Can you elaborate on what the benefits would be?
Is it basically so that the list of podcasts doesn't "randomly" reorder itself based on how much new episodes are available?
Or is it something you would want to use in the list of queued episodes?

I'm not saying I'm a huge fan of how the list of podcasts is working currently, but I'm slightly concerned that the change you're suggesting would make this much more complex for the rest of the users that don't necessarily need this. Please elaborate on what end result you are trying to accomplish.

Not only so that they aren't randomly reordered, but also so that the user knows where to look for the specific kind of podcast they want to listen to at the moment.

Say I have a lot of technology related podcasts, a lot of comedy related podcasts, and a few miscellaneous podcasts. Instead of having to scroll through a handfull of screenheights of podcasts, looking for the one I want to listen to, I should be able to create a technology group, a comedy group, and a misc group (probably sorted alphabetically), and thus have a much smaller area (a single group as opposed to all podcasts) to look through when looking for a podcast.

A bonus feature would be to have these groups be foldable, so that I can only see the names of the groups when folded and can simply click the one with the desired content to unfold it and be able to see its podcasts.

Here's an example of how a similar feature works in another app:

This might be something that could be integrated in the subscription view (#1826) via tabs.
(Which, of course, will lead to people wanting to rename, order and do all other kinds of things with those categories...)

Theres is also currently an option which previous posters in this issue might find useful: order the podcast list alphabetically. Much better than sorting by new episodes in my opinion.

If folders are too hard or deemed unnecessary, I vote for @MolarAmbiguity's suggestion.

@ahstro: the feature is already in Antennapod. I wasn't clear enough before, sorry.

You can enable it by doing settings > User Interface > Customise Navigation Drawer > Set Subscription Order > Sort Alphabeticaly.

Oh, fantastic! Thank you :)

I like the screen shot at #1711 (comment) and if this feature were available I'd probably make a "Favorites" group so that my favorite podcasts appeared at the top of the list.

I found this issue by searching for "order" and what I'd really like is a fourth option under "Set Subscription Order" that lets me pick the order:

1. Sort by counter (existing)
2. Sort alphabetically (existing)
3. Sort by publication date (existing)
4. Sort based on an arbitrary order I pick (new!)

Please let me know if I should open an issue for this as a new feature request. 😄 Keep up the good work!

@e2jk this is agreat idea, something like inoreader would be perfect

I'm a bit partial to BeyondPod's "Smart Playlists" where users can build rules for a playlist and have multiple playlists to choose from. Each entry in a playlist is either "all" (podcast feeds), a specific defined category (which will include podcast feeds in that category), or a specific podcast feed. You then get to choose how many podcast episodes will be included and lastly the order in which they will appear (sort).

The smart playlist is refreshed each time it is opened or manually (depends on settings), and it uses the rules to rebuild the playlist with non-played episodes. There is an option to keep the current episode being played when the list is regenerated, so if you trigger a rebuild while listening to a episode it will let you finish before taking you to the first episode in the newly built episode list.

So if I have a backlog of episodes to listen to from a variety of feeds (and I do) I can define my main "smart playlist" as playing the top 5 news podcasts episodes sorted from oldest to newest, then the top 5 Fresh Air episodes sorted from oldest to newest, then top 5 This American Life episodes sorted by name ascending. I could then define another smart playlist to play all Mike Row The Way I Heard It episodes in order from oldest to newest.

Desired sorting options: Name (ascending A-Z), Name (descending Z-A), Newest First, Oldest first, Play time remaining (descending), Play time remaining (descending), and Random

I'm considering a move away from BeyondPod for a couple reasons but so far I haven't found anything as easy for me to use as the smart playlist feature as I've tried to describe it here. I will miss it.

I'm still interested in specifying the order of the podcast feeds.

For now I've resorted to renaming all of my podcast feeds with numbers prepended like this:

• 010 My Favorite Podcast
• 020 This One is Also Quite Good
• 030 Not a Bad Podcast
• etc.

Obviously, this is cumbersome but I haven't found a better way to keep podcasts ordered the way I want. I'm using version 1.6.4.1. If anyone has any suggestions for me, please let me know. Thanks.

For m'y usage it miss me a lot ;) I would nees to classify podcast by language and/or theme and/or from who it was recommanded.
Regards.

Been meaning to chip in on this one: I can understand the use-cases described here (group/categories) and #851(tag support), but I feel like my use-case is considerably simpler than that.

For me my subscriptions fall into two categories: the ones I listen to all the time, and the ones I never/very occasionally listen to. :)

The issue I then have is I keep scrolling up and down from A to T and back to J when looking for those favorites.

