Screenshots

Core Features

• 🎯 Smart Subscription & Preview: Subscribe to YouTube or Bilibili channels and playlists in seconds.
• 🎞 Single-video subscriptions: Turn one YouTube video into an auto-generated playlist feed.
• 📻 Secure RSS for Any Client: Generate protected standard RSS feeds for any podcast app.
• 🎦 Flexible Audio/Video Output: Download as audio or video with quality and format control.
• 🤖 Auto Sync & History Backfill: Keep subscriptions updated and backfill older videos on demand.
• 👥 Multi-user & Role-based Access: Manage multiple accounts with granular permissions, restricting system and feed configurations to admin users.
• 🍪 Expanded Cookie Support: Use YouTube and Bilibili cookies for more reliable restricted-content access.
• 🌍 Proxy-ready Network Access: Route YouTube API and yt-dlp traffic through custom proxies.
• 🔗 One-click Episode Sharing: Share any episode with a public page for direct playback without login.
• 📦 Fast Batch Downloads: Search, select, and queue large back catalogs efficiently.
• 📊 Download Dashboard & Bulk Actions: Track task status and retry, cancel, or delete in bulk.
• 🔔 Failed-download Digests & Alerts: Get email or webhook summaries when automatic retries are exhausted.
• 🔍 Per-feed Filters & Retention: Control sync scope with keywords, duration, and episode limits.
• ⏱ Smarter New Episode Downloads: Delay auto-downloads to improve fresh-video processing results.
• 🎛 Customizable Feeds & Player: Customize titles and cover art, then play episodes on the web.
• 🧩 Episode Management & Control: Download, retry, cancel, and delete episodes with file cleanup.
• 🔓 Trusted-environment Auto Login: Skip manual sign-in when PigeonPod runs behind trusted access controls.
• 🔒 Built-in SSL/TLS Encryption: Secure your self-hosted instance with native SSL support for encrypted web and RSS traffic.
• 📈 YouTube API Usage Insights: Monitor quota usage before sync jobs hit the limit.
• 🔄 OPML Subscription Export: Export subscriptions for easy migration between podcast clients.
• ⬆️ In-app yt-dlp Management: Manage runtimes, switch active versions, and update yt-dlp without leaving the app.
• 🛠 Advanced yt-dlp Arguments: Fine-tune downloads with custom yt-dlp arguments.
• 📚 Podcasting 2.0 Chapters Support: Generate chapter files for richer player navigation.
• 🌐 Multilingual Responsive UI: Use PigeonPod across devices in eight interface languages.

Deployment

Using Docker Compose (Recommended)

Make sure you have Docker and Docker Compose installed on your machine.

1. Use the docker-compose configuration file, modify environment variables according to your needs

services:
  pigeon-pod:
    image: 'ghcr.io/aizhimou/pigeon-pod:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: pigeon-pod
    ports:
      - '8834:8080'
    environment:
      - SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:sqlite:/data/pigeon-pod.db # set to your database path
      # Optional: disable PigeonPod built-in auth when running behind another auth layer
      # - PIGEON_AUTH_ENABLED=false
    volumes:
      # Application data: SQLite database, logs, runtime configurations
      - ./data:/data
      # Optional: Separate media storage (audio & video) onto a different disk or media share
      # - /path/to/media/audio:/data/audio
      # - /path/to/media/video:/data/video

[!TIP] Storage & Directory Separation:

• By default, ./data:/data mounts application data (SQLite database, logs, runtime configs) to the local host directory for easy management and lightweight backup.
• To store large downloaded media files on a dedicated bulk storage disk or NAS share, uncomment the /data/audio and /data/video volume mappings.
• If upgrading from an older version using a named volume (data:/data), you can keep using your named volume or copy existing data to the host (docker cp pigeon-pod:/data ./data) before switching to bind mounts.

[!WARNING] PIGEON_AUTH_ENABLED defaults to true. Set it to false only if another trusted layer already protects the web UI, such as an auth proxy, reverse proxy access control, VPN, or private network.

If you disable built-in auth, you must secure PigeonPod by other means. Do not expose an auth-disabled instance directly to the public Internet.

2. Start the service

docker compose up -d

3. Access the application Open your browser and visit http://localhost:8834 with default username: root and default password: Root@123

Run with JAR

Make sure you have Java 17+ and yt-dlp installed on your machine.

1. Download the latest release JAR from Releases

2. Create data directory in the same directory as the JAR file.

mkdir -p data

3. Run the application

java -jar -Dspring.datasource.url=jdbc:sqlite:/path/to/your/pigeon-pod.db \  # set to your database path
           pigeon-pod-x.x.x.jar

4. Access the application Open your browser and visit http://localhost:8080 with default username: root and default password: Root@123

Storage Configuration

• PigeonPod supports LOCAL and S3 storage modes.
• You can only enable one mode at a time.
• S3 mode supports MinIO, Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, and other S3-compatible services.
• Switching storage mode does not migrate historical media automatically. You must migrate files manually.

Storage Quick Comparison

Documentation

• Wiki Home
• Quick Start
• Installation
• Configuration Overview
• Troubleshooting
• Advanced Customization

Tech Stack

Backend

• Java 17 - Core language
• Spring Boot 3.5 - Application framework
• MyBatis-Plus 3.5 - ORM framework
• Sa-Token - Authentication framework
• SQLite - Lightweight database
• Flyway - Database migration tool
• YouTube Data API v3 - YouTube data retrieval
• yt-dlp - Video download tool
• Rome - RSS generation library

Frontend

• Javascript (ES2024) - Core language
• React 19 - Application framework
• Vite 7 - Build tool
• Mantine 8 - UI component library
• i18next - Internationalization support
• Axios - HTTP client

Development Guide

Environment Requirements

• Java 17+
• Node.js 22+
• Maven 3.9+
• SQLite
• yt-dlp

Local Development

1. Clone the project

git clone https://github.com/aizhimou/PigeonPod.git
cd PigeonPod

2. Configure database

# Create data directory
mkdir -p data/audio

# Database file will be created automatically on first startup

3. Configure YouTube API

   • Create a project in Google Cloud Console
   • Enable YouTube Data API v3
   • Create an API key
   • Configure the API key in user settings

4. Start backend

cd backend
mvn spring-boot:run

5. Start frontend (new terminal)

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

6. Access the application

• Frontend dev server: http://localhost:5173
• Backend API: http://localhost:8080

Development Notes

1. Ensure yt-dlp is installed and available in command line
2. Configure correct YouTube API key
3. Ensure audio storage directory has sufficient disk space
4. Regularly clean up old audio files to save space

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