(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Migrating from Google Podcasts to AntennaPod on Android

2024-03-20 08:30:00+00:00

Like all fun Google applications, Google Podcasts is being axed and its function in this case is being rolled-over to YouTube Music, which I fear will mean less usability in (e.g.) cars, and even more adverts than those already spliced into the content.

I want to get away from the extra crap.

Podcast players & RSS readers are related, being (like standalone blogs) legacies of the “Web 2.0” / early 2000s era of people “doing tech for themselves”, before platforms and advertising money became both big and essential for “influencers”; this architectural quirk means that although you can choose to buy an app and pay for a cloud storage service to store all your podcast subscriptions, you can also hunt around for an app to install on your phone to do it all for you locally — so long as you don’t lose your phone, which is a risk I’m willing to accept.

After some research I chose AntennaPod because it’s free, open-source, highly-regarded, and straightforwardly supports import of OPML files, which are the standard format of data for transferring podcast subscriptions from one podcast player to another.

The problem then became: how to get OPML out of Google Podcasts

The Solution

In the end it was very very simple, but also very slow, which may be a standard problem or may be a consequence of having enabled Google Advanced Protection; but:

Navigate to Google Takeout, and start a takeout process. You might as well start this right now because it may take ages. Deselect ALL of the products Enable Google Podcasts, and (important) click the OPML Format button Go to the Next Step and follow the rest of the process; I chose ZIP output Wait several days to receive a notification of data export; clearly the Takeout process is geared towards exporting gigabytes of email and this is a massive hurdle for just tiny bits of data like OPML files, but it’s gotta be done. I panicked because it arrived as a security alert, until I remembered it and confirmed that I wanted the export to take place. Receive the email, download the ZIP file onto a laptop, unzip the ZIP file, find the OPML file, oh my god Google if everyone has to do this it will be a nightmare At this point the official AntennaPod page suggests emailing the OPML file to yourself as an attachment and then saving it locally, but I suspect that you could use Google Drive to get it back onto your phone. I used Dropbox, or you could manually transfer it if you’re into that sort of thing. Open AntennaPod; go to Import/Export, go to OPML Import. Import it. Done

Really, the pain here is all entirely and utterly due to Google. There ought to be an OPML Export button on the website. There ought to be an OPML export feature in the app – and onesuch was built, but apparently was only launched in the USA. I am guessing that the people working on that must have been laid-off, since updates were promised in December last year?

Anyway: now I have a nice Podcast app, and all the data is under my control.

Let’s see what I can find that’s worth listening to.
[END]

[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/109414
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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