Wavelet v1.0.0

One player for everything you listen to.

Wavelet plays podcasts and audiobooks in a single small app. Paste an RSS feed for shows, add your own files for books. Downloads are kept offline, positions are always remembered, and nothing is ever recommended to you.

It's an early build. The core works well and holds up daily, but expect rough edges. There's a list further down.

Download Now Android 8.0+ · iOS · free

142 · Attention spans are fine, actually

The Long Form

What it does

Everything below is built and working. This is what's in the app today, not a wishlist.

Two libraries, one player

Podcasts and audiobooks stay in separate libraries (one is episodic and disposable, the other is nine hours of your life), but the player underneath is the same, so speed, sleep timer and skip settings behave identically everywhere.

Feeds and files, not a store

Shows come in by RSS link or OPML import. Books come in as .m4b files or folders of MP3s. There's no directory, no charts page, and nothing competing for your attention.

Downloads that stay

Episodes and books live on your device until you delete them. No streaming-only content, no cache that quietly evicts the thing you saved for the flight.

Built for the long haul

Chapter-aware playback for podcasts and .m4b books alike, bookmarks with notes, a sleep timer that rewinds a couple of minutes when it fires (because you were probably asleep before it did), and a position kept per show and per book, indefinitely.

Works with Hamlet, too

Run a Hamlet server? Log in from Wavelet and your library, downloads and playback position come from there instead of living only on your phone. Same player, just with a server behind it if you want one.

Where it stands

Honest state of the build, updated as things land.

Piece	Status	Notes
RSS subscriptions	Working	Feed parsing and episode lists work against the messy reality of real-world feeds.
Playback	Working	Play, pause, seek, speed, and background audio with lock-screen controls.
Downloads	Working	Episodes and books download and stay until you delete them. Auto-delete-after-listening rules and storage limits aren't in yet.
Audiobooks	Working	.m4b with embedded chapters, plus folders of numbered MP3s treated as one book, alongside podcasts in the same library screen.
OPML import	Working	Import or export your subscriptions as OPML, since nobody should retype forty of them by hand.
Hamlet server sync	Working	Log into a self-hosted Hamlet server and your library, downloads and position sync from it. Optional.
CarPlay	Working	Play, pause and skip from your car's display; podcasts and audiobooks both show up.
.aax (Audible)	Can't happen	Audible's format is DRM-locked, and that's a lock on the file, not a format problem. Wavelet plays files you actually own.

Roadmap

In order, not on a schedule. Each step starts when the one before it is solid.

Tap a milestone for the details.

Downloads already work and stay until you delete them. Auto-delete-after-listening rules and storage limits are next, so a long backlog doesn't quietly fill your phone.

What "done" looks like Set a storage cap or a "delete after finished" rule once, and never think about it again.

Like the rest of the Letworks apps, Wavelet is built with Flutter, so the iOS build shares almost all of its code with Android. It's moving through testing alongside Leaflet's, so the family arrives on iOS as a set rather than one app at a time.

What "done" looks like Out of TestFlight and onto the App Store, listed alongside the Android build on the downloads page.

Questions

Wasn't this supposed to be two apps?: It was. A podcast app and an audiobook app were originally planned separately. Then it became obvious they shared about ninety percent of a player: speed, chapters, sleep timer, downloads, positions. Two front doors on the same room is really just one app, so they merged into Wavelet.
Really, no recommendations at all?: None. No trending tab, no "because you listened to", no notifications about shows you don't follow. If Wavelet ever suggests something to you, that's a bug report.
Where do my subscriptions, episodes and books live?: On your device by default. Feeds are fetched directly from their publishers and audiobooks are read from your storage, so there's no Wavelet server in the middle seeing what you listen to, unless you connect your own Hamlet server, in which case your library lives there instead. Either way, it's a server you control, not one of ours.
Will it play my Audible books?: Not in their .aax form. Those are DRM-locked, and Wavelet won't pretend otherwise. It plays DRM-free files: purchases from stores like Libro.fm or Downpour, rips of your CDs, and anything else you actually own.
Can I use this with Hamlet, my self-hosted server?: Yes. Connect Wavelet to your Hamlet server and your library, downloads and playback position sync from there instead of (or alongside) files on your phone. Prefer everything local? Wavelet works fully offline too. The server is optional either way.
Will it be on the Play Store?: Eventually. Right now it's distributed as a plain APK while things are still changing quickly, same as its sibling Leaflet.