What is podpull?

podpull is a command-line tool, with an optional browser interface, for downloading podcast episodes straight to your computer. It works with shows from Apple Podcasts, plain RSS feeds, and the Chinese platforms xiaoyuzhou and Ximalaya. There is no app to install beyond the tool itself, no login, and no copy protection to work around, since podcast audio files are already public files linked from a feed. The way it works follows the same chain podcast apps use internally. Apple Podcasts itself does not host any audio, it only points to each show's RSS feed, and that feed lists a direct download link for every episode. podpull looks up a show by its Apple ID or URL, finds its RSS feed, and downloads the actual audio file from there, resuming automatically if a download is interrupted. It can also handle a pasted link to a single xiaoyuzhou episode, a single Apple Podcasts episode, or a Ximalaya album. You can search for shows, list their episodes, and download one or many at once through an interactive picker where you move with arrow keys and select with space. For scripting, episodes can instead be selected by index number or by matching part of the title, and the tool can output JSON instead of its normal interactive display. Downloaded filenames are cleaned up so they upload cleanly to cloud storage services, and when you grab multiple episodes from one show they are grouped into a folder named after that show. Installation is available through pipx, pip, or Homebrew on macOS and Linux, and through pip or pipx on Windows. The project also includes a command to teach AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor how to use podpull, so you can simply ask the agent to grab an episode for you. It is released under the MIT license and works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.