If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably got a long list of videos and YouTube saves that you’ve been wanting to get back to but haven’t had the time to just yet. For me, most of these videos live inside YouTube’s watch later playlist. Sometimes I even send them to a notes app or save them on Notion. Elsewhere, there are podcast episodes that my friends shared with me, buried in old WhatsApp messages. It could be a long interview I was hoping to catch to get up to speed on the latest political developments, or a lecture on the latest developments in LLMs.
The fact of the matter is that while I’m pretty good at discovering great content to watch, I’m pretty terrible at saving it and organizing it. I’ve even dabbled in a Notion database of quality content to get back to, but as you can imagine, that didn’t last.
For most of us, the real problem isn’t finding good content. There’s plenty of that. It’s consuming it in a way that fits into your daily life. Here’s the thing: I do not want to subscribe to every YouTube channel I come across just because I found one excellent interview or video. Nor do I want my podcast app filled with shows I barely follow, only to catch up on one single episode to get up to speed. The less said about the dozens of browser tabs open on my desktop already, the better.
So, when I came across this open-source app called Stashcast, it immediately piqued my attention, and I installed it on my NAS. Here’s how it solves the precise problem I’ve been facing.
Stashcast turns random links into a curated podcast feed
From saved links to a queue that I might actually finish
Stashcast solves just one problem, but it does it extremely well. It turns random links into a private podcast feed that I can listen to later inside any normal podcast app. You can do things like paste a YouTube video or a direct media link or even a single podcast episode. In fact, you could even paste a page with embedded media, and it downloads the file using yt-dlp, processes it in the background, and publishes it as a private RSS feed. This feed can work in all your favorite podcast apps like Pocket Cast, Apple Podcast, and even Overcast.
Once set up, instead of collecting links and hoping that you remember them, you now actually get a proper queue that behaves like your own personal podcast for all the content that you’ve been meaning to catch up with. And that’s basically where it immediately clicked for me. Now, if a friend sends me a long interview on YouTube, I no longer let it sit in the chat or in the browser tab anymore. I immediately sent it to Stashcast. Similarly, if I come across a great concert store during work hours or even an interesting project that I want to check out for later, I stash it in Stashcast. I can check it out during my evening walk.
The best part is I no longer need to subscribe to these individual channels or even wonder where exactly I saved this specific link. I can just open my podcast app and press play. That small workflow change is what made the biggest difference in removing friction between discovering something interesting and actually consuming it.
Simple setup, smart workflow
Built for catching up with content, not for managing it
Installing StashCast is simple enough if you’re well-versed with Docker, and all the necessary instructions are provided on the GitHub page. I’m not going to spend too much time talking about that.
In addition to the base functionality, which is excellent, there are a few more things about StashCast that I really do like. Much of this is the fact that StashCast does not try to become everything. It’s not another Plex server, nor is it a long-term archive project like TubeArchivist or one of the many YouTube downloader apps. It’s not even trying to replace YouTube subscriptions or become a media management platform.
The goal here is simple: I see something interesting, consume it, and move on. For the consumption part, it basically acts like a middle layer, serving this media to your preferred podcast app. Now, all of that might sound obvious, but most of the tools that I have come across so far try to manage your entire media life. StashCast, on the other hand, basically just serves up this media to your podcast app. Podcast apps are already best positioned for stop-and-go consumption of long-form media.
In addition to all the features that we talked about, Stashcast also makes some concessions to convenience. For example, there is a browser bookmarklet which is extremely useful when you just immediately want to send across media from a page that you come across to your stash. Additionally, it supports subtitle extraction, which can come in very handy for long interviews or even technical talks.
It solves one problem and does it well
Stashcast is a prime example of one of those open-source apps that take one problem and solve it beautifully. It takes all of those random “I should listen to this later” links and gives them a proper home. That’s my podcast app. Since everything is self-hosted, all I need to do is to send it to stashcast, and it’ll automatically create a feed and beam it over to my podcast app. This could be on Android or your iPhone, even a desktop app, and it will immediately pull all of these videos from the server running Stashcast. All that work around tracking how much of an episode you’ve watched, or even beaming it over to a smart speaker or a smart display, is handled by your podcast app. Stashcast just focuses on getting this media to you, and that’s what makes it so simple and effective.
If you consume a lot of video or audio content daily, I would highly recommend installing Stashcast on your home server. It’s definitely found a place on my home server.
