Podbird Freezing on start for about 1 minute?

rik · 7 Nov 2020, 06:57

@Elleo thanks for the geat app it really is an essential one! I only have some trouble with it freezing for at least a minute each time I start it.

I am on a N5 with a fairly slow internet, so I don't know if the freezing is as it refreshes / updates podcasts or?? Meaning I am not sure if it is my N5 performance or it is my network that is freezing things up. Any pointers on debugging to see what the freezing is from?

I am subscribed to 22 podcasts.

Thanks for any advice.

AppLee · 7 Nov 2020, 09:53

@rik
It could be due to your internet bandwidth.
At startup, podbird updates all podcasts to seek for new input, it's relatively light but could take some time...
Then there are downloads, but I doubt it's your problem.

Have you tried on another connection ?

CiberSheep · 7 Nov 2020, 10:56

Podbird will go and try to get updates on all channels you are subscribed to.

As a workaround you can start the app in flight mode

Also opening an issue in their tracker will help: https://code.launchpad.net/podbird

rik · 12 Nov 2020, 10:49

Thanks so far for the insights. I'll check-in at the issue tracker, but understand what podbird is trying to do a bit better now at startup.

Note that a few other glitches were solved with a recent update: namely that downloaded podcasts were not able to play.

Additionally, in the settings I "refreshed podcast artwork" and deleted orphaned files and links. So overall it seems to function acceptably now.

Again I'll head over to the tracker, it would be nice if there was a way to control it not automatically doing a refresh at start for us poor internet users (Ethiopia is a single carrier country, and it is slow!)

danqo6 · 28 Jan 2021, 11:09

@rik Hello, new Podbird was released, you can set up frequency of automatic updates during start up to 3 days. If that is not enough, you can edit config file in

~/.config/com.mikeasoft.podbird/com.mikeasoft.podbird.conf

property responsible for that is

refreshEpisodes={number of days to wait to refresh}

I hope that internet in your country will get better soon.

rik · 28 Jan 2021, 15:32

@danqo6 Whoa, that is a very welcomed update! Africa thanks you!!!! (We are in Ethiopia, but many other countries have the same challenges)