Where listeners subscribe

Pod ships three places listeners can subscribe to your show, all fed from the same list of podcast apps: the /subscribe/ page, the homepage subscribe band, and the end-of-episode CTA. This document walks through what each one shows, why some apps always appear and others don't, and what you configure to control it.

The /subscribe/ landing page

Your /subscribe/ page is designed to be the one URL you hand to your audience. Print it on a business card, drop it in your bio, mention it at the end of an episode — from there, listeners pick their app and go. Each button opens straight into the app with your show ready to follow.

The page needs the routes.yaml entry Pod ships with (Getting started covers the one-file upload). Without it, /subscribe/ returns a 404 and the "More ways to subscribe" link in the band doesn't resolve.

At the bottom of the page you'll also find a "Copy RSS URL" card — for power users who want to paste your feed directly into an app that isn't in the grid.

The ten apps that always appear

Ten podcast apps show up on the /subscribe/ page for every publisher automatically, no configuration needed. Pod knows how to deep-link each one because they all read a public RSS feed and none of them require a business relationship with the publisher.

• Apple Podcasts — deep-links straight into the iOS/macOS Podcasts app via the podcast:// URL scheme from day one, before any directory submission. Once Apple approves your feed, paste your podcasts.apple.com/… show URL into subscribe_apple_url in Ghost admin and the pill switches to that URL — one working button for listeners on every OS + browser, not just iOS.
• Overcast — overcast://x-callback-url/add?url=…. iOS-only; opens the app and subscribes.
• Pocket Casts — pktc://subscribe/…. iOS + Android + web. Opens Pocket Casts and subscribes.
• Castro — castro://subscribe/…. iOS-only.
• Podcast Addict — podcastaddict://…. Android's most popular independent podcast app.
• AntennaPod — antennapod-subscribe://…. Android, open source.
• Podverse — https://podverse.fm/search?q=…. Open-source, web + native, one of the fullest Podcasting 2.0 implementations.
• Player FM — web-based subscribe URL. Android + web.
• gPodder — desktop-native podcatcher on Linux, macOS, Windows.
• RSS — the raw feed URL. For anyone using an app that isn't in this list, or for the "just give me the URL" crowd.

These ten cover the majority of listeners you're likely to have. They're also the ten most likely to survive the next reshuffle of the podcast landscape — they're small, independent, and mostly community-funded.

The six apps that require a show URL

Four other apps run closed catalogs — they don't automatically pull public RSS feeds; they require the publisher to submit the show through their own onboarding flow, and only then does the show get a canonical URL in their catalog. Pod can only link listeners to those apps if you paste that URL in.

These are:

• Spotify (via Spotify for Podcasters)
• Amazon Music (via Amazon Music for Podcasters)
• YouTube Music
• Castbox (has a public catalog with a slug per show)

To turn any of them on, go to Ghost admin → Settings → Design → Site-wide and paste the show URL into the matching field. Empty fields hide the corresponding button. Turn one on today, another next month — you don't have to do them all at once, and you don't have to do any of them at all.

Recommended flow: submit your feed to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and one or two others first, wait a few days for the catalog listings to appear, then come back and paste in the URLs you get.

The homepage subscribe band + episode CTA

The full 16-app grid on /subscribe/ is the deep menu. On the homepage and at the end of every episode, we show a shorter top-five band for the ones your audience is most likely to already have.

The band's five slots are fixed for layout stability:

1. Apple Podcasts — always
2. Spotify — only when you've filled in the Spotify show URL
3. Overcast — always
4. Pocket Casts — always
5. RSS — always

Plus a "More ways to subscribe →" link pointing at /subscribe/. That handles all the other apps in one place without cluttering the front page.

The same band appears at the end of every episode page as a "Keep Listening" CTA card. It uses the same partial as the homepage, so if you change your Spotify URL (or remove it), both surfaces stay in lockstep. You can turn the end-of-episode CTA off entirely via the show_post_cta custom setting if you'd rather not repeat the pills.

How the deep links actually work

The magic of a good subscribe page is that clicking a button doesn't take listeners to a website where they then have to search for you and tap "Follow" — it opens their podcast app directly, with your show already loaded. Pod uses each app's documented deep-link mechanism:

• Custom URL schemes like podcast://, overcast://, pktc://, castro://, podcastaddict://, antennapod-subscribe://. The operating system routes these to the installed app.
• Web deep links like overcast.fm/podcasterinfo, pca.st/…, podverse.fm/search?q=…. These work in a browser first, then the app if it's installed.
• Publisher-provided URLs for Spotify, Amazon, YouTube Music, Castbox — you paste in the URL you got from that app's onboarding, and Pod uses it verbatim.

All URL patterns are validated against Nathan Gathright's podcast platform catalog and each platform's own documentation. If a URL scheme changes, Pod's next release picks up the new one — patch or minor, based on how noisy the change is.

What if a listener's app isn't in the grid?

Podcasting is open, and any podcast app worth using can accept a raw RSS URL. That's what the "RSS" button gives them: yoursite.com/podcast/rss/. They copy that URL, paste it into their app's "Add by URL" or "Import feed" field, and they're subscribed. The bottom of the /subscribe/ page also has a "Copy RSS URL" card with a one-click clipboard button — same feed, no app-specific button needed.

Testing your subscribe links

Before you send anyone to the page, click through each button on your own phone or laptop:

• On iOS: podcast://, overcast://, pktc://, castro:// all fire the corresponding app if installed. If not installed, the OS falls back to a "no app" screen — perfectly fine, that just means the listener doesn't use that app.
• On Android: pktc://, podcastaddict://, antennapod-subscribe:// work the same way.
• On desktop: iOS-specific schemes are no-ops (as they should be), but the web-based ones (Overcast's web player, Podverse, Player FM, gPodder's web catalog) open in the browser.

If a button ever misfires — wrong show loads, opens the wrong app, gives a 404 — check the show URL you pasted in for that app. That's almost always the culprit. Otherwise, file a bug; the URL patterns are versioned in the theme and easy to correct.