GNOME Podcasts

GNOME Podcasts is the podcast app for the GNOME desktop environment, built in Rust and shipped as one of GNOME's core applications. It's the Linux-desktop-native answer to "I want a podcast app that looks like the rest of my OS."

Origins

GNOME Podcasts was developed by Jordan Petridis and community contributors, originally under the name "Hammond" before being renamed and folded into GNOME's core app collection. It's licensed under GPLv3-or-later and, like the rest of GNOME's core apps, is a volunteer-and-Foundation project rather than a company product.

What it does

The app plays any open RSS feed with the features you'd expect from a modern podcast client: episode queue management, variable playback speed, offline downloads, playback-position memory across sessions, and integration with the GNOME desktop's notifications and MPRIS media controls, so keyboard media keys and system-tray widgets work correctly. It's built to feel like GNOME rather than to compete with the mainstream mobile apps on features.

The Rust codebase is unusual for a GNOME app (many are still C or Python), and it's part of a broader move to bring memory safety and modern tooling to Linux desktop applications. The interface is adaptive, so the same app also runs on GNOME-based Linux phones (Librem 5, PinePhone with a GNOME shell).

Where you get it

GNOME Software on any GNOME-based Linux distribution, Flathub as a Flatpak (the recommended install path for stability), and various distribution package managers. Free, open source, no account required.

Current stance

Actively developed by GNOME community contributors. The pace of releases is steady rather than fast, which is what you'd expect from a volunteer project embedded in a larger desktop-environment ecosystem. If you want the KDE equivalent, Kasts is the natural comparison. If you want a longer-running, cross-platform Python client, gPodder is the open-desktop podcast client that predates most of this space.