Antennapod: Is there a guide on how to use this app? It is very confusing.

[jawz101]

I've tried using this app several times over the years and it has the most confusing interface of any podcast player I've tried. After finding a podcast and adding it to my subscriptions I have no idea if it's actually going to start automatically downloading episodes offline. I end up clicking around to mark all unplayed and then downloading them. I don't understand why all of the subscriptions would be listed along the left side instead of just defaulting to an interface such as the subscription list.

If there is a process to do these things it isn't intuitive. It seems made to subscribe to rss feeds, download, and play audio files... but there is no workflow.

It would be nice to see a button or longpress action to play all of one subscription in order and another button to play all subscriptions.

If I subscribe to something begin auto-downloading the first X episodes.

There's a queue list, episodes list, downloads list, and playback history.. Why do I need all of this? None of them have a button to just start playing the list. A queue lock and unlock button? What does that even mean?

Just trying to give some constructive criticism.

[mfietz]

Not sure what to do about this.
With a few thousand users, it is pretty much out of the question to do a complete UI overhaul. No matter what we change, we will break someones workflow and they will hate us for it. People described flows in issues that made so sense to me at all, but if they are happy with it...

I don't understand why all of the subscriptions would be listed along the left side instead ...

Well, I'm not really sure if the initial design was actually inspired by youtube, but the similarity is obvious... Works for them and has been working for us.

It would be nice to see a button or longpress action to play all of one subscription in...

If you play an episode from the feed view and have continuous playback enabled (should be default), the app will continue to play the next episode from the same feed.

If I subscribe to something begin auto-downloading the first X episodes.

Auto Download is not enabled by default and I am not sure that it should. A lot of users don't even download episodes, but stream. We could make the setting more obvious, but changing the default doesn't look like a good idea to me.

There's a queue list, episodes list, downloads list, and playback history..

Long press the navigation bar (or settings) and you can hide whatever you don't need.
Some users find the playback history very useful, others manage downloads manually. We try to cover a lot of different use cases here and it is plainly to late to be opinionated now.

Thanks for the suggestions, but frankly, I do not read any immediate actions out of this.

[jawz101]

Thank you! I know I didn't have much in the way of actionable items but I felt compelled to say something so thank you for your response.

I guess one thing that might be actionable is sane defaults. I would think no one would leave continuous playback unchecked unless you were using this before you go to bed. But then you're constantly toggling the setting at night when a sleep timer seems more appropriate as it's an ad hoc sort of scenario.

By making continuous playback a preference and not having a "play all" button in a subscription as well as a combined feed list with its own "play all" button, just playing one episode and relying on a preference checked at setup seems quirky.

[keunes]

If you play an episode from the feed view and have continuous playback enabled (should be default), the app will continue to play the next episode from the same feed.

From what you're saying @mfietz, I would understand #1533 has been implemented (if continuous playback is enabled), not sure that's the case? (would be cool :D )

I guess one thing that might be actionable is sane defaults.

@jawz101 Rather than sane defaults (what is sane? I don't think the defaults are chosen to not be sane ;) ), I'd propose asking users at first launch. Could also solve many of your other remarks I guess. So for me, a concrete follow-up would be working on #2358.

[jawz101]

By sane I mean 99% of the time users would expect continuous playback to be on so make it the default choice. Since apparently it is, there really shoud be no reason to have a checkbox in the first place. If there's no reason for a preference just get rid of it.

I would expect I'd just hit the play button on an episode would play a single episode but, from what I gather, it wouldn't do that. So the only way to play a single episode is to always go back into your settings and toggle the preference for continuous playback.

The implementation just seems backwards.

[keunes]

99% of the time users would expect continuous playback to be on so make it the default choice

I agree with you, but I doubt we will ever reach that degree of agreement if we'd ask the users.

I would expect I'd just hit the play button on an episode would play a single episode but, from what I gather, it wouldn't do that. So the only way to play a single episode is to always go back into your settings and toggle the preference for continuous playback.
The implementation just seems backwards.

For this specific issue a separate ticket would be in place I guess. Separating 'play all (queue)' and 'play episode' makes sense, never thought about it.