A podcast is a form of digital media consisting of an episodic program downloaded or streamed over the Internet using an XML protocol called RSS. Podcast episodes can be audio radio, video files, PDFs, or ePub files. These episodes can be viewed and listened to on a number of different devices including computers, portable media players, and smartphones.
The publisher or broadcaster podcasts the program by offering the episodes and the XML document to a web server. Whilst large media corporations are prominent publishers of podcasts, almost anyone can publish them, as often or as infrequent as they wish. Podcasts are a great way of keeping up to date with the latest news, reviews, banter, gossip, to deepen your understanding of the world we live in, and much more.
Podcasting lets listeners automatically receive the latest episodes of their chosen programmes as soon as they are released. This operation is made very simple by using the appropriate client software. The consumer can subscribe to the podcast and automatically check for and download new episodes, or download episodes of a podcast series individually.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 11 high quality open source podcast tools that let you manage and download podcasts. The selection includes terminal-based tools only. We feature GUI podcast tools in this roundup.
Here’s our verdict captured in a LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. We only feature free and open source software here.
Let’s explore the 11 podcast tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources.
| Terminal-Based Podcast Tools | |
|---|---|
| castero | Command-line podcast player written in Python |
| termusic | Rust-based music player with good podcast support |
| castget | Simple, command-line based RSS enclosure downloader |
| Podbit | Podboat Improved |
| Shellcaster | Terminal-based podcast manager written in Rust |
| hpodder | Console tool to scan and download podcasts |
| yapa | Basic podcast aggregator and player |
| greg | Command-line podcast aggregator written in Python |
| podget | Console podcast aggregrator/downloader optimized for cron |
| neon-podcaster | Python tool to listen to podcasts using RSS |
| podfox | Podcatching for the terminal |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |