This article is for those users who want the best podcast app for their Linux system. You might be lost in finding the best one, as there are thousands of Linux podcast software available on the market. Installing and checking all these will be time-consuming, tiresome, and obviously not resource-friendly. So, to overcome this situation, I will share a generic list of the best Podcast apps for Linux enthusiasts.
Best Podcast Apps for Linux System
Podcasting content has rapidly become a mainstream form of news, entertainment, and knowledge-sharing concept. A lot of major content creators now use this form of content creation for a wide range of audiences.
Many podcast apps are available outside the box, and moreover, there are some of the best RSS feed readers available that can also extract and play podcast content out of the box.
In this quick article, I will try to review a generic list of the 20 Best Podcast Apps for Linux particularly. This list doesn’t follow any specific order, and all the features are not exclusive here.
1. CPod
CPod (formerly known as Cumulonimbus) is a free, open source, and cross-platform podcast player for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. CPod is built on top of web technology, written in JavaScript, and uses the Electron framework. It’s easy to install a .deb file that is available for Debian/Ubuntu systems. Moreover, It offers “AppImage and Snap package” for installation on any Linux distros.
2. Vocal
Vocal is a beautifully crafted podcatcher app that comes pre-packed in Elementary OS, another of the best-looking Linux Distros. It offers lots of features out of the box, including full audio and video support, streaming and downloading podcasts, saving and custom skip intervals, smart podcast management, etc.
Install:
Ensure you follow the instructions on installing flatpak apps in Linux before installing them.
flatpak install flathub com.github.needleandthread.vocal
Run:
flatpak run com.github.needleandthread.vocal
3. gPodder
gPodder is another of the best news aggregators and podcatchers for Linux, Windows, and MacOS. It’s a simple but powerful and open source podcast software. This dedicated cross-platform podcast app is written in Python using GTK+.
4. VLC Media Player
Are you looking for the Best Podcast Player? You can go with the VLC Media Player. VLC is one of the Top Podcast Apps. It’s a free, open-source streaming media player and server, as well as a Cross-Platform Podcast App.
With VLC, you can stream unencrypted and live videos to your monitor. It also allows you to stream and record your desktop and save it. VLC comes with basic support for podcast management and is an amazing multimedia player.
5. Clementine
Clementine is another Best Free Podcast App available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It’s a wonderful open-source audio player and podcast software. It doesn’t provide video podcast support. Clementine can search and download new podcasts automatically. It can update or refresh all podcasts and even delete the ones that are played after a fixed period of time.
With Clementine Podcast Software, you can create and customize dynamic and smart playlists of your favorite music. It will also help you to keep track of the podcasts by marking every single piece of them. You can keep Clementine in your Best Podcast App list.
6. Cantata
Cantata is also a Best Podcast App, quite similar to Clementine. In addition to podcasts, it offers other online music resources like SoundCloud, Magnatune, Jamendo, and even Streams. Cantata, as the Best Free Podcast App, offers some fantastic features, including a flexible interface, dynamic playlists, informative notes, tag editing, ReplayGain, and snappiness.
Cantata can run and process very quickly to collect and provide important information to users. It has an info window that shows the artist, album, and tracks with a scrolling tree view. But you’ll need MPD to use Cantata, as it’s the front end of MPD.
Install Cantata via Unofficial PPA
Open the Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) or from the app drawer. First, run the below command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/cantata-qt sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cantata mpd
7. Guayadeque
Guayadeque is an open-source and free audio player, as well as Linux podcast software. It’s one of the lightweight Top Podcast Apps with a lot of amazing features. This podcast software comes with both dynamic and static playlists along with the “smart play” mode. It has support for tagging and labeling, crossfading, the last FM scrobbling, and even radio streaming recording.
Guayadeque can download new episodes and lyrics automatically and can keep old episodes instead of deleting them according to your choice. It can find similar songs, automatically create a playlist, and continuously play them.
8. Spotify
Among the Top Podcast Apps, Spotify is also a good Choice. Spotify is one of the most popular streaming services in the world, and it can also be the Best Podcast App for you. The free version of Spotify comes with a few audio adverts. If you want to enjoy the add-free full service, you have to pay $9.99 per month. Spotify is reliable and easy to use.
9. Rhythmbox
Another Best Podcast App is Rhythmbox. It’s an open-source and free audio player. Rhythmbox was primarily designed for the Gnome desktop environment, but it can work on other desktop environments as well. Its podcast section provides the available episodes in the library. This Podcast Software downloads the new podcasts automatically from the library.
Rhythmbox can be your Best Podcast Player. It comes with a bunch of fantastic features, including gapless music playback, audio CD burning, music importing, audio scrobbling, song lyrics and album cover display, Jamendo support, SoundCloud, web remote control, DAAP music sharing, and so on.
10. Winds
Winds is another open-source Best Free Podcast Software and an RSS Reader for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. It’s also available on the web. “Winds” comes with an instinctive UI, so you can enjoy the podcasts and follow the websites you like. This Best Podcast App provides you with a clutter-free interface and a clean and minimal home screen. It’s entirely free.
Install “Winds” in Ubuntu Linux
You can install it using the Ubuntu Snap package. Run the below command:
sudo snap install winds
11. Liferea (Linux Feed Reader)
The list of the Best Podcast Apps also contains Liferea. Liferea is not an actual music player. It’s basically a Linux Podcast Software and feed reader. This is actually short for Linux Feed Reader. Liferea provides you with some pre-installed podcasts and feeds along with its first installation. It can support feed formats like OCS, Atom, CDF, RSS/RDF, OPML, and more.
