Privacy
podqast has no accounts, no ads and no cookie banner, because it keeps almost nothing about you, and most of what it keeps stays on your device. This page says exactly what, and where.
What you follow, which of those shows you listened to last, where you stopped in each episode, what is playing, your playback speed, your filters and last search, whether translations are on, your subtitle settings and whether you have used subtitles, and for the news in pictures your language, the editions you get notices for and the episodes you asked pictures for, are kept in this browser’s local storage. The History page is drawn from them, with the title and artwork of each episode you played kept beside it (episodes played before 31 October 2026 are looked up by id once, and nothing about that request is stored). They are never sent to the server; there is no copy anywhere else, so clearing this site’s data removes them for good, and they do not follow you to another device.
Episodes you download are stored in this browser (IndexedDB), with their subtitles if you use subtitles, and the app’s own files are cached so it opens offline. One cookie, pods=1, records only that this browser has used the app, so the front page opens on your feed instead of the introduction. It carries nothing else.
The server holds a shared catalogue of public podcast feeds: shows, episodes, and what podqast adds to them (English translations, subtitles, transcripts of news bulletins, topics and people). None of it records who asked for it. Adding a show by its feed address adds it to the catalogue for everyone, with no record of who added it.
If you have used subtitles, opening or playing an episode in another language asks the server to start its subtitles, so they are ready when you tap. The request names only the episode and the second you are at.
Visits are counted by our own counter (stats.kapps.dev), through this site’s own address. It records the pages opened and how the player worked: pressing play, whether the sound started and how long it took, how long you listened, pauses, follows, downloads, speed, filters, the subtitles voice setting, how many results a search found, and on the news in pictures: opening it, playing an episode, turning notices on and asking for pictures (the episode, never your note). The words of a search are sent only when it found nothing. With each event go the country, the network operator and a coarse device such as “android/chrome”.
No cookie and nothing stored on your device identifies you, and no IP address is stored. A visitor is a hash of the connection and browser with a key that changes every day. For visitors outside the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland, a second hash that does not change tells a returning visitor from a new one.
No session recording is running. (The site has one, PostHog, offered only outside the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland; it is switched off.)
A message sent from the feedback form is stored in Eyal Levin’s own inbox with the kind you picked, the page you were on, a coarse device (“android/chrome”), the visit’s random id, and your email only if you gave one. A copy of the message is sent to his phone. It is used to read and answer it, and for nothing else.
The news in pictures (/pictures) plays in a frame from reach.kapps.dev, where the pictures are made (Reach, also Eyal Levin’s). That site sees your connection as any website does and keeps no account; the sound streams from the broadcaster’s own file (each episode names its broadcaster: ARD and rbb for Germany, Observador for Portugal, and the broadcasters of the Israel, Spain and United States editions as those start), which sees your address as a podcast app’s request would.
If you press Notify me, your browser hands podqast an address at its own push service (Google’s for Chrome and Android, Mozilla’s for Firefox, Apple’s on an iPhone) and two keys to lock the message with. The server keeps that, the edition you chose, the language of your summaries, a coarse device (“android/chrome”) and the date, and nothing else: no account, no email. When a new episode of that edition is published, the notice goes through that push service, encrypted so the service cannot read it. Turning notices off deletes the row, and so does the push service telling us the address no longer exists.
Each new episode is also posted, by podqast’s bot, to two public Telegram channels: t.me/reach_de (Germany, in Hebrew) and t.me/reach_pictures (every edition, in English). The post holds the episode’s title, summary, picture and link, nothing about any reader. Joining a channel is between you and Telegram; podqast does not see who reads them.
Request pictures, on a German or Portuguese episode, stores the episode, the subtitle language you picked, your note if you wrote one, a coarse device and the time. The first request for an episode each day goes to Eyal Levin’s inbox and phone, so he can decide whether to make it; the rest are counted.
Cloudflare runs this site and sees every request, as any host does. The audio streams straight from each podcast’s own server, which sees your address as it would in any podcast app; only for an old http feed, or to retry after a failed play, does podqast’s server fetch it for you. Show artwork loads from where each show publishes it, pictures of people from faces.kapps.dev, a search for a podcast that is not here yet goes from your browser to Apple’s podcast search, and so does the lookup of a charted podcast’s feed address when we do not have it. A show’s YouTube video plays from youtube-nocookie.com only when you press to watch it, and its preview picture loads from YouTube.
Subtitles can say each line’s English aloud. podqast’s voice is made on Cloudflare (Deepgram’s speech model) from that line of English alone, and kept so the next listener gets the same file; nothing about who asked goes with it. If you choose this phone’s voice instead, your browser speaks the line itself, and on some phones (Chrome’s Google voices, for one) that means the line is sent to the phone maker’s speech service.