iPX

A podcatcher for the whole household, running on your own server.

It checks your feeds, downloads new episodes, and gives everyone at home a list of their own to listen from in the browser, all sharing one copy of each file.

Browse the directory

99% Invisible
Hackaday
Clarkesworld
Accidental Tech Podcast
Daring Fireball
Ologies
Oxide and Friends
xkcd
The Sporkful
Acquired
Construction Physics
Dwarkesh Podcast

Some of what people listen to and read on iPX servers today.

In the browser

Everyone signs in to a list of their own: feeds down the side, episodes in a table with each one's notes below, and the player along the bottom, as iPodderX laid them out.

iPX in a desktop browser: the feed list down the side, 99% Invisible's episodes in a table, the newest one's notes below it, and the player along the bottom.

iPX on a phone: Ologies with Alie Ward and its latest episodes.

On your phone

Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app, with the same lists and the same place in each episode as on your computer.

What it does

Everyone gets their own list: Each person subscribes, reads and listens at their own pace, and picks up where they left off on any device. However many of you want an episode, there is one copy on disk.
It does the fetching: Feeds are checked on a schedule and new episodes download on their own, filtered by keyword, media type or explicit content. Old files are cleared to stay within the disk space you give it, never one somebody pinned.
BitTorrent too: A show published as a torrent downloads like any other. iPX joins the swarm, seeds back until the ratio or time you set, and gives up on one that stalls. A slow swarm never holds up the rest.
Subscribe to a whole list: Give iPX the address of an OPML list and it keeps a folder in step with it, as whoever keeps the list adds and drops shows. Your own subscriptions import and export as OPML too.
DeadAir: Turn it on for a show and iPX plays it without its long silences, leaving the pause you choose. The original file stays as it is.
A shared directory: iPX servers can share the public shows their people follow. Browse it to find something new, and subscribe in one click from your own server.
Sign in your way: Each person signs in with a password, or Cloudflare Access or Authentik signs them in for you. An admin adds people and decides who else is one.
Blogs too: Any RSS or Atom feed works, so the blogs you read sit beside the shows you listen to, each with its own read and unread.

Since 2004

iPodderX was one of the first podcatchers, a Mac app by Ray Slakinski and August Trometer, from the year podcasts got their name. iPX is its engine rewritten in Rust for a server, with a page modelled on the original window: the feed list down the side, the episodes in a table, the player along the bottom.