Kasts

Kasts is the KDE podcast app, built by Bart De Vries and Tobias Fella using KDE's Kirigami UI framework. It's convergent by design: the same codebase runs on Plasma Mobile phones, KDE Plasma desktop Linux, Android, and various less-conventional targets, all from one binary.

Origins

Kasts was first released as part of the Plasma Mobile Gear 21.06 release in mid-2021, developed inside the KDE community by contributors working on making Plasma Mobile a viable phone OS. The wider KDE project has always cared about Linux desktop podcast listening; Kasts is what happens when the same team decides to make it work on a phone screen too, without splitting into two separate apps.

What it does

Kasts plays any open RSS feed and does the basics well: episode queue, variable playback speed, sleep timer, silence-skip, offline downloads, subscription search across the open Podcast Index directory, and integration with gpodder.net or gpodder-nextcloud for cross-device sync of subscriptions and playback position. Because it's a KDE app, it inherits KDE conventions (system tray integration, notifications, theming) rather than reinventing them.

The convergent design is the differentiator. On a Plasma Mobile phone or PinePhone, Kasts renders as a phone app with touch targets. On a KDE Plasma desktop, the same app renders as a wider layout with more room. Both are the same binary, and both work equally well.

Where you get it

KDE Discover on Plasma-based Linux distributions, Flathub (as a Flatpak), Google Play (for Android), and various KDE Neon builds. GPL-2.0-or-later, entirely free.

Current stance

Actively developed inside the KDE community, part of the Plasma Mobile Gear release train, and the natural pick for people who use a KDE Linux desktop or an alternative-phone-OS device. If you want a similarly open desktop-Linux client on the GNOME side, GNOME Podcasts is the equivalent. If you want a cross-platform sync target regardless of app, gpodder.net is the shared open service that both Kasts and gPodder speak.