What would really help me would be to isolates just these favourites. Without meaning to suggest a particular implementation, I think the way Slack does it with « Starred channels » could be good inspiration − it would certainly work for me :)

(happy to open another issue for that if preferable)

For me there my subscriptions fall into two categories: the ones I listen to all the time, and the ones I never/very occasionally listen to. :)

A thousand times yes. I'm the same way. For some podcasts I listen to every other episode without fail. For other podcasts, I read the description and then tap "Mark all as seen" at the podcast level (if it's possible to mark an episode as seen individually, I haven't found it). That makes the podcast that I don't want to listen to go away by moving way down the list somewhere. These days I have "Set Subscription Order" set to "Sort my counter" and I've abandoned the crazy "rename podcasts as 010 My Favorite Podcast" that I described in an earlier comment.

With my current setup, I do a lot of "Mark all as seen" for podcasts that I'm selective on which episodes I listen to, especially the ones that release episodes quite frequently, such as daily. Again, marking them as read makes them go away. I suppose I could simply unsubscribe from these frequently updating but infrequently listened to podcasts, but sometimes there's good stuff in there so I stay subscribed. I wonder if I want the opposite of a "Favorites" feature, an "Unfavorites feature" where I can hide these podcasts that update so frequently and always end up at the top because they update so often.

Yes it can work like that for me too. A simple star simply actionnable on the page of the podcast should be easy to select/unselect.

If it's possible to mark an episode as seen individually, I haven't found it (@pdurbin)

This is only possible from the 'Episodes' screen, 'New' tab (though all episodes are displayed together. You'd have manually seek for the podcast episodes you'd want to remove the label from and 'swipe' them from the list.

I suppose I could simply unsubscribe from these frequently updating but infrequently listened to podcasts, but sometimes there's good stuff in there so I stay subscribed

Are you aware of the option to be subscribed to a podcast, but not have a) its feed automatically updated and/or b) not have its episodes automatically downloaded (if you have enabled automatic download in the general settings. These feed-specific settings are available from the feed settings (go to a podcast and tap on the ℹ right from the feed title).

happy to open another issue for that if preferable (@JeanFred)

That would indeed be a different function/solution. I would personally create a separate ticket.

The way I'd most likely use multiple/custom queues would be similar to playlists, e.g.:

• Comedy - The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Superego
• Interview/Talk - Dork Forest, Fresh Air, The Nerdist, WTF with Marc Maron
• Education/News - Radiolab, Stuff You Missed in History Class, TED Radio Hour
• Story - This American Life, Criminal, The Moth

From there, I think I'd be good with the Smart Shuffle within each queue.

@keunes thanks! I didn't know about swiping to mark as read. Also, I'm aware that I can prevent a feed from updating automatically but thanks for asking.

@mr-intj that's a nice example of putting podcasts into categories.

NewPipe has nice looking solution for this TeamNewPipe/NewPipe#2309

Indeed. Love that UI

hi, I will like to have this feature, I really need a different groups for podcasts for child and for news, for science, history etc.
can I help codding that? (need a guidance)

Hi @schapira, it would be great if you could help with that. I have to warn you that this is probably not an easy task and will take a lot of work. I might be able to help with specific questions but I can not help with questions like "where should I start" (because I do not know every part of the code by heart and would need to research this myself, too).

If you want to start with something more simple, you can try the issues tagged with "good first issue": https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/labels/good%20first%20issue Make sure that noone else is already working on it (if you look at the bottom of the issue and there are lines like "referenced from commit" or "referenced from pull request", someone is probably already working on it).

This would be so nice.
I'd need folders for different languages (I listen podcasts in 3 languages), for the ones I plan on give a try later but have yet to listen, for the finished ones (why keep them? Well... I like to remember them and re-listen something from time to time)... and I'm sure more ideas would come.

In general, we are used to feed aggregators to let us categorize feeds, it's such an important feature.

Thanks!

This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.antennapod.org/t/normalization/337/5

Some general feedback requested by @ByteHamster.

What I want is different queues for different listening contexts. I don't mind if it the categorization is done by folders or tags, as long as I can get different queues out of it. @chicocaramelo describes the use-case well:

The main use for this function (like folders in general) is to put appart different genders or formats, like "short news podcasts" or "comedy" or "listen to in the morning" or "storytelling" and so on.

EDIT. Personally I only want two categories, which might be called "morning" and "evening". Others may want more. As it stands, every morning I need to skim visually down the queue to find the first episode belonging to a subscription in my imaginary "morning" list. Not a huge pain point, but it would be nice to offload this task to the app.

