battle and there are other projects where I could contribute more efficiently. Definitely not a reason not to do the refactor, but it is something I had never considered before until I was on that side of it. So if the only contributors are older contributors, and they are still around, it can be difficult. If the older contributors have moved on or are the ones doing the refactoring, or if most contributions are from newer members, then it's a huge win.

thepill 2y ago

Loving this >AntennaPod doesn’t need a lot of money. Our (annual) costs are already covered by our existing donation funds. Therefore, we’d much prefer it if you donate to your favorite podcast(er), orhelp us with a non-monetary contribution.

threemux 2y ago

Great article - it's always interesting to see refactoring tools like that used in real life. I'm a daily user of AntennaPod and it is the best podcast app I've ever used.

IAmLiterallyAB 2y ago

AntennaPod is my favorite podcast app. I use it for all my podcasts that have RSS feeds. Highly recommend

bastawhiz 2y ago

I love this! My startup and I have been contributors to Antennapod for a while now and I'm always eager to see them ship improvements.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago

How is antenna pod? My experience with these kinds of open-source apps aimed at end users is that unless there's any kind of actual product or design direction saying yes/no to every little thing someone in the community wants to add, it turns into a bloated mess for everyone except for the community experts in open-source podcast apps. It's pretty much always developers that are the main contributors in communities like this and they want everything to be configurable. So you get things like a bunch of inputs and sliders for configuring various buffer sizes and timeouts and whatnot. I use Pocket Casts and love it because it's simple and looks nice and works great. How is antenna pod?

jabroni_salad 2y ago
Podcasts are just syndicated audio feeds and in that respect, Antennapod is pretty serviceable. That said I've tried it a few times and always bounce off for two issues: 1. If you want to discover new podcasts, you will have to do that somewhere else. 2. Playlisting is not as good as others. If you follow a few podcasts and aren't too opinionated about it then AntennaPod is a perfectly good app. I also use pocketcasts as I am married to my different filters and ability to sync playback status to PC.
fluidcruft 2y ago
For the most part I like it but there are some annoyances in queue/download management and playlists. They're known issues that they are working on. Currently there's just one queue which can get extremely annoying when mixing episodic and news podcasts. They're working on supporting multiple queues which should be a great solution. I don't think that feature has been released yet (but I could be wrong). Hopefully this restructuring makes things easier.
- doutupudonktan 2y ago
  You're right, this feature hasn't been released yet. See https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/2648 https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/2648 if you want to follow the work in progress.
2y ago

pmayrgundter 2y ago

Thanks for the work guys! It's been growing in quality of the years and is one of my regulars.

freguencey 2y ago

[dead]

gnuvince 2y ago

I absolutely loved AntennaPod back when I had an Android phone -- I actually never really "attended" to it though: I installed it, it worked, never gave me any issue. Now that I own an iPhone, I really miss having a quality app like AntennaPod.

easyKL 2y ago

Still waiting for them to catch up and join the revolution of sat streaming, boostagrams , and other Podcasting 2.0 features. Still my app of choice (due to F-Droid availability and many years of playback history).

noman-land 2y ago
Lotta new words here.
keunes 2y ago
Discussions are ongoing: https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22Area%3A+Podcast+Index+%2F+Podcasting+2.0%22 https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues?q=is%3Aopen+... & https://forum.antennapod.org/t/improve-podcasting-2-0-coverage/3138 https://forum.antennapod.org/t/improve-podcasting-2-0-covera...

noman-land 2y ago

I love love love AntennaPod. Top 5 apps for me and there's a GPodder Sync app for Nextcloud so you can easily use it across devices with no third party clouds.