Antennapod: Allow to set priorities on podcasts

[m3adow]

App version: 1.6.2.3 (F-Droid version)

Android version: 7.1.1

(I don't think the rest of the questions is important.)

Hi,

first of all thanks for Antennapod. I use it daily on my commute and am very happy with it. I recently got the idea of enqueueing my "short notice news feeds" in front of my "long term feeds". I found the feed priority sorting method in the Wiki, but I couldn't find anything regarding feed priorities or priority sorting in the App. Where and how do I set feed priorities and sort the queue accordingly?

Thanks in advance for the answer and thanks again for the App.

Edit: I just read the first sentence of the Wiki page I linked which implies not all of those features are implemented. So I assume feed priority hasn't been implemented (yet?). Is this assumption correct?

[mfietz]

This was only a draft and never implemented.

I think we already have a lot of options for sorting and I do not see any natural way how a user would give these priorities (without overly complex micro-managing and getting frustrated in the end).

[udif]

I wanted to suggest this a long time ago, but was too lazy...
This is somewhat related to #2448 I've just opened.

Option A:
Each feed has a priority field, with a default "neutral value".
When Antennapod periodically scans all feeds, new podcats should be inserted according to feed priority.
(Higher priority feeds gets inserted first). Feeds with equal priority will be interleaved. (e.g. if we have 5 chapters each from feeds A,B that has the same priority, we will have A1,B1,A2,B2, ..., A5,B5 etc. inserted.

Option B:
Same as option A, but feed priority is controlled by making the feeds in the "subscription" tab draggable.
This is more intuitive, but has no simple way to indicate feeds with equal priority.
A draggable feeds screen can be implemented via:
https://github.com/h6ah4i/android-advancedrecyclerview
And you can see a demo app here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.h6ah4i.android.example.advrecyclerview&rdid=com.h6ah4i.android.example.advrecyclerview
(Choose "Draggable (Grid Layout)" for something comparable to what we have today).

[m3adow]

I think we already have a lot of options for sorting[...]

How would you achieve my idea of having differently weighted/priotised podcasts then? I haven't found a feasible way yet.

@udif I really like Option B, although equal priority feeds would be a problem to solve.

[ardydo]

The lack of this feature is the only thing that is keeping me from this app so I'd like to add my voice to this.

While it involves some micro-managing after you've set it up you just don't have to interact with the play queue at all (aside from jumping from one place or another) and this is really neat to have. Podcast Addict does it nicely.

[Matth7878]

Adding to @udif option A, I think things could work this way :

• Each podcast get a priority field level (0 being default, negative would be authorized)
• Each podcast get a reading order (most recent first or oldest first ?)
• Queued episode get a reading order value when added to queue (see below)
• Queue could be sorted using this priority value
• Dragging episode in queue when sorted by priority should change priority value

Episode reading order value would work this way :

• Episode reading order value would be 1 for the first episode to read, 2 for the second and so on
• If there is no episode in queue value would be 1
• Else queue will be sorted with reading order to be scanned (aka "priority queue")
• New queued episode would be set with the value from the first episode with an inferior or equal podcast priority
• first episode with an inferior podcast priority and all episodes next in "priority queue" would get their reading order value increased by 1

For podcast with setting to read older episode first it would work the same except that :

• "priority queue" is scanned first to detect if there is already episodes from the same podcast
• if yes scanning "priority queue" to set reading order should start after the last episode from the same podcast
• else we start from position 1

[orionlee]

I feel we need to clarify what "priority" means and how it behaves.

Take a simple case, that a user can define mark a podcast be "important", i.e., there is only a single priority. (The use case of "short notice news feeds" in front of my "long term feeds". @m3adow suggested initially)

The assigned "important" priority can change some or all of the following:

1. New sorting option: In Queue screen, users can sort the queue by priority, i.e., important podcast episodes are placed at the front.

2. Enqueue behavior: When users download the episodes of podcast marked as important (or they use "Add to Queue" to add an episode to the queue), such episodes are put to the front of the queue.

3. Autodownload behavior: when AntennaPod automatically downloads new episodes, it chooses to first download those from important podcasts.

I think the initial use case from @m3adow ("short notice news feeds" in front of my "long term feeds") is really about on enqueue and download behavior, sort option is nice to have but not essential.

[Matth7878]

I agree sort option is an extra. What is really lacking right now is an enqueue behavior which would respect user's priority preferences. (And if autodownload is used it should respect it)
=> imho priority should be set via a number and I think podcast should have an option to indicate in which order they should be read (or it would be problematic for serialized fiction podcasts)

[orionlee]

@Matth7878 I appreciate the use cases for serialized fiction podcasts, but I feel it is somewhat independent of priority use cases. I'd suggest to create a separate issue for discussing / tracking it.

2659 (Smart Shuffle, already merged to develop) addresses serialized podcasts from the sorting angle (not enqueue behavior), which alleviates / solves the serialized use cases, depending on your specific needs.

[orionlee]

Last year, I had a prototype for a subset of this feature request. I'd like to share my experience in using it.

In the prototype, a podcast can be marked as "urgent", such that during auto-download, the "urgent" podcasts will be

1. first chosen to be downloaded (over regular ones)
2. put in the front of the queue.

In the prototype, the "urgent" podcasts are hardcoded (the UI is out of scope), primarily for the daily news type. The main goal is to see how the priority will play out in day-to-day usage.