Keep up the great work.

What I want is different queues for different listening contexts.

@Friptick Multiple queues are not the goal of this issue - that is covered in #2648. This issue here is about managing and organizing the list of subscriptions, not playback of episodes.

not needing a unassigned folder, unassigned podcasts would be just there, kind of a root folder

@chicocaramelo That's how I imagined the feature, too. Though, we could add an additional tag (called something like #root) for cases where someone wants a subscription to appear in both root folder and a group.

We now have 3 different proposals for click actions for a tag. I can see the use-case of all of them but for usability (and big fingers), I would prefer to only add one single action to the side bar (but could live with 2).

1. @chicocaramelo Than I could click on a > like icon and it would expand, showing podcasts within.
2. @chicocaramelo Also, clicking on the folder would show a episodes screen for that folder
3. @Matth7878 To allow tapping any group/folder directly in the list and to show a subscriptions screen with only podcasts belonging to that folder

My proposal would be to do action 1) when clicking tags in the side bar, do action 3) when clicking tags on the subscriptions screen and keep action 2) for later as a filter on the "episodes" screen.

I am pretty much settled on using tags now, not folders. The reason is that having folder specific settings adds a lot of additional complexity (need for neutral/global settings state etc). If settings are always applied to the individual subscriptions (eg with multi-select within a folder/tag), tags are a more flexible tool for organizing.

Thanks to those who shared their ideas :) Putting together the comments with my own ideas, I came to the following mock-ups.

From left to right (top to bottom):

• main menu, first tag unfolded (following tags invisible until scrolling down)
  • the tag icon+title area make the tag unfold/collapse
  • the queue icon will be fore tag-specific queues (until that's implemented should be RSS icon for option 2: episodes screen for the tag)
  • the blue line helps to visually bind together the podcasts (but can be replaced by something else to visualise the podcasts together, if this is too much)
  • notice that there is no option 3: show 'Subscriptions' screen for a specific tag, because the related podcasts are visible & available directly from the main menu as well as quickly accessible using the tag filter in the Subscriptions screen
  • notice that 'Politico's EU Confidential' has two tags, and thus would count to the totals of both tags
• main menu, first tag collapsed, two following tags unfolded (notice the count is only visible when collapsed)
• subscriptions screen, with new 'tags' button (I personally think the 'refresh' button could be removed or moved to the overflow menu, now that pull to refresh is available)

From left to right (top to bottom): subscriptions screen with

• the tag selection dialog (tapping on a chip directly applies/changes the tag filter)
• only specific tag applied (notice the 'tag' button changed in a 'remove tag' button)
• specific tag and other filters applied (meaning we would need three strings for the info text)

Multiple queues are not the goal of this issue - that is covered in #2648. This issue here is about managing and organizing the list of subscriptions, not playback of episodes.

Honestly I suspect a very big group of people chipping in with comments and upvoting this issue have this issue in mind. But either way we will need to account for that use-case in the design/UX we settle on now.
So I would propose this as 'option 4': Tapping on the tag opens the queue for that tag.

From the sidebar I would expect option 1: expand list (by tapping on icon or tag name), and later on option 4: open tag-specific queue (by tapping the queue icon). For now, without option 4, I would use option 2: episodes screen for this tag (by tapping on the icon, which would have to be the RSS symbol, in line with the Episodes menu entry).

Option 3: filtered subscriptions screen I don't think is really necessary

not needing a unassigned folder, unassigned podcasts would be just there, kind of a root folder

That's how I imagined the feature, too. Though, we could add an additional tag (called something like #root) for cases where someone wants a subscription to appear in both root folder and a group.

I think that as soon as people add a tag it should disappear from the general ('root') list. But I like the option of a root tag. We'd need to figure out the UX for this - we should avoid adding a visible 'root' tag to all podcasts (when users start adding tags) while making sure this option is discoverable. But that's for later I guess.

Does the counter of tags equal the total sum of its contents?

What do you mean with the 'counter of tags'? Are you referring to a number that could be displayed in the menu next to the tag/folder name?

Yes, I mean the number that is displayed in the sidebar. Additionally, I mean the small triangle that is displayed on the subscriptions screen.

The number of the tag IMHO should simply be the sum of the number (that is currently already displayed for each podcast) for all podcasts with this tag. So total of all tags ≠ number next to 'Subscriptions'. I would only display this when the tag is collapsed. (see mock-ups above)

PS

• Please shoot at these mock-ups - I made them (also) to facilitate discussion
• I hope the coming weekend I can add some mock-ups showing the way to add/apply tags to podcasts (and how it could look on the podcast screen)
• I think batch-editing of podcasts (Introduce multi-select/batch-edit for podcasts #4681) should be added first, as it would probably be the easiest method to add tags to podcasts

Great work @keunes! And some interesting podcast recommendations as a bonus, thanks! Sorry not to have any more specific feedback, it genuinely looks great.

