Using Google Reader as a podcast feed on iOS

Posted by Urby on August 13, 2012 12:51 pm 1

Hey everyone, there was an old post here that I would have commented on but comments are closed for obvious reasons.

Anyways, I was looking for a cross-platform solution to have the same podcasts on Android, iOS, and web/desktop, and I really like that all the major podcatchers on Android sync up with Google Reader. I can then easily watch or listen to podcasts on any computer right in the browser. And I wanted to give people a heads up that for some of the major podcatchers on iOS there's also a way of doing this in some capacity.

1. Make sure all your podcast feeds are in a folder in Google Reader.

2.Click on the little arrow that appears when hovering over the folder and click on "Create a bundle"

3. Call it whatever you want, and once it's done click "Add a link to your website or blog" and copy the address of the "Atom feed" link on the right.

4. In Dowscast, or Instacast, or other podcatchers with support for atom feeds, just paste in this link and voilà!

Pros:
- Easy to update your feeds from Google Reader, you just have to add a podcast to your Reader folder and update the bundle (it doesn't update automatically!).
- You can have the same podcasts on multiple platforms without having to constantly send .opml files between clients.

Cons:
- Syncing support with Reader is limited by clients, on Android BeyondPod will sync statuses with read/unread, but on iOS it's just a feed that gets read by all the clients.
- No way to sync progress between platforms.

So there you go. Personally I'm just glad I have a way of doing this, and I'm not too hung up on the cons, but if you don't really change your podcasts much nor do you have devices with different OSes, just ignore this post. What I enjoy about this is that my iPad and iPhone still keep in sync thanks to iCloud syncing, and I have access to the same podcast feeds on my Android devices and Mac. You can also add the atom feed to iTunes if you prefer.

Just a quick tip for anyone who has always wanted to do this!

Cheers!