Exporting Google Podcasts subscriptions

It is useful for a person to be able to export the list of podcasts that he or she has used Google Podcasts to subscribe to. A worthwhile export process should be easier to perform than starting from scratch—i.e., with an empty podcast library that must be laboriously re-built by cross-referencing the items shown in Google Podcasts, then independently tracking down each show and/or feed URL, etc.

Google Podcasts itself does not provide an export tool, and Google Podcasts data is not included in the data available from Google Takeout, but Google does operate an information service where you can submit general records requests related to your account. There is a known process for extracting the relevant information from the format of the documents that Google sends requestors in response to Google Podcasts-related inquiries. It is on the basis of this process that the associated export tool operates.

This document comprises a manual for operating the associated export tool. Detailed specifications of the exporter's internal components are also given, for the benefit of the repair technician given the task of maintaining the exporter and ensuring it is in working order.

Supported export methods

Exporting subscriptions using the drag-and-drop methods

To export podcasts on a case-by-case basis, for fine-grained control:

  1. Visit your Google Podcasts subscriptions page using your Web browser. Your subscriptions page can be found by choosing the "Subscriptions" menu item in the sidebar on the Google Podcasts website, or by its URL <https://podcasts.google.com/subscriptions>.
  2. From the list labeled "Your subscriptions", open the podcast that you would like to export. On the resulting page, you should encounter the title of the podcast you wish to export, as well as a button labeled "Subscribed" and a visible checkbox, indicating that you are subscribed to this podcast. Additional elements may also be present, such as a link to the associated Web site, the name of the publisher, a description, and a graphic (icon) representing the show.
  3. With e.g. the ability to use the keyboard or mouse cursor to select content in your browser, select the area around the "Subscribed" button for the show that you are subscribed to. It is recommended that you begin your selection to include title of the show, and extend the selection to the beginning of the show description. Your browser should indicate that the "Subscribed" button is part of the selection using the system highlight color. It is acceptable to include some or all of the show description in the text selection.
  4. With both the selected content and the exporter visible on your screen, use the mouse to drag and drop the selected region from the Google Podcasts show page into the exporter.
  5. When you are finished adding shows that you wish to export, press Ctrl+Enter in the export tool to reveal your exported URLs. You can save a copy of this file.

Using this method, the exporter is able to extract the relevant feed URL for each podcast. This is viable if you have a small number of podcast subscriptions, or useful for exporting a small subset of a large number of subscriptions. To export a large number of subscriptions, instead follow the subsequent steps to drag and drop your entire subscription list into the exporter.

The process for completing drag-and-drop of entire subscription lists is similar to the one described for exporting individual shows.

  1. Visit your Google Podcasts subscriptions page using your Web browser. Your subscriptions page can be found by choosing the "Subscriptions" menu item in the sidebar on the Google Podcasts website, or by its URL <https://podcasts.google.com/subscriptions>.
  2. With e.g. the ability to use the keyboard or mouse cursor to select content in your browser, select all items appearing in the list labeled "Your subscriptions". It is recommended that you begin your selection so the "Your subscriptions" label is included, and extend the selection to the label at the beginning of the next section (e.g. "Latest episodes", or whatever section follows). This will ensure that all links to the show pages are selected, even those that are not scrolled into view. Your browser should indicate that the content is part of the selection using the system highlight color. It is acceptable to include some or all of the next section label in the selection.
  3. With both the selected content and the exporter visible on your screen, use the mouse to drag and drop the selected region from the Google Podcasts subscriptions page into the exporter.
  4. When you have successfully added the shows that you wish to export, press Ctrl+Enter in the export tool to reveal your exported URLs. You can save a copy of this file.

Behavioral specification

Let the process concerning the exporter's drag-and-drop handling of feed page content be referred to as setUpDroppableFeeds.

The general strategy:

  1. get the dropped content (parsed as HTML)
  2. extract the title and feed data properties from the dropped content
  3. send the show name and feed URL (corresponding to the aforementioned title and feed data properties, respectively) to the exporter accumulator

This process can be more rigorously expressed as follows:

Let setUpDroppableShowLists be the name we use to refer to the process for initializing drag-and-drop behavior of the "Your subscriptions" section. The general strategy follows:

  1. get the dropped content (parsed as HTML)
  2. extract from the dropped content the show name from the alt text associated with each link to a valid show page
  3. send the show name and the URL to that show's page to the exporter accumulator
  4. send the feed URL (derived from the URL to the show page) to the exporter accumulator

After inserting a URL for a show page into the accumulator, the URL to the associated feed is automatically derived from a special base-64 encoded token in the show page URL.

The specifications for the accumulator as well as the top-level process control module are defined in the Supporting modules section.

Supporting modules

Initialization sequence

Production and publication of this document

The following style rules contribute to the visual representation of this guide: