Search by name or topic, get recommendations, listen offline, watch video shows, and keep up with new episodes.
About · The soul of boxlore · What we track · Features · Release notes · Screenshots · Install
boxlore is an Android app for finding, following, and playing podcasts. Search for a show even when the spelling is imperfect, or describe a subject to find relevant shows and episodes.
The app uses your listening activity—such as what you play, skip, and like—to suggest more podcasts. This personalization is processed on your device. You can listen online or offline, build a queue, and keep subscriptions, downloads, history, and likes in one library.
Read The soul of boxlore: why this app is free, ad-free, and crafted with care.
See What we track and why: full transparency into our telemetry, with no ads and no selling of data.
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Find podcasts | Search by show name, even with a misspelling, or describe a topic to find podcasts and individual episodes about it. |
| Recommendations | Get suggestions based on what you play, skip, and like. These suggestions are calculated on your device. |
| Automatic queue | When the list of episodes waiting to play runs low, Smart Queue can add more from the current show, unfinished listening, subscriptions, and recommendations. |
| Audio and video player | Play audio and video episodes with speed controls, a sleep timer, chapters, transcripts, intro skipping, and a queue you can reorder. |
| Downloads and library | Keep subscriptions, new episodes, downloads, likes, and listening history together. Smart Downloads can prepare episodes for offline listening. |
| Alerts and widgets | Choose which shows can send new-episode alerts. Home-screen widgets show playback controls, subscriptions, or new episodes. |
| TV and car playback | Send playback to supported TVs and speakers with Google Cast, or listen through Android Auto. |
| More ways to discover | Browse short question cards that lead to related episodes, or play an optional daily news briefing with sources and chapters. |
| Import and backup | Import a subscription file (OPML) from another podcast app, then export your subscriptions or a full library backup whenever needed. |
| No app ads | boxlore has no banner ads and does not charge to unlock features. Podcasts may still contain ads placed by their publishers. |
New features and improvements for the next release are currently in development.
AI-generated summary; may contain mistakes.
Verify details in the changelog and linked pull requests.
🆕 New features:
- Subscription Folders & Custom Sizes: Organize your podcast library into custom folders with adaptive layouts—from compact 1×1 tiles to full-width 3×1 shelves and expanded panels, featuring direct show playback right from the folder card.
- Auto-Organize Library: Instantly group your subscribed shows into genre-based folders with one tap, smart size presets, and automatic deduplication.
- Custom Podcast Tags & Icons: Assign custom tags and expressive icons to any subscribed show in boxlore, with live chip preview, keyword suggestions, and priority filtering in Subscriptions.
- Offline Chapters & Transcripts: Downloaded episodes now include Podcasting 2.0 chapters and synced transcripts for offline listening on planes, trains, and commutes.
- Full Backup & Restore: Export and restore your complete library configuration—including folder definitions, show memberships, sorting preferences, and custom tags—with 100% fidelity.
- Recommendation Variation: Time-of-day rotation and cross-day variety for the “Because you like” recommendation rail on the Home screen.
- Same-Show Continuation Banner: Added a convenient queue banner to preview and add upcoming forward episodes of a show when played from recommendations.
- Multi-Level Sorting & Drag-and-Drop: Customize folder order with drag-and-drop manual arrangement, smart recency rankings, and independent intra-folder show sorting.
- Inline Player Transcript Theming: Polished inline player transcript view with theme-matching headers, dynamic controls, and calibrated text sizing.
- Download Removal Confirmation: Added a confirmation prompt before removing downloaded episodes across show details and player sheets to prevent accidental deletions.
- Backup Restore Progress & Permissions: Added real-time show progress and active animated loader when restoring library backups, plus a streamlined notification permission check.
- Subscriptions Tab Style Preference: Added tab style preference in Settings > Appearance, allowing users to choose between top header tabs or a bottom floating selector in boxlore.
- Memory & Parsing Efficiency: Resolved out-of-memory errors during large podcast pagination and feed parsing by streaming responses and bounding in-memory cache sizes.
- Background Download Reliability: Improved background auto-download reliability so new episodes are ready for offline listening as soon as notifications arrive.
- Show Refresh Integrity: Pulling down to refresh on a podcast’s page now checks for newly released episodes without resetting notification or download settings.
- Android Auto Queue & Playback Resumption: Android Auto now seamlessly resumes your last played podcast and queue when reconnecting in your vehicle instead of showing an error screen.
- Android Auto Metadata: Fixed an issue where episodes played from Android Auto showed missing show names and could cause playback to resume an older session on restart.
- Android Auto Disconnect Crash: Fixed an intermittent crash that could occur when disconnecting from Android Auto during artwork loading.
- Android 14+ Auto-Download Crash: Fixed an issue on Android 14 and newer where background auto-downloads could crash or fail to start when new episode notifications arrived.
- Download Disk Storage Reclamation: Fixed storage cleanup so deleting or replacing downloaded episodes properly reclaims device disk space.
- Notification Spike Playback Block: Resolved an issue where receiving many episode notifications over time could cause audio playback to fail to start.
- Duplicate Key Crashes: Fixed crashes when viewing search results and recommendation shelves with duplicate items.
- Home Recommendation Tap Crash: Fixed an issue where tapping recommended episodes from the Home screen could cause boxlore to unexpectedly close.
- Queue Continuation Skip: Fixed an issue where the queue would skip upcoming episodes of the show you were listening to.
- Playback Restoration & Widget Crash: Fixed background crashes when restoring playback sessions or updating widgets.
- Video Spotlight Animation: Fixed Video Spotlight cards on the Home screen so their dropshadow and border scale smoothly with the artwork during tap animation instead of revealing a static outer outline.
- Player Cast Icon Theming: Fixed the Cast icon in the full-screen player so it adapts to light and dark themes and matches the Share button.
 Home Continue listening and see suggestions |
 Search Find a name or explore a topic |
 Player Controls, chapters, transcripts, and queue |
 Recommendations Suggestions based on what you listen to |
 Library Subscriptions, downloads, likes, and history |
 Daily briefing Optional news audio with sources |
- Google Play is the recommended install.
- GitHub Releases provides the latest APK for sideloading.
- Obtainium adds boxlore with automatic update tracking.
Android may ask you to allow installation from your browser or file manager when sideloading.
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boxlore is source-available under the PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0. Noncommercial use is allowed; redistribution and derivative works are restricted by the license.