Updated Pocket Casts to the latest beta (7.97-rc-1) and got these stupid fucking banner ads on top
I switched to Antenna Pod as soon as I realized that Pocket Cast is owned by Automattic, never looked back.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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I too went from Pocket Cast to Antenna Pod. Never looked back.
What's wrong with Automattic? I don't know them at all.
Got a suggestion for an app that works on Android in my car? (Not Android Auto, but it's Android based so can run Android apps. It's a Volvo.)
Automattic is owned by Matt Mullenweg, which is a fucking bigot. See his attacks on WP Engine
Edit: also see https://wpvswpe.report/
Maybe try podcast addict, been using it for years and it's just got constant development. I donated to them because I hate subscriptions and I've gotten a lot of value from it.
Free version only has ads on the search page as far as I can tell, and it's just a couple recommended casts.
You know, it is not really a free version if they give you ads. Why not donate to foss? AntennaPod is really great.
Edit: so after that I hyped myself up a bit to donate to AntennaPod myself and their donation page told me, they have enough money to develop the app and they would like people to help in other ways or maybe to donate to their favourite podcast. π€·
Thank you for the suggestion! I looked at it but I think I might be a bit picky β I kinda didn't like the design. π Pocket Casts is just ππ
Nothing big is wrong with them, the drama got blown way out of proportion to a frankly insane degree.
What drama though?
Antenna Pod runs on Android. Not sure about on your Volvo specifically though.
I'm mainly interested in an app that can sync between devices. Non-commercial apps rarely do this. π
+1 for antennapod
Thanks for the recommendation. I checked it out and it's exactly what I've been looking for.
Thanks for the recommendation. I bookmarked this comment in case they put ads in the app that I paid money for years ago. I got the ad update today, so I switched.
Stopped using it years ago when they redesigned it completely. I remember people HATED it, but they really did make it worse.
I use Podcast Addict instead which isn't perfect but looks like it has more features that I use than Antenna Pod
I don't even remember what they did when I bailed. Some redesign thing close to a decade ago. I've been using Podcast Republic ever since as it resembles what Pocket Cast was like before they screwed it up.
I paid for Pocket Casts years ago. Then shortly after, they announced it was going to be free. I think I got a refund. Don't remember.
I can't say I'm surprised at this decision to stuff it with ads. Gotta pay for development somehow, and unfortunately they took the easy route, i.e. data collection and ads.
i still have a lifetime plus account from when i originally paid for the web version in beta otherwise i'd have moved on to audiobookshelf
I really like Audiobookshelf for audiobooks.
But it breaks my brain that it still hasn't implemented some sort of automatic queueing of new podcast episodes. Every time you finish a podcast episode, you need to manually go into the app and find the next episode to play. Not ideal for when you're driving...
This day was always going to come, I've got them as well. Maybe it's time to look at something like PinePods, since it was only the cross device syncing keeping me using pocket casts.
Antennapod is great and also has syncing (through gpodder.net)
I would like to switch to another app, preferably FOSS, but I haven't found another decent one that has the filters feature from PocketCasts. This is the feature that lets you apply a preset filter to the total list of episodes. I use it to auto-build a queue of just certain podcasts, instead of all of my subscriptions.
Any chance someone has seen that feature elsewhere?
Pocket Casts client is actually open source, server is not AFAIK.
I am very curious if they are going to implement something like Google Ads in the future because I don't recall any open source app ever having third party ads. Right now there is only a banner ad to subscribe to Premium but on clicking the X button there is an option to "report ad" so surely they are getting third party ads? I have seen locked down features with premium version having full features, but never ads really. Maybe the MPL license they have chosen is very lenient in that way.
If someone forks the app and creates a fully FOSS version I will be fine using that.
OMG thank you for that knowledge! I've been putting off building a podcast server for years because I couldn't be arsed learning some front end framework.
Podcast addict has a ton of filters I remember using.
I set it up so a news podcast would be like tier one so each morning it played first then after it was over it would move down to what was in progress in tier two in the queue then when those finished it'd go down the list by tier
Is this happening even for their premium subscribers?
Premium now also has "No banner ads" as a feature so no
It's an ad to upgrade, so I doubt it
Enshittification. I have become certain that any app owned by a for-profit company has to follow this path. There is no way to sustain forever growth without harming the product. I have used Pocket Casts for a decade and have premium. I stick with it because I love the web features and feel fine paying for those but I suspect the deal will keep getting worse all the time, Vader style.