Multiple queues are not the goal of this issue - that is covered in #2648. This issue here is about managing and organizing the list of subscriptions, not playback of episodes.

Honestly I suspect a very big group of people chipping in with comments and upvoting this issue have this issue in mind. But either way we will need to account for that use-case in the design/UX we settle on now.

Yes. Frankly I am not seeing why a user would want to spend time gardening lists of subscriptions if not for the queue UX. For me a podcast app is the queue. I hardly ever look elsewhere. But possible I am missing something.

Anyway, well done and thanks again.

Nice mock-ups @keunes! They really help to continue the discussion.

the blue line helps to visually bind together the podcasts (but can be replaced by something else to visualise the podcasts together, if this is too much)

I think it is a bit too much but I currently don't know a way to make it better

the queue icon will be fore tag-specific queues (until that's implemented should be RSS icon for option 2: episodes screen for the tag)

I do not understand what a tag-specific queue even is, to be honest. Is it the normal queue, but filtered by tag? If so, how does sorting a filtered queue influence the unfiltered queue? Is a tag-specific queue a completely separate thing? If so, how do you add episodes to that one? Are downloads always added to/removed from all queues at once if you have multiple tags? I think that needs a whole discussion on its own, which I would rather continue in #2648 to keep the discussion here easier to follow.

the tag selection dialog

How about displaying the tags directly above the subscriptions list? Clicking could then filter (with a nice animation) in place. That makes it faster to switch and (at least in my opinion) easier to discover. Also, it does not change anything about the UI when no tags are created.

I think that as soon as people add a tag it should disappear from the general ('root') list. But I like the option of a root tag. We'd need to figure out the UX for this - we should avoid adding a visible 'root' tag to all podcasts (when users start adding tags) while making sure this option is discoverable.

👍 Any ideas how to do that?

How about displaying the tags directly above the subscriptions list?

Good idea. Like this, with horizontal scrolling?

When scrolling vertically (e.g. when all podcasts are visible), the tag filter bar could hide & show depending on the direction of scrolling, like in Gmail:
(initial state | scrolling up: bar disappears | scrolling down: bar shows again)

The state of the chip could change like in this example, without too fancy effects.

Related questions:

• A tap on one of the chips, does it change the tag (A off, B on) or does it change the status of that specific tag (if you have A on, tap on B, both A & B are on)? My thought: selecting multiple tags at the same time occurs less often then changing the selected tag - so a single tap would change the tag. Multiple tags could be selected with a long-press.
• I added a 'clear tag filter' button, but do we really need it?
• Should we show the 'filtered' message above or below the tag bar?
• How could we allow users to change tag names? Do we need an 'Edit tags' option in the app settings? (Which would open a dialog where all tags are listed, with edit & delete buttons and an 'add' button?

I do not understand what a tag-specific queue even is, to be honest

I was thinking just like a regular queue, but only sourcing from relevant podcasts. So in effective they're different queues, because they all have the same total amount of episodes as the main queue (according to the app settings). I.e. it's not a filtered version of the main queue.

But, thinking about it, this means several queues need to be implemented. Quite a bit of development work, while not offering the full flexibility of custom queues (e.g. with the rule-based options as requested by @mhellwig in #2648). So maybe queues should be decoupled from the tags after all. When implementing extra/custom queues, it should be made easy to select a tag as a sourcing criterium, though.

In this case I would not have any icon next to the tag name - so not have any of the proposed click actions (only tap to collapse/unfold).

@Friptick @chicocaramelo @Matth7878 any thoughts on decoupling queues from tags?

About tags above the subscriptions there should be a way to have a dialog and quick select. Without that it could be cumbersome with more than 4/5 tags. On the mockup screen only 2 tags (3 at most) would be displayed which is not much. Somebody with 10 tags would have to scroll 5 horizontal screens to access his last tag.
Considering this I would suggest not making an horizontal tags bar and only use a tag icon to open a dialog for tags filtering.

