Pocket Casts Announces Open-Source Mobile Apps

Pocket Casts makes their mobile apps open-source. Learn more about it here.

, and Ankush Das

October 20, 2022 . 11:28 AM

2 min read

Pocket Casts is a popular podcast app for its simplicity, hand-curated collection, and features.

If you did not know, it was entirely a paid app a few years back. 🤯

In 2019, they made their mobile apps accessible to all and introduced Pocket Casts Plus subscription to access desktop apps and extra features.

Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) acquired Pocket Casts in 2021.

Automattic is involved with open-source projects. So, it was obvious for users to expect it to be open-source sooner than later.

And the time has come!

Mobile Apps Are Open-Source

Pocket Casts announces that the mobile apps are now open-source.

The announcement mentions:

We’ve been eager to take this step since we joined Automattic last year — after all, the company’s creed includes the phrase “I know that open source is the most powerful idea of our generation.” We believe that podcasting can not and should not be controlled by Apple and Spotify, and instead support a diverse ecosystem of third-party clients.

Pretty exciting.

💡

Note that the desktop apps and the web app are not yet open-source.

Yes, Spotify and Apple shouldn't dominate the podcast space.

So, it makes sense to open-source the Pocket Casts app to improve them and encourage more people to use an alternative that supports open-source.

Now, a user can report bugs, suggest new features, and help add new features they want to see in the app.

You can check out the repositories for iOS and Android apps on GitHub.

Pocket Casts Android