Experience:
While it largely works as intended (prioritizing urgent podcasts), it does have a few issues:

1. after I go offline for a few days, when I open AntennaPod again, it fills the queue with the "urgent" daily news podcasts that don't make sense anymore - only the latest one is indeed urgent.
2. For the case when the queue is full (per Automatic download episode cache criteria), I'd like the "urgent" daily news be downloaded nonetheless when the latest one arrives.

Lessons:
I feel a general priority scheme might end up a half-baked solution to the specific use cases that feed priority might be useful.

In the trial, of prioritizing urgent daily news, it shows additional logic is needed to make it useful. Similarly, other use cases might demand other logic.

---

If you're interested in the codes, it is at:
https://github.com/orionlee/AntennaPod/tree/expt_enqueue_high_priority

[ardydo]

I'd like to try elaborating a little bit of way I think priority can be used, as of my expeciense using PodcastAddict which does this well. In it, priority works as such:

• Priority is an arbitrary number set by the user. Defaults to 0 to newly subscribed podcasts
• It can be used to sort lists, either the podcast lists (which I think defines what order the podcasts are checked and downloaded) and the playlist, if you wish to apply automatic sorting to it, so it's not necessarily the only or the "most important" criteria.

Podcast Addict does have a really robust (at least in my opinion) playlist sorting feature. You can sort by 3 different criteria and choose if you'd like to reverse then. I'm not sure how it compares to AntennaPod because the last time I did try it, was long, long ago. Anyway, here is a screenshot:

So, my use case is as this: There are podcast that I'd like to listen first, as soon as they get out because I really like then. To those, I give higher priority numbers and then use those number to sort the playlist, so if I start listening from the top I'll always listen to those podcasts if there are new episodes. Since the priority are just an arbitrary value that I give to each podcast, I can assign a silly number, like 9999999, to a podcast that no matter what I'll forever want to listen first, and then manually adjust the priority of the other podcasts according to what I feel like I'd like to listen first and etc.

The other two criteria give you the option to prioritize secondary and tertiary sorting so you can decide how you'd like to order podcasts that have the same priority number, or whatever other criteria you're using to sort your playlist. So, if priority is just a toggle and there is no distinction between the prioritized podcasts more logic is really necessary.

I'm not sure that this is what other people agree on what "priority" should be, but this use case was what I was thinking about when I said that the lack of this feature is a deal breaker for me but I understand that it may add too much extra logic to the user and that the few interactions that happened in this issue shows that it is not really that much of an issue for everybody else... and I didn't even try to think about how to solve this UI and programing wise (without just straight ripping it of that other app that I mentioned).

[orionlee]

@ardydo Thanks for the clarification. From what you suggest, feed priority can affect how the episode in the queue (AntennaPod's equivalent for playlist I believe) is ordered, as well as automatic download order.

If so, how does it handle the case:

• users set 2 daily news type podcast to be higher priority,
• users went off grid with no network, say, for a week.
• when users connect the device back to network again, the queue / playlist is flooded with daily news podcasts (given the higher priority).
• the users don't really care about the older daily news: they are nonetheless downloaded and prioritized over other podcasts.

[ardydo]

That would be solved by yet another setting. There is a "batch download"
option that limits how many episodes from a podcast can be downloaded at
once (either by updates or by pressing a "download unheard episodes"

Em dom, 10 de mar de 2019 às 17:54, Sam Lee [e-mail]
escreveu:

@ardydo https://github.com/ardydo Thanks for the clarification. From
what you suggest, feed priority can affect how the episode in the queue
(AntennaPod's equivalent for playlist I believe) is ordered, as well as
automatic download order.

If so, how does it handle the case:

• users set 2 daily news type podcast to be higher priority,
• users went off grid, say, for a week.
• when users connect the device back to network again, the queue /
  playlist is flooded with daily news podcasts (given the higher priority).
• the users don't really care about the older daily news: they are
  nonetheless downloaded and prioritized over other podcasts.

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[orionlee]

@ardydo Thanks for the input - a batch download limit setting will solve the issue.

As an user, I'll be okay with it. I feel others might be weary of having more settings, however.

[ardydo]

I agree with you.

This "simple" feature already would need many more setting and that's no
necessarily good. I took a long time to answer because I just wasn't aware
that it existed, even thought I had mine changed from the default value.
The sheer amount of different configurations and setting may just turn
people away from using the app and that should always be considered.

Em qua, 3 de abr de 2019 às 19:47, Sam Lee [e-mail]
escreveu:

@ardydo https://github.com/ardydo Thanks for the input - a batch
download limit setting will solve the issue.

As an user, I'll be okay with it. I feel others might be weary of having
more settings, however.

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[7596ff]

I would love this feature as well. I would love to use this app but I'm too attached to my queue settings in podcast addict to part with it.

[kevincox]

As for how the user can set the values it can be done by drag and drop. You simply have a list of podcasts and groups are separated by an "Add new group" target. If you drag a podcast onto another one it assumes the priority of the target. If you drag on to one of the separators it creates a new priority group between the other two.

This is quite simple and doesn't require the user to fiddle with numbers.

[shawn1thompson]

I might be oversimplifying, but I've wanted the ability to queue particular podcasts at the front rather than the current global option.

[jplitza]

I recently started prepending "priority" numbers to the beginning of my podcast names (can be edited with long tap in subscriptions tab) an keeping my queue sorted by name. Works like a charm!