Ask HN: Why is it so hard to download podcasts?

1. hpodder

   1 1 53 10.0 Haskell

   Podcatcher to download podcasts [Haskell] (unmaintained)

   

   Many people have given their "why," but I'll give another "how".

   castget¹ is a simple tool that does exactly what you want, just add a feed URL and it pulls all the episodes. It has a nice catchup mode so you can add feeds that you've listened to elsewhere without pulling all the old episodes too. hpodder² is another tool I've used in the past, but I can't remember why I switched.

   Depending on how much you like cobbling together your own solution html-xml-utils³ makes it incredibly easy to script a solution. For example, "curl feed | hxselect -c -s '\n' 'enclosure::attr(url)'" would list just the URLs. feedparser⁴ is a battle tested solution for processing feeds if you'd prefer a proper solution over a hacky shell script.

   ¹ https://castget.johndal.com/

   ² https://github.com/jgoerzen/hpodder/

   ³ https://www.w3.org/Tools/HTML-XML-utils/

   ⁴ https://github.com/kurtmckee/feedparser

2. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com sponsored

   SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

   

3. castget

   2 3 111 3.0 C

   A simple, command-line based RSS enclosure downloader, primarily intended for automatic, unattended downloading of podcasts.

   

   Many people have given their "why," but I'll give another "how".

   castget¹ is a simple tool that does exactly what you want, just add a feed URL and it pulls all the episodes. It has a nice catchup mode so you can add feeds that you've listened to elsewhere without pulling all the old episodes too. hpodder² is another tool I've used in the past, but I can't remember why I switched.

   Depending on how much you like cobbling together your own solution html-xml-utils³ makes it incredibly easy to script a solution. For example, "curl feed | hxselect -c -s '\n' 'enclosure::attr(url)'" would list just the URLs. feedparser⁴ is a battle tested solution for processing feeds if you'd prefer a proper solution over a hacky shell script.

   ¹ https://castget.johndal.com/

   ² https://github.com/jgoerzen/hpodder/

   ³ https://www.w3.org/Tools/HTML-XML-utils/

   ⁴ https://github.com/kurtmckee/feedparser

4. python-scripts

   3 2 0 6.0 Python

   Misc Python scripts and modules I have made (by EricRa)

   

   Despite there being many good solutions and suggestions from people here, I ended up creating my own podcast downloader as a learning experience:

   https://github.com/EricRa/python-scripts/tree/main/modules/p...

   Appreciate everyone's suggestions and time!

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