Kõnele vs Podcini.X - Podcast instrument
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
Kõnele
Kõnele is an app that offers speech-to-text user interfaces to other apps. Many apps contain a text area or a text field (e.g. a message box or a search bar) that can be edited using the input method editor (IME), aka the on-screen keyboard. Kõnele provides an IME that is optimized for speech input. Modalities like swiping and buttons are also supported, for situations where speaking is less convenient. Many apps (e.g. intelligent assistants, navigation apps) also contain a microphone button that is linked to the standard Android speech recognition activity. Kõnele provides an implementation of this activity, and uses it itself as a launcher. Kõnele can connect to any speech recognition service available on the device but by default uses, and is optimized for Kõnele service (https://github.com/Kaljurand/K6nele-service), a separate lightweight app whose backing server runs the kaldi-gstreamer-server (https://github.com/alumae/kaldi-gstreamer-server) software. The default server operates from Tallinn and provides Estonian speech recognition, but the software is easy to deploy elsewhere (e.g. a private network) and customize for other languages. (Note that Kõnele also includes a simpler version of "Kõnele service" under the name "Kõnele (fast recognition)".)
Podcini.X - Podcast instrument
Podcini, an open source podcast instrument, attuned to Puccini, adorned with pasticcini and aromatized with porcini, invites your harmonious heartbeats. Do I hear your heartbeats? Great! Common functionalities of a podcast player are well-supported: Search, discover and subscribe to podcasts, by keywords, simple RSS URLs, or OPML files. Download, stream or queue episodes, and enjoy them the way you like with adjustable playback speeds. Save effort, battery power and mobile data usage with powerful automation controls for auto-downloading/auto-enqueuing episodes. If the feed contains no media (plain RSS feed), Text-to-Speech engine is used to play the text. Listening progress can be instantly synced through a NextCloud server or across devices in the same Wi-Fi network without a server. So what's special with this podcast app among the many? Well, aside from doing the above well, the following make it stand out: It's open sourced, free to use and free of ads, free as in beer and free as in speech! It takes advantage of modern frameworks to be efficient and conserve energy. In addition to subscriptions, it allows you to create your own synthetic podcasts to compile your interested episodes from various sources to better focus on your interests. While the list of episodes (filtered and sorted by you) in each podcast serves a natural playlist for you, it also empowers you with multiple queues each associable with any podcasts to group similar contents for better listening. On any podcast/episode, you can assign 5 levels of rating allowing you to make better decisions on where to put your attention. You have 12 levels of play states (like to play soon, play again, etc) to better plan and enhance your listening experiences. You can also keep your personal notes with your opinions/comments on each podcast/episode. It has sophisticated sorting and filtering options for you to better select contents. When you unsubscribe a podcast, it allows you to preserve your important episodes of the podcast in a synthetic feed. It keeps a record of your unsubscribed podcasts and notifies you if you unknowingly try to re-subscribe to some. It caches streamed audio for seamless local rewind and replay. You can record audio clips or mark positions on any episodes for better review. You can also set selected episodes related for better grouping. Sure, you can play any episodes in your car's speakers. And, it's not all about audio, video is well handled. You can cast the audio/video to Chromecast speakers/screens. Some other podcast players can also do all of the above? Join the Podcini community! Podcini is under active development by volunteers. You can contribute too, with code, comments or improvements. See source code on github.com/XilinJia/Podcini.X
| Feature | Kõnele | Podcini.X - Podcast instrument |
|---|---|---|
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0-only |
| Install sources | F-DroidGitHub | F-DroidGitHubIzzyOnDroid |
| Categories | Media PlayerVideoKeyboard | Media PlayerPodcastVideoBrowser |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |