Even though Pocket Casts is already very well-liked, its user base will grow now that it is open source.
The Android and iOS apps from Pocket Casts have recently become open source. When the podcast player app first appeared in 2010, it cost $3.99 as a premium offering. After NPR purchased the rights to Pocket Casts in 2018, the firm launched Pocket Casts Plus, a premium monthly membership service, and made the podcast applications free.
After thereafter, the story continued when Automattic bought Pocket Casts in 2021. Given that the company’s other products, Simple Note and WordPress, are open source as well, the open sourcing of the mobile apps is not surprising. In a blog post announcing the move, Automattic stated that it did not want Apple and Spotify to have control over podcasting. The company cited the desire to enable a varied ecosystem of outside users as justification for releasing the programmes open source. It’s encouraging to see someone take on the power brokers head-on.
Each version has its own repository on GitHub, where the source code for the Pocket Casts mobile apps for iOS and Android has been made available. The business decided to release the apps as open source under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 2.0). In advance of the announcement, several bugs and pull requests were submitted, and now users and developers can contribute to the projects by suggesting new features and bug fixes to improve the app.
You can get Pocket Casts from the iOS App Store or Google Play Store if you don’t already have the app on your phone. The Android app’s repository provides a download link for an APK, thus F-droid users may also get access to it. Since the source code has been made available, it is extremely likely that other programmers will fork Pocket Casts to produce their own version of the application and enhance its interface and capabilities.
According to Automattic, Pocket Casts Plus, its premium membership service, will remain supported. 10GB of additional cloud storage, themes, folders for organising your podcasts, desktop apps for Windows and Mac, and Apple Watch playback are among the new features available. The monthly premium plans start at $0.99, while a yearly subscription is $9.99. (before taxes). You can just disregard it and continue using the mobile versions for free because this add-on is entirely optional.
The layout is simple, there are no advertising, and you can download episodes to listen to them later. There is no excuse not to give it a shot. To subscribe, listen to, or download podcast episodes using Pocket Casts, you do not need to register. The benefits of creating an account include the assurance that you won’t lose your data, such as subscriptions, watched episodes, etc. Additionally, it synchronises the content between devices so you can immediately resume where you left off. To add a feed to your list if you subscribe to podcasts using RSS feeds, enter the feed’s URL here and choose whether to make it public or private.
