iPX

iPX

A podcatcher for the whole household, running on your own server.

It checks your feeds, downloads new episodes, and gives everyone at home a list of their own to listen from in the browser, all sharing one copy of each file.

Run it on your server Browse the directory

  • 99% Invisible
  • Hackaday
  • Clarkesworld
  • Accidental Tech Podcast
  • Daring Fireball
  • Ologies
  • Oxide and Friends
  • xkcd
  • The Sporkful
  • Acquired
  • Construction Physics
  • Dwarkesh Podcast
Some of what people listen to and read on iPX servers today.

What it does

Everyone gets their own list
Each person subscribes, reads and listens at their own pace, and picks up where they left off on any device. However many of you want an episode, there is one copy on disk.
It does the fetching
Feeds are checked on a schedule and new episodes arrive over HTTP or BitTorrent, filtered by keyword, media type or explicit content. Old files are cleared to stay within the disk space you give it, never one somebody pinned.
DeadAir
Turn it on for a show and iPX plays it without its long silences, leaving the pause you choose. The original file stays as it is.
A shared directory
iPX servers can share the public shows their people follow. Browse it to find something new, and subscribe in one click from your own server.
On your phone
Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app, with the same lists and the same place in each episode.
Blogs too
Any RSS or Atom feed works, and an OPML list can be a subscription of its own that keeps a whole folder of feeds in step.

Run it

You need a machine that stays on and Docker. These three steps start iPX with everything kept beside it in SQLite.

  1. Get the source.

    git clone https://git.sdf1.net/rays/ipx.git
cd ipx

  2. Build iPX and its web page.

    docker build -t ipx .
docker build -f Dockerfile.web -t ipx-web .

  3. Start them, then open port 8099 on that machine and sign in as admin with the password ipodderx. Change it in Settings straight away.

    docker compose up -d

The README covers Postgres, signing in through Cloudflare Access or Authentik, and every setting.

Since 2004

iPodderX was one of the first podcatchers, a Mac app by Ray Slakinski and August Trometer, from the year podcasts got their name. iPX is its engine rewritten in Rust for a server, with a page modelled on the original window: the feed list down the side, the episodes in a table, the player along the bottom.