Automatic downloads

When you subscribe to a podcast and are interested in every new episode, automatic downloads save you from having to manually download each one. This page explains how to set it up and what to check when it isn’t working.

How automatic downloads work

When AntennaPod refreshes a podcast and finds new episodes, it places them in your Inbox. If automatic download is enabled for that podcast, AntennaPod downloads the episode in the background, adds it to the queue, and removes it from the inbox.

Automatic downloads can be enabled in one of two ways:

  1. Global switch: go to Settings » Downloads and enable Automatic download. This will turn on automatic download for all subscriptions, but you can also exclude specific ones on the settings screen of each subscription.
  2. Per-podcast switch: open the podcast, tap the settings icon (⚙️) and enable Include in auto downloads. If you want to enable automatic downloads for several podcasts at once, you can use multi-select on the subscriptions screen.

In Settings » Downloads » Mobile updates, you can also configure to only perform automatic downloads when on WiFi. Most importantly, you can specify a limit for the maximum number of episodes to download before automatic downloads stop. The default limit is 50 episodes. In Settings » Downloads » Automatic deletion, you can find related settings to automatically delete episodes after playing them or when automatic download needs more space. In the per-podcast settings, under Episode filter you can also set a minimum episode length as well as keywords to in- or exclude episodes in automatic downloads.

Why isn’t it downloading?

If automatic downloads are enabled but episodes are not downloading, work through this checklist:

  1. Is Include in automatic downloads enabled on the specific podcast?
  2. Are you on WiFi (or is the WiFi-only restriction disabled)?
  3. Has the episode download limit been reached? Check how many episodes are currently downloaded (on the Downloads screen, not just the ones in the queue) and compare it to the limit in Settings » Downloads » Automatic download.
  4. Are the episodes of the podcast added to the inbox? Only episodes in the inbox are eligible for automatic download, so if you set the New episodes action to anything other than Add to inbox, nothing gets downloaded. Note that automatic download moves the episodes from the inbox to the queue once downloaded, so they still end up in your queue.