Druthers

A lightweight podcast app. Priorities, in order: simplicity, correctness, speed. There is one ordered list. Episodes you add and episodes the app suggests live in it together, not a queue plus a separate recommendations shelf. When you tell it to stop suggesting, it stops, and nothing else changes. WHY ONE LIST Two lists means two modes, and two modes means a switch, plus every bug that lives in the seam between them. So there is no queue mode and no autopilot mode. Turning suggestions off does not change how anything plays. WHAT FILLS IT An episode's place is decided by both how much you like the show and how new the episode is. Neither signal on its own. That is what makes "new toward the top and things you actually finish toward the top" a real blend rather than one rule beating the other. New is measured against each show's own rhythm. A monthly show's four-day-old episode still reads as brand new. A daily show's yesterday is already old news. One show cannot take over the top of the queue either: every episode already taken from a show makes its next one score lower. YOU CAN ALWAYS ASK WHY Every suggestion carries the reason it is there. You favourited the show. It is fresh for that show's cadence. You finish these. You usually listen around now. Press one and you get the actual numbers behind it, not a slogan. Anything the app learned, you can overrule. Pin an episode, reorder, delete, or switch suggestions off entirely. What you did explicitly always beats what it worked out about you. IT KEEPS YOUR PLACE Starting an episode does not consume it. Half-listened episodes stay in the queue for later, and the app will not quietly drop one you had started. An episode leaves the queue when it is finished, or when you say you are done with it. Those are the only two ways. THE REST OF IT Subscribe by search or by pasting a feed URL, and bring a library across from another app with an OPML file. Downloads and offline playback, with one screen showing what is on the device, what is still waiting, and what went wrong if anything did. Lock-screen and Bluetooth controls, adjustable speed, and skip buttons that mean the same thing on every device. Trim silence, which shortens long pauses without speeding anyone up, and a clarity boost for quiet recordings. Both are off until you turn them on. A sleep timer that fades out rather than cutting. A listening history you can actually read: what you played, when, for how long, and which shows you keep coming back to. Export everything to a single readable file, and restore it by merging or replacing. WHAT IT KNOWS ABOUT YOU Nothing that leaves your phone. There is no account to make, no server of mine to hold anything, no analytics, no tracking and no ads. Your listening history is used to order your queue and shown back to you on a stats screen, and that is all it is for. Druthers is a personal project. iPhone only, iOS 26 or later.