AntennaPod Is A Feature-Rich Podcast & Vodcast Manager For Android
Over the past few months, quality podcast management apps for Android have slowly but surely started to show up in the Play Store. Just recently, we saw a very promising Holo-themed podcast app Volksempfanger that supported some nifty features such as auto-downloading of new episodes, downloading over Wi-Fi or in charging mode only, and plenty more. Today, we’ll take a look at AntennaPod – a full-featured podcast and vodcast manager for Android. Besides sporting a gorgeous Holo-themed UI with multiple shades, AntennaPod boasts quite a few handy tools that are hard to find in a single package, and that too for free!
Before we jump to the features list of AntennaPod, we’d like to mention here that the app is currently in beta, and compatible with Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread or higher devices. That said, here is the list of features AntennaPod currently offers:
- Multilingual support (currently available in English, German & Russian).
- Downloading & streaming of high quality podcasts and vodcasts.
- Separate columns for your feeds, new content and queued items.
- Universal search tool to easily look for content.
- Light and dark themes.
- Option to subscribe to new feeds by custom URLs.
- Miro Guide integration to subscribe to interesting content from an extensive category-based repository.
- OPML support to allow users to move (import & export) their podcasts from one podcatcher to another.
- Option to share URLs and visit websites of select sources.
- Support for RSS and Atom feeds.
- Detailed logging of playback history and download tasks.
- Support for MP3, simple and VorbisComment chapters.
- One-tap refresh of items listed under select subscriptions.
- Episode-by-episode listing of content featured under each subscription, with indication about the last played item via a color-coded bar.
- Complete overview of feeds and brief information regarding each episode.
- Polished podcast player UI supplemented with background playback support, podcast cover, shownotes, and basic playback controls.
- Option to set custom sleep timer (in seconds, minutes or hours) for podcasts and vodcasts to automatically quit the app after a specified duration.
- Notification bar alerts for current playback and download status.
- Home screen widget and lockscreen controls to play/pause podcasts conveniently.
- Advanced options such as pause upon headset disconnection, continuous playback of episodes, and auto-deletion of episodes after playback is completed.
- Custom update interval to refresh the feeds.
- Option to download items over cellular data connection.
- Auto-queuing of episodes when set to download.
- Complete Flattr integration.
Currently being in beta, the app is understandably carrying a few trivial bugs such as an odd force close instance, inability to download feeds occasionally, and a slightly unhelpful search engine. Besides fixing these odd glitches, the developers can introduce several additional features. We would love to see the option to sync personalized content across devices. The widgets can be beefed up with slightly better controls and aesthetics. Similarly, the download manager of the app can be enhanced by adding the option to download content in charging mode only. Last but not the least, the option to manage feeds and underlying content in bulk, if added, will prove to be a huge bonus.
That being said, even in its current form, AntennaPod is beefy enough to grab the attention of avid podcast and vodcast fans with Android devices.
Download AntennaPod For Android
