Feeder 4.6 is now available. This version adds support for transcripts in Apple Podcasts, includes support for the recommended and optional tags from the Podcast Standards Project, and it’s now possible to publish to S3-compatible services not provided by Amazon.

Podcast Transcripts

In iOS 17.4 you will now be able to see transcripts in the Apple Podcasts app. While Apple can automatically generate transcripts for your podcasts, it’s also possible to provide transcripts in your feed, which you can do in Feeder 4.6 and later.

To add transcripts to your episode, first show Transcripts by choosing Editor > Transcripts > Show Transcripts from the menu. You will then see a table where you can either enter the URL of transcript files that are already online, or choose files to upload along with your feed.

Podcast Standards Project

The Podcast Standards Project is “The Podcast Standards Project is a grassroots industry coalition dedicated to creating standards and practices that improve the open podcasting ecosystem for both listeners and creators.”

While Feeder has always supported the tags required for this project, there are additional recommended and optional tags that are now supported in Feeder 4.6, which includes a GUID, whether or not a feed is locked from being imported by podcast directories, funding and text entries. These can be accessed under the “Podcast Index” heading in the Feed view.

Using S3-Compatible Services

Feeder can now publish to S3-compatible services such Cloudflare R2. To do this, click the Options button next to the Protocol pop-up (when it’s set to Amazon S3) and enter a Custom Endpoint. 

Pricing & Availability

Feeder 4.6 is a free update for all existing Feeder 4 users. Feeder 4 is $49.99 and is available from Reinvented Software and the Mac App Store. Feeder 3 users can upgrade for $24.99 unless you purchased Feeder 3 in its final year, in which case it is a free upgrade. Upgrades are only available from Reinvented Software, not the Mac App Store. See the Feeder support page for more information about upgrading from Feeder 3. To download a 15-day trial and see a full list of changes, see the Feeder downloads page.

Feeder 4.5 adds support for some additional tags used by Spotify, Podlove Simple Chapters, chapters in the podcast preview, and includes some other improvements to the item editor, publishing, iCloud sharing, and more.

Spotify Specifics

Podcasts on Spotify require nothing additional over what you provide for Apple Podcasts, but using Spotify’s RSS extension you can optionally specify whether a podcast is more relevant to certain countries, and limit the number of most recent episodes shown in Spotify. 

In addition, if your feed uses the Media RSS extension, you can now restrict a podcast to only appearing in Spotify in certain countries. Find all these under Spotify heading in the Feed view.

Podlove Simple Chapters Extension

Most podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, get information about chapters from the media file itself. However, Spotify’s mobile app needs chapter information to be included as special tags in the RSS feed using the Podlove Simple Chapters extension. As the name suggests, this extension was originally created to allow the Podlove Web Player to show chapter information, but the same tags may be used by other web players and apps too. 

This extension can be enabled or disabled at any time each feed’s Settings view. When enabled, Feeder will automatically extract chapter information when you add an enclosure file to be uploaded or fetch its attributes, and will include those chapters in the feed, so no duplication of effort is required.

Where a chapter has specific artwork (that does not match the overall episode’s), a corresponding image file can be uploaded when the feed is next published. This option can be disabled, in which case chapters may not show a corresponding image when the episode is played in the Spotify mobile app or any other apps or players that require it — Apple Podcasts will not be affected.

The names for chapter image files will be based on the chapter title, so if episodes regularly contain chapters with the same title and image (e.g. for a recurring segment, or to mention a regular sponsor), a single image file can be shared across multiple chapters and episodes, saving space on the server. Alternatively, Feeder can store the image in a folder named after the enclosure, so that it will always be unique.

These options can be chosen when enabling the extension, or at any time in the feed’s publishing settings.

Chapters in the Podcast Preview

Feeder’s podcast preview will now show a chapters button above the podcast title once you start playing the episode in Feeder’s preview, and chapter images will appear as the episode plays. 

Click the chapters button to see a list of chapters, and click on a chapter to make the player jump to that time and show any chapter-specific artwork. As with the rest of the preview, the chapter list emulates Apple’s Podcasts app.

Pricing & Upgrades

Feeder 4.5 is a free update for all existing Feeder 4 users. Feeder 4 is $49.99 and is available from Reinvented Software and the Mac App Store. Feeder 3 users can upgrade for $24.99 unless you purchased Feeder 3 in its final year, in which case it is a free upgrade. Upgrades are only available from Reinvented Software, not the Mac App Store. See the Feeder support page for more information about upgrading from Feeder 3. To download a 15-day trial and see a full list of changes, see the Feeder downloads page.

Feeder 4.3 is now available. This version adds support for Shortcuts in macOS 12 Monterey, and makes improvements for dealing with podcast artwork.

Shortcuts

Feeder provides the following actions to the Shortcuts app on Monterey. Most of these actions have additional options that can be set by expanding them, and will return feeds and items whose properties can be used in other actions:

• Add New Item to Feed: Adds a new item to the specified feed with a title (required), and optional link, enclosure file (required for podcast and Sparkle feeds), Description, and any categories. Returns the new item.
• Export Feed: Export the XML from the specified feed as a file that can be saved with the Save File action or passed to another action.
• Find Feeds: Get feeds from feed by name, link, description, feed URL, folder or title, all of which are optional. Returns a list of matching feeds (or all feeds if no criteria specified).
• Find Items in Feed: Finds items in the specified feed by their title, link, unique ID, date, description, or enclosure URL, all of which are optional. Returns a list of matching items (or all items in the feed if no criteria specified).
• Publish Feed: Starts publishing a feed. To perform actions when a feed has finished publishing, set a script in the feed’s Publishing settings in the app itself.
• Reload Feed: Reload a feed from the web or a file.
• Remove Items From Feed: Removes the passed-in items (e.g. found with Find Items) from the feed that contains them.
• Set Properties on Feed Item: Use to set standard RSS, Dublin Core, Media RSS and WordPress tags on an item.
• Set Properties on Podcast Item: Set podcast-specific properties on an item in a podcast feed.
• Set Properties on Sparkle Item: Set Sparkle-specific properties on an item in an appcast feed.

