1/3 - WTF its only Monday and Apple just dropped the biggest podcasting news of 2026!
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1/3 - WTF its only Monday and Apple just dropped the biggest podcasting news of 2026!
Did you know Apple already supported video podcasting - MP4 - (but didn't tell anyone)? Now they have finally decided to support their own video technology called HLS - see below for more details.
The podcasting 2.0 community has been asking Apple executives to do this for over two years but it has fallen on deaf ears until today.

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I podcastindex.social shared this topic
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@samsethi can my app download the video just like any mp3 with this HLS protocol? So I can play it offline and archive it like any file.
If not, it's broken and doesn't deserve implementation in any "podcast" app, it's not podcast, it's enshitification by introducing an uncontrolled element in the podcast infrastructure. It's a threat
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@samsethi This is huge!!!!! Can't wait for you guys to dissect this feature!
Apple supporting HLS is HUGE fo the Podcasting ecosystem.
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T #podcasting shared this topic
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EPIC! This is big news!
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@samsethi This is huge!!!!! Can't wait for you guys to dissect this feature!
Apple supporting HLS is HUGE fo the Podcasting ecosystem.
HLS is a near-perfect protocol, and makes all kinds of streaming so much better (and almost for free, too)
How will this work with Podcasting software? I think of a podcast as a pre-downloaded media file, where the benefits of HLS are lost. or is this for playing things I haven’t downloaded yet?
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HLS is a near-perfect protocol, and makes all kinds of streaming so much better (and almost for free, too)
How will this work with Podcasting software? I think of a podcast as a pre-downloaded media file, where the benefits of HLS are lost. or is this for playing things I haven’t downloaded yet?
@benpate @phillycodehound we already break up MP3 and MP4 into 6 second packets to stream podcasts on TrueFans.
We allow TrueFans users to also download the whole file for offline use.
HLS uses the same tech for 6 second packets but also has adaptive rates based on playback device/bandwidth. So you can have multiple files stored by the host e.g 320k, 720k, 1080p or 4K etc
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P Podcasting shared this topic
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@benpate @phillycodehound we already break up MP3 and MP4 into 6 second packets to stream podcasts on TrueFans.
We allow TrueFans users to also download the whole file for offline use.
HLS uses the same tech for 6 second packets but also has adaptive rates based on playback device/bandwidth. So you can have multiple files stored by the host e.g 320k, 720k, 1080p or 4K etc
@samsethi@podcastindex.social Of course you’ve figured it out on TrueFans.fm!
Impressive.
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