A podcast player and feed reader that does not collect your information
Last updated: October 7, 2026
For help with trickle, contact parmesh@hey.com.
See the privacy policy for details about local data and network requests.
Include the following information when reporting a problem:
Do not include private-feed passwords, bearer tokens, authorization headers, or complete private-feed URLs.
Home’s Search button searches your library. Tap Add next to Library, then Add podcast to search Apple’s podcast catalog, or Add podcast URL to paste an RSS URL. The same menu has Add feed for RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, website, and Nostr profile addresses, and Add YouTube feed for public channels and playlists. If a podcast URL is entered under Add feed, or a regular feed under Add podcast URL, trickle explains the mismatch and adds it to the right collection.
Home shows your 20 most recent episodes and 20 most recent feed items, including items you have played or read. Opening an article marks it read but leaves it on Home. See all episodes and See all feed items open the full lists with All selected. Full lists have Load more controls for older items. Episode cards show their podcast, date, duration, and status; their actions menu offers queueing, downloads, saving, and Mark played.
Library sits between the two lists, with six shortcuts in two columns. Cyan identifies podcast actions and magenta identifies feed actions. On narrow screens or at accessibility text sizes, the shortcuts become full-width rows. At accessibility text sizes, the episode shelf also changes to one wider row and article thumbnails move above the text. The Add menu scrolls when needed.
Podcasts has a badge for new episodes you have not started. Feeds has a badge for unread feed items. Both show the full count and disappear at zero. In-progress and completed episodes are not included in the Podcasts badge.
Article thumbnails come from the feed’s image, an image in its content, or the linked webpage. Some publishers provide no usable picture or block previews. In those cases, trickle shows source artwork or a placeholder. Turn on Remote images in Settings to load pictures.
Confirm the feed uses HTTPS and opens in a browser. For a private feed, verify its URL and authorization values in the feed settings.
If a refresh finishes with failed feeds, tap Review in the message to see the affected subscriptions. Open one to see its refresh error and try again. Other subscriptions and existing items remain available.
Choose an existing category or enter a new one while adding a feed. To change it later, tap the category in feed details or open Feed settings. Clear the Category field to move a feed back to Uncategorized. Podcasts do not use categories.
To move several feeds at once, open the Feeds tab and choose Organize feeds. Rename changes every feed in a category; renaming to an existing category asks before merging them.
The Feed items tab can show one category at a time, with unread counts in the category picker. Search, filter, sort, or mark the selected category read from the same screen.
Confirm the device is online and the publisher’s media URL is still available. Retry the episode after changing networks.
Episodes are marked New until they have saved listening progress, In progress while unfinished, and Played after completion or Mark played. Position is saved every 15 seconds and when playback is paused, changed, or closed. The last unfinished audio returns paused in the footer when you reopen trickle. Clearing Up next keeps it available to resume; removing it from your library removes it from the player.
Open Podcasts, choose Episodes, then In progress to find unfinished episodes, including those kept after unsubscribing. Removing an unsaved video item also closes its player; saved items remain available after unsubscribing.
If a completed download is missing or unusable, trickle falls back to the publisher’s stream while the device is online.
If the operating system stops an episode that was still playing, trickle tries once to restore the audio session and continue. If it still cannot play, the player leaves the loading state and shows Retry.
Use Add YouTube feed to add a public channel, playlist, or YouTube Atom feed. Private and members-only feeds are not supported.
Video items use Opened and Unopened instead of Watched: opening an item does not mean you finished watching it. Unopened videos count toward the Feeds badge. The item menu can change this status manually.
Video requires a network connection. Public YouTube videos play without ads when supported. If that player fails, trickle tries the official source. If neither works, choose Try again or Open original. Minimize the player to keep watching while using trickle.
Use the Picture in Picture button on a supported device to keep video and audio playing outside trickle or when the screen is locked. Closing or restoring Picture in Picture while trickle is visible returns the video to the minimized player. Closing it while trickle is in the background ends playback. Without Picture in Picture, hiding trickle pauses video. Podcast audio continues normally in the background.
Paste an npub, nprofile, or nostr: profile address into Add feed. trickle reads verified root posts from a small finite set of secure relays. Replies and reposts are omitted so the feed stays focused on the profile’s own posts.
Posts can contain text, Markdown articles, content warnings, images, audio, and direct video. Audio uses the native player and saves progress. Relay and media availability remain controlled by their respective operators; retry the feed or attachment if one is temporarily unavailable.
Allow background activity for trickle in system settings. The selected interval applies to each subscription from its last refresh. Work is time-bounded; subscriptions that do not fit remain eligible for the next opportunity. Android battery restrictions and iOS Low Power Mode can delay operating-system scheduled work.
Enable notifications for trickle in system settings, then enable notifications for the individual feed inside trickle.
Open Transcript in Now playing. Search works for every supplied transcript. Timed VTT, SRT, and Podcasting 2.0 JSON segments can be tapped to seek; plain-text transcripts remain selectable but cannot seek without publisher timing.
Open Downloads to see the number of downloads and their stored size. Its menu can remove played downloads or all downloads. Played downloads marked Keep are excluded from the played-only cleanup. Automatic cleanup timing remains in Settings.
Settings can import and export standard OPML files. Before importing, choose Podcasts, Feeds, or Mixed subscriptions. Use Podcasts for a podcast-player export; mixed files use saved types when available and detect the rest. Export offers podcasts, feeds, or all compatible subscriptions. trickle exports preserve subscription types and store feed categories as OPML folders. Portable URLs with embedded tokens are included; feeds that require separate authorization headers are skipped. Nostr profiles are stored only in trickle backups because OPML does not support them.
You can also share a feed, website, podcast RSS, YouTube, npub, or nprofile address to trickle from another app. Review or edit the address in Add feed before subscribing.
Articles open in reader view when the page can be downloaded and extracted. Use the text-size menu to adjust the type or refresh the article. Share and Open in browser are in the toolbar. If reader view is unavailable, trickle shows saved or feed content with options to retry or open the website.
Saving an article keeps its available text for offline use. Articles downloaded by the current reader open from its local cache; Refresh reader view fetches a new copy. After upgrading from the old reader, reopen saved articles while online to cache them again. Publisher-hosted images and video still require a connection unless already cached.
The local ZIP backup includes subscriptions, Nostr profiles, articles, playback and reading state, queues, bookmarks, and settings. It does not include separate authorization headers, passwords, or downloaded media.
New backups support up to 2 GiB of expanded data and are split into smaller chunks to keep large libraries manageable. Backups from older versions are still supported, with their original 50 MiB expanded-data limit. If an older backup exceeds that limit, export a new one from an updated copy of trickle. Keep the ZIP intact; removing a chunk makes it incomplete.
Restore accepts only trickle ZIP backups. An invalid or unsupported archive is rejected without changing existing data. Canceling the picker makes no changes. If a restore is already running, tapping Restore local backup again rejoins that operation instead of opening another picker or applying the backup twice.