Podcasting

Feeder will now offer to fix artwork that does not meet the Apple Podcast specifications for dimensions, color space, and resolution provided the image is large enough and at least 72 DPI. In addition, all issues with the original image will be reported immediately, rather than individually.

Pricing & Upgrades

Feeder 4.3 is a free update for all existing Feeder 4 users. Feeder 4 is $39.99 and is available from Reinvented Software and the Mac App Store. Feeder 3 users can upgrade for $19.99 unless you purchased Feeder 3 in its final year, in which case it is a free upgrade. Upgrades are only available from Reinvented Software, not the Mac App Store. See the Feeder support page for more information about upgrading from Feeder 3. To download a 15-day trial and see a full list of changes, see the Feeder downloads page.

Feeder 4.2 is now available. This version includes improvements for editing and previewing podcasts, Touch Bar support when editing, specifying tags when posting to WordPress blogs, and more.

Podcasts

When editing the Episode Summary, clickable links are now shown. The conversion of links from HTML to the plain text Episode Summary has been improved to handle phone numbers. Podcast feeds can now be downloaded via their Apple Podcasts URLs.

Editing Changes

Touch Bar support has been added for the rich text editor, and the HTML editor’s Touch Bar now matches that. It’s now possible to set default categories in the template editor, and there are improvements when converting HTML to Markdown.

Posting to Blogs

Feeder 4.2 restores the ability to include tags when posting to WordPress blogs. The Tags field can be enabled by editing the template, and default tags can be specified in the template too. Posting to blogs has also been improved with better error reporting.

Other Changes

The library window now looks better on macOS Big Sur. Various other changes have been made to Feeder over the past few releases to support Apple Podcasts Subscriptions – see this post for more information, and see the release notes for all the changes specific to Feeder 4.2.

Pricing & Upgrades

Feeder 4.2 is a free update for all existing Feeder 4 users. Feeder 4 is $39.99 and is available from Reinvented Software and the Mac App Store. Feeder 3 users can upgrade for $19.99 unless you purchased Feeder 3 in its final year, in which case it is a free upgrade. Upgrades are only available from Reinvented Software, not the Mac App Store. See the Feeder support page for more information about upgrading from Feeder 3. 

Recently Apple announced Podcasts Subscriptions, which are now live in macOS 11.4, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS 14.6, and watchOS 7.5. Feeder 4 has some changes to help people who want to offer podcast subscriptions in Apple Podcasts, and to handle HTML links in show notes with the latest Apple Podcasts redesign.

Apple provides two ways to offer alternative versions of episodes without subscribers seeing the freely available versions as duplicates. Feeder supports both these methods.

Matching Type, Season and Episode Numbers

If your podcast is a Serial or an Episodic podcast that includes Season and Episode Number tags, you will not need to do anything different in Feeder, apart from make sure the numbers match the episode in Podcasts Connect.

Serial podcasts show the Episode Type / Season / Number fields by default. If you want to use these for your Episodic podcast, you can show the fields:

• While editing an item, choose Editor > Edit Template from the menu
• Scroll down to the Apple Podcasts section
• Click the checkbox next to Episode Type
• Click Save

Using the Apple Podcasts Episode ID as the GUID

If your podcast is not a Serial or Episodic podcast that uses season and episode numbers, you can set the episode’s GUID to match the Apple Podcasts Episode ID, which you can get from Podcasts Connect after uploading your subscriber audio there.

In Feeder, the GUID is called the Unique ID. Feeder automatically generates a Unique ID for each item in the feed. The Unique ID field is normally hidden; to show it, while editing an item:

• Choose Editor > Unique ID > Show Unique ID from the menu

The Unique ID is not editable by default, because if it’s changed for an item that has already been published, your episode will appear as a duplicate. To edit the Unique ID:

• Click the action button next to the Unique ID field
• Choose Make Editable from the menu shown

If the item has already been published, Feeder will show a warning.

Formatting Show Notes

Update: From July 1, 2021 this issue has been fixed in Apple Podcasts.

Apple Podcasts no longer uses any HTML in your show notes, but other podcast apps might. That means that links in the show notes won’t be active in Apple Podcasts unless they literally appear as URLs. 

If necessary, Feeder can create a version of your show notes just for Apple Podcasts in the Episode Summary, which is an alternative to the Description.

When a podcast episode has an Episode Summary, Apple Podcasts shows that instead of the Description. This means you can keep your Descriptions as before, and use Episode Summary to provide a plain text version for Apple Podcasts only.

Feeder can convert HTML in the Description to plain text, expanding links that otherwise wouldn’t appear clickable. The links will be shown in brackets alongside what would normally be the clickable text.

To show the Episode Summary, while editing an item:

• Choose Editor > Show Episode Summary from the menu

You can now switch between the Description and Episode Summary fields using the buttons above the text area.

To have Feeder insert a plain text version of the Description with links expanded:

• Choose Editor > Episode Summary > Insert Description With Links from the menu

You can see how your podcast will look in Apple Podcasts and other apps using Feeder’s preview.

• Click the Preview button in the editor window toolbar
• Use the pop-up below the preview to switch between the Podcasts and Standard previews.