Removed upstream episodes still show up in app

  • Unknown's avatar
    costinel · Member ·

    I run my private self-hosted RSS server.

    Due to nature of contents (recorded hourly FM radio news) I expire them quite shortly on source, periodically deleting episodes older than 24 hours.

    But the app prefers to linger them around indefinitely according to local app retention preferences.

    Can you add option to adjust the app/backend to actually reflect the current state of upstream RSS instead of caching them unconditionally?

    Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    costinel · Member ·

    to clarify, I also update the XML RSS file, not only delete the media.

  • Unknown's avatar
    costinel · Member ·

    Note I posted this as Support and not Feature request because this is not what I expect the app to work.

    On Google Podcasts before they shut it down, the XML deletions would instantly reflect in the app.

  • ctdalba · Staff ·

    Hi @costinel

    The episodes are cached in our database. We currently do not have a way of removing them if they’re no longer in the RSS feed or, in this case, in the server’s response since we don’t interact with feeds directly in clients.

    Hope this clarifies your question.

  • Unknown's avatar
    costinel · Member ·

    no, it doesn’t bring in any clarification – it was obvious already that the backend caches them without rechecking the episodes validity on next polling.

    the request is to stop doing that (or expose it as an user choice) and instead always reflect the true contents of the XML at the time of polling.

  • staff-bluejay · Staff ·

    Hi @costinel,

    Thank you for the feedback. We have a sort of safeguard in place to protect against accidental mishaps, such as accidental deletion of the episodes. We used to have a big issue with duplicate episodes as a result, and this prevents that.

    If users are already playing the episode in their Up Next or if they already downloaded the file, that won’t be removed either.

    I hope that clarifies things!

  • Unknown's avatar
    costinel · Member ·

    I understand that you are justifying the current behavior however that still doesn’t work right for my use case.

    Please take note that Apple iOS Podcasts app works exactly the way I am asking. Why would Apple respect the XML contents and you not?

    Also you are neither offering a custom expiration number of episodes inside the app, that would alleviate the problem.

    In this case, I would need the number 24, while the app only offers increments of 1,2,5,10 most recent episodes limits. I also run a 7 days backlog of same podcast and would need limit number 168 as well.

  • staff-dexter · Staff ·

    Unfortunately, Pocket Casts might not be the right fit for your use case here as we do not offer custom expiry for the listed episodes.

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