Liferea supports importing and exporting OPML-format subscription lists. It’s fast and easy to install and use. Users can easily read weblog comments or linked articles using an embedded browser like Mozilla Firefox.
Install Liferea in Ubuntu Linux
In this tutorial, I will show you two ways to install Liferea on Ubuntu Linux, including the installation of a third-party PPA repository. To install the repository on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or other Ubuntu derivatives, run the command below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install liferea
If you are not comfortable with the Terminal command, then download the source code and install it in Linux, FreeBSD, and Cygwin.
12. Amarok
Amarok is an open-source, free, cross-platform podcast app and music player. It’s one of the Top Podcast Apps that comes with a whole bunch of interesting features, including podcasting. This Podcast software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In Amarok, there are 45 plus language translations available as a contribution to the community.
You can create dynamic playlists on it. Amarok supports a vast number of file formats, including MP3, WAV, FLAC, Windows Media Audio, AAC, TTA, Ogg, WavPack, Musepack, Opus, Apple Lossless, and many more. It provides tagging, sorting, and renaming of the files. You can mark the tracks when you leave the app. It always keeps track of all the files.
13. XiX Music Player
You can also use Xix Music Player as the Best Free Podcast App available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Linux ARM. This Podcast Software provides you with a bunch of fine features. There is an equalizer, batch-renaming, tagging, recording online radio playback, and audio CD ripping. Xix Music Player comes with an easy way to add and remove podcast subscriptions.
It’s an open-source music player with multiple performances. This Best Podcast App can support many file formats, such as WAV, FLAC, DFF, APE, MP3, M4A, OPUS, AAC, and OGG. It creates playlists and plays them. You can repeat, shuffle, or reverse the music.
14. Icepodder
You can add Icepodder to the Best Podcast App group as a podcast aggregator. It’s available for OS X and Windows. You can download music on your computer or copy it to a digital audio player using Juice. It supports files with mp3 and Ogg formats. Icepodder can be the Best Free Podcast App for you. It allows download scheduling and also notifies the arrival of new episodes.
15. Miro
Miro is another Podcatcher in the Best Podcast Player list. It’s basically an audio, video player, and internet television. It’s available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, and MacOS. It can support almost every well-known and most-used file format, such as MPEG, QuickTime, XVID, Windows Media Video (WMV), Audio Video Interleave, etc.
Miro downloads videos automatically from RSS-based channels. It’s very easy to manage and play audio or video files with Miro. It can be your Best Podcast App.
Command-Line Tools for Podcasts
Here are some of the best command-line tools for podcasting on Linux.
16. Podfox
There is another software for the Best Podcast App list. You can use Podfox as the Best Free Podcast App. Podfox is a command-line application for podcasts. It’s basically a Python script that can assist you in downloading and updating podcast episodes you like. With this command-line-based podcast software, you can customize the podcasts’ names and update them either altogether or one by one.
To use Podfox, you should remember the required commands for every step. It’s not that difficult. Podfox shows all available podcast episodes with a list but can’t check for the updates automatically. You have to do it manually.
17. Greg
Greg is another Best Podcast App for you. It’s also a command-line-based podcatcher. There is no need to worry about the commands. The commands are straightforward and simple. Via this Podcast Software, you can subscribe to podcasts, make lists of recently available episodes, and download them. You can download both audio and video files with Greg.
Greg allows you to delete old episodes manually. It can also keep track of your podcast episodes by automatically tagging them. Even if you’re a beginner, Greg will be very easy to download, install, and use.
18. Mashpodder
Mashpodder is also a podcatcher that you can include in the Best Podcast App list. You can download podcast episodes using this podcatcher. There are options for the users to download a set number of none or all of the podcast episodes. You can mark the downloaded episodes. Mashpodder gives you two directory options to save the downloaded files: name and date.
19. Podbeuter and Newsbeuter
Newsbeuter and Podbeuter can also fit in your Best Podcast App list. Newsbeuter is basically a text-based news aggregator that runs on a Unix-type system. It’s also a podcatcher. Meanwhile, Podbeuter is an integrated podcast downloader tool of Newsbeuter. Newsbeuter shows you the notes and episode titles. Podbeuter lets you download and manage those episodes.
20. Podcatcher
Despite being a command-line app, Podcatcher can be the Best Podcast App for you. It can create playlists from the podcast episodes in your podcast list. It allows you to download a huge number of episodes. If there isn’t enough space for your download, it will delete the old episodes and manage the required space for the new ones.
Podcatcher provides you with options for downloading both audio and video podcasts. There are also different options for downloading. You can pick as you wish. There is no need to type the same commands again and again. This Podcast Software reads options from a file.
Finally, Insights!
It’s true that nowadays, people are hearing podcast content from their smartphones. Still, as Linux is a vast area of interest for many, I hope the above list of the best podcast apps will help you get your desired podcast content in the Linux system.
Each Linux Podcast Software has its advantages and disadvantages over others. Try to install some and check whether it meets your requirements or not.
Is this list of Top Podcast Apps helpful? If so, please share this content on your personal and professional social media. This small step will encourage us to write more engaging content for you. Don’t forget to share your suggestions and experiences in the comments below.
