I noticed that this doesn’t work on iOS 14 due to new/unsupported JS (just shows a blank page), would this be possible to workaround/fix? I quite like the idea, and would love to switch to it as my way to consume podcasts.
Ah, bummer. Just did some quick research, which suggested that first load can fail on iOS 14, but that refreshing the page might fix the issue. Can you try and report back?
I don't see iOS 14 in the list of simulators that ships with XCode, so this could be a challenge to reproduce.
Another option: try another browser. So if you're using Safari, try e.g. Chrome or Firefox.
Thanks for taking the time to respond! I’ve tried refreshing a couple of times and I’m afraid it made no difference. Chrome and Firefox all use the same embedded WebKit, so I’m afraid it still happens on them. I have XCode with an iOS 14 (as well as some similarly-old) Simulators if you’d like me to see if I can isolate and upload that, but according to Apple documentation[0] you should be able to download older simulators from Settings->Components->Add Platforms.
Expected details of that episode. Instead the modal is dismissed and I see the search results again.
Note that if I click View Details to go to the creator page, a similar list of episodes show up and clicking the title of those opens up a modal with episode information as I would expect.
I'm sure your idea's great, but I was hoping for a regionally local-first podcast app when I clicked the link, e.g. something that would show me podcasts from near where I live.
Very cool - played around with it, and it seems quite featured, and my test podcast worked!
I really appreciate the local-first, self-contained but very portable architecture, with an optional server connection to handle CORS and index and whatnot; that's a really solid approach.
Hopefully this isn't too annoying, but I saw you open-sourced what looks like the backend, do you have any plans/interest to open-source the front end as well, for people who might want to self-host?
Yay! And not at all annoying. No plans to open-source the frontend at this stage but I'll keep the request in mind. Btw, that backend was part of an earlier abandoned infrastructure attempt. Still cool code imo, but no longer running on it.
Also personally I do not prefer to play podcasts with a podcast app. I just want it to download the files to a directory which I then sync with another audio player. Does your app make that workflow easy?
Thanks! Also, to be transparent, the chatbot uses a third party hosted API. Just updated the post to reflect that. There are actually models that can run in a browser, but last time I checked they were pretty heavy to run.
This is actually pretty amazing, definitely the most impressive pwa I've ever seen.
It took me about 3 minutes to add to my home screen, export a opml from pocket casts and import it to whatever.
Having offline downloads, ability to adjust playback speed etc is really cool too.
Nice work!
I'm on my phone now, so I'm curious to see how it looks on a browser. Obviously syncing of podcasts / listening positions is not going to work, by design?
The AI search is actually kind of cool for discovering podcasts too, I kind of rolled my eyes a bit when I read it, but it actually worked ok for a query I tried, and I do find it difficult to find new podcasts.
> Obviously syncing of podcasts / listening positions is not going to work, by design?
Not sure, can you say more? Quick potential answers in the meantime.
For syncing, there's an auto-sync that runs in the background and prioritizes the shows that you've listened to most in the past month, but eventually cycles through all podcasts that you follow. There's also a manual sync on the Following page.
For listening positions, there's a Queue where you can drag individual episodes up and down to change the order, and playback will automatically cycle to the next episode in the queue when the playing episode finishes.
Ah, just realized you might be talking about syncing state between devices. Definitely haven't tackled that, as there's no coordinating server in the architecture at this point. But I did recently add "beaming", which lets you quickly transfer your subscription lists between devices with a QR code backed by an ephemeral, signed link.
I don't see iOS 14 in the list of simulators that ships with XCode, so this could be a challenge to reproduce.
Another option: try another browser. So if you're using Safari, try e.g. Chrome or Firefox.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/downloading-...
Found a bug:
- Search for a podcast creator
- Click on a result
- A modal will pop up with a list of episodes
- Click the title of the episode
Expected details of that episode. Instead the modal is dismissed and I see the search results again.
Note that if I click View Details to go to the creator page, a similar list of episodes show up and clicking the title of those opens up a modal with episode information as I would expect.
Am on Firefox Nightly on GrapheneOS
https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/m...
I really appreciate the local-first, self-contained but very portable architecture, with an optional server connection to handle CORS and index and whatnot; that's a really solid approach.
Hopefully this isn't too annoying, but I saw you open-sourced what looks like the backend, do you have any plans/interest to open-source the front end as well, for people who might want to self-host?
Also personally I do not prefer to play podcasts with a podcast app. I just want it to download the files to a directory which I then sync with another audio player. Does your app make that workflow easy?
Fun sidenote, what you're describing is how the first podcast apps worked back in the day!
[0] https://github.com/Slord6/podcast-playlist
It took me about 3 minutes to add to my home screen, export a opml from pocket casts and import it to whatever.
Having offline downloads, ability to adjust playback speed etc is really cool too.
Nice work!
I'm on my phone now, so I'm curious to see how it looks on a browser. Obviously syncing of podcasts / listening positions is not going to work, by design?
The AI search is actually kind of cool for discovering podcasts too, I kind of rolled my eyes a bit when I read it, but it actually worked ok for a query I tried, and I do find it difficult to find new podcasts.
> Obviously syncing of podcasts / listening positions is not going to work, by design?
Not sure, can you say more? Quick potential answers in the meantime.
For syncing, there's an auto-sync that runs in the background and prioritizes the shows that you've listened to most in the past month, but eventually cycles through all podcasts that you follow. There's also a manual sync on the Following page.
For listening positions, there's a Queue where you can drag individual episodes up and down to change the order, and playback will automatically cycle to the next episode in the queue when the playing episode finishes.