Podcasts on my schedule with Android – the impossible dream???

July 14, 2013 7:18 PM

Why nothing like iPhone Podcaster on Android? Beyond Pod, Doggcatcher, Podkicker Pro, and Pocket Caster fill me with blinding rage.

This thread, http://ask.metafilter.com/186266/Android-App-for-Podcasts, http://ask.metafilter.com/243923/Podcasting-and-Podcatching-for-Android-phones, and a couple of others I can’t find were somewhat helpful in guiding me to Android apps when I made the big switch. However, none of them cut it, for me.

As mentioned, BeyondPod, Doggcatcher, Podkicker Pro, and Pocket Caster are not doing it for me.

(Google Listen – if it still exists- is utterly and entirely out of the question because of my deep and possibly pointless/ignorant hatred of Google.)

Can someone suggest an app, or explain to me how to configure the apps I have, so that I get what I want?

The process request
What I want is, this happens when I go to the app
There is a list of podcasts I deliberately subscribed to
If I select one of the subscription podcasts, it works like this
I see a list of podcast that I have deliberately downloaded.
Those podcasts show progress, if any.
There are no automatically downloaded podcasts, not effing ever. Never ever ever.
(Seriously, why is this so hard to understand?)
I can delete podcasts at will (not mark as not steamed, effing delete)
I can go to the podcasts site and choose to download from the available podcasts.
(Nice, but not necessary if the app knows which have already been downloaded.)

Example request
Say, for instance, I decide to subscribe to Triple-A S podcast. I am way too stoopid to understand most of the content – I only want to hear stuff about crazy psychological/neuroscientist experiments or weird animals. An app that automatically sucks in every single podcast of the last X months is just going to make me feel extra dumb.
Additionally, perhaps I listened to some of the podcasts of interest on my computer at work – no reason to clutter up my playlist with those.

Also, I should never, eve, have to connect to Google to use this app. Gah.

Help help help. Why is this so hard? What am I missing? (Either in finding apps or configuring the ones I have.)

(For those of you who prefer podcast players that automatically download new podcasts all by themselves and never ever delete anything, you might be happy with Pocket Caster. The Shifty Jelly people are wonderful quick and entertaining, although not up entirely able to provide useful (to me) solutions.)

posted by Lesser Shrew to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I use mypod and I think it can do all these things. When you create a podcast entry you can choose under what circumstances it gets downloaded (it expects you to want to do it on a schedule but you can choose "never"). It actually deletes stuff (I use "delete all" a lot which has 3 options: really delete all, delete anything listened to over 90%, or delete anything listened to at all).

There's a free version that lets you use up to 3 or 4 podcast sources. You buy an unlock key to get the full version, it's a few bucks)

No google connection for mypod or anything like that.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:03 PM on July 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Except for the last point, BeyondPod Pro seems to work for me in pretty much the way you describe - I have a few niggles with it, but overall it's been great for me.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:16 PM on July 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: BeyondPod does everything you noted. I have mine set to download manually only. You want to set that feature and also have it applied to all subscribed podcasts.
posted by slavlin at 8:42 PM on July 14, 2013

Response by poster: Looks like I need to spend more time with Beyond Pod's manual and look into MyPod.

Thanks!
posted by Lesser Shrew at 5:07 AM on July 15, 2013

I think I can do all that with Doggcatcher. I know you can turn off auto downloads because I have done so. It also shows you which podcasts are on your device and which have not been downloaded. You can scroll through the list and pick and choose which podcasts to download. You can delete the media from your phone at at will.
posted by COD at 5:52 AM on July 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I may review Doggcatcher. It was my first choice and I spent quite a bit of time without being abke to reliably configure. Tried it again a month ago and didn't see any changes. But maybe I'm missing something.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 8:01 AM on July 15, 2013

Is there a specific thing you found lacking in Pocket Casts? That's the one I use and I can find everything you've mentioned.

The only one that seems odd is the auto download. I can only find that setting in the playlists, and I have one playlist that includes all my podcasts, and it's in that list I see the 'auto download' setting.
posted by nerhael at 8:20 AM on July 15, 2013

Just for future readers, but Google Listen is dead because it relies on Google Reader which is now dead.

I'll nth that Doggcatcher can likely be configured to do what you want.
posted by mmascolino at 2:19 PM on July 15, 2013

You can also set Doggcatcher's Auto download's to 0, and to auto delete things that you've listened to.
posted by garlic at 8:34 AM on July 17, 2013

Response by poster: BeyondPod is what I went with. As a tool, MyPod seems to fit my needs process-wise. Unfortunately, some of my feeds show up as page source which is a lot of trouble to download from.

Been way out of service quite a bit in the past few days and BeyondPod has been terrific.

Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful answers!
posted by Lesser Shrew at 7:30 PM on July 20, 2013