About decoupling queues from tags : IMHO what is needed is support for automatic queues. Which is not support for true multi queue as user wouldn't be able to create and manage them manually. They could work this way :

• created from a tag or a podcast
• auto populate them with all episodes already downloaded with corresponding tag
• add to them all new episodes that user download. (Or manually add to main queue)
• implement automatic queues specific settings with at minimum an option to specify if episodes in it should be kept in main queue
• no matter where an episode is read all actions that applies once read (remove from queue, delete download) should be applied for any queue where episode is in
• most important : access them from main queue -> if you go to main queue the screen has in top bar "Playlist" labeled. It should become a drop-down list to select the queue you want to play. If no automatic queue has been created no drop-down list. So nothing would change for users not using them.

it could be cumbersome with more than 4/5 tags

Good point. At the same time I like the horizontal scrolling. Maybe the icon I included in my mock-up could be used to pull up a dialog providing a full overview.

• auto populate them with all episodes already downloaded with corresponding tag
• add to them all new episodes that user download. (Or manually add to main queue)

From this and your other points I understand that you're only interested in queues based on tags, and not so much in any other type of automatic queue (as mentioned in #2648). But also you don't mention to be against more advanced queues that (in the interface) are separate from the tags. So I gather decoupling is OK for you - correct?

no matter where an episode is read all actions that applies once read (remove from queue, delete download) should be applied for any queue where episode is in

Regardless how extra queues would be implemented, I think i'd agree. (Even though if 'keep episode' is enabled for one tag/queue and not for another, being persistent throughout queue could be confusing for the user)

access them from main queue -> if you go to main queue the screen has in top bar "Playlist" labeled. It should become a drop-down list to select the queue you want to play

Not sure I'm a fan of a dropdown in the Queue screen. I was thinking that they should (also) be accessible directly from the side menu, possibly with an option to colapse queues (as is proposed now for the tags). Either way, all queues should be easily accessible.

Like this, with horizontal scrolling?

I like it :) Maybe 2 lines could also work to avoid having to scroll a lot.

Somebody with 10 tags would have to scroll 5 horizontal screens to access his last tag.

How many tags do users create? I thought this would only be around 2-5

How about having a last "chip" with something like "more»" that opens the tag dialog?

so a single tap would change the tag.

👍 Not sure what selecting multiple tags should do. Display subscriptions that have any of the tags or that have one of the tags? Anyway, I don't think we need to discuss that now - things like this can be changed easily later.

Should we show the 'filtered' message above or below the tag bar?

I don't know (but I don't care too much because it can be moved easily without conceptual changes).

I was thinking just like a regular queue, but only sourcing from relevant podcasts

This sounds like you are actually looking for the Episodes»All list, filtered by tag (and having AntennaPod follow that list when playing).

I think we should stop discussing multiple queues here and focus on tags only. Otherwise, it is hard to read (and implement) #2648 later.

How about having a last "chip" with something like "more»" that opens the tag dialog?

Sounds like a good solution to me. @Matth7878 ?

Not sure what selecting multiple tags should do. Display subscriptions that have any of the tags or that have one of the tags?

I'd say all podcasts that have one or more of the selected tags. So they do not need to have all of the selected tags. I think expanding [1+] the 'search' is more useful than making it more restrictive [all]

I think we should stop discussing multiple queues here and focus on tags only. Otherwise, it is hard to read (and implement) #2648 later.

Ok. Probably makes dicussion (and implementation later on) easier, yes.

Having a more chip is a good idea.
Especially if it is directly accessible without having to scroll.

IMHO those who will use this feature are likely to have 5 to 10 tags. If automatic queues from tags are ever implemented it could easily lead to more tags.
So one idea to address it with tags as chips above subscriptions would be to use up to 2 lines as Keunes suggested, making it non scrollable, use "more" for last chip and for other ones shown (4 or 5 should fit) last ones user has selected. If there is less than 5 or 6 tags they will all fit and more chips wouldn't be needed.

Whatever is done I will be fine with it! Thanks for trying to tackle this features! 👍

This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.antennapod.org/t/podcasts-grouping/491/2

So... Because there currently is an ongoing effort to restructure the complete code base of AntennaPod (see #4661), it would be pretty hard to keep my initial implementation up-to-date with the base branch. Unfortunately, even though dozens of users requested this feature, nobody seemed to care enough that they helped implementing. I merged my very basic implementation of the feature to the development version of AntennaPod now. It barely works and most of the features discussed here are not implemented. I hope that we can find someone who is motivated to continue implementing the rest of the feature. If you are that motivated person - just comment :)

This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.antennapod.org/t/brainstorming-bottom-navigation-for-bigger-screens/774/5

It barely works and most of the features discussed here are not implemented.

@ByteHamster Should this issue be reopened?

@ruvilonix If you (or anyone) wants to help us, it would be helpful to create separate issues for each of the features and enhancements that are listed in the issue above. Having multiple minor things to do makes it easier to complete.