Realizing that all you need is listen to RSS feeds and play audio files, I made a static html/js page that manages your podcast subscriptions and episodes.

I leveraged browser and OS capabilities as much as possible, the actual playback is not done in this site, nor does it track any status -- this is all done automatically and better by the browser or OS.

The brunt is vibed in a handful of prompts on DuckAI, driving back home from holiday (in the passanger seat). Now I spent as much time fiddeling with the background colors as I did making the whole thing, I deemed it time to publish.

Features:

  - subscribe to podcasts with links to their rss
  - export subscriptions to (or mass subscribe from) a comma separated list
  - refresh episodes by refreshing the page
  - read episode and podcast descriptions by clicking on their row
  - click to play or download audio, your browser will handle it
  - keep track of listen status with blue-vistited-links

Implementation:

  - HTML for structuring the information
  - javascript for subscribing to feeds and fetching the episodes
  - LocalStorage for persistence between sessions

Sourcecode: https://pastebin.com/4a86NAsd

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/2utv5av

Example podcasts comma separated list:

  https://anchor.fm/s/21c734c4/podcast/rss, https://podcast.npo.nl/feed/europa-draait-door.xml, https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2040953.rss, https://feeds.megaphone.fm/QCD6036500916, https://wakingup.libsyn.com/rss, https://www.omnycontent.com/d/playlist/df1c5e88-ffb1-4b44-b1ba-b1800112647a/22932043-46bd-4892-b94a-b22500dd01f5/176148f4-6026-442a-bd70-b22500dd04db/podcast.rss, https://feed.podbean.com/foreignaffairsmagazine/feed.xml