Podlite

A tiny Audiobookshelf podcast client for the Samsung Galaxy Mini (GT-S5570) and other Android 2.2+ phones, with a second build for Android 4.1 and later (Xperia J, Galaxy S II…): see Android 4.1 build. Native Java; the APK is about 1.1 MB, nearly all of it the bundled TLS stack. Formerly MiniABS. The interface is in Galician, with large text and touch targets sized for the Mini's 240×320 screen. The launcher icon is the "Podcasts Radio" pack (master in art/icon-master.png); tools/make_icons.py draws the notification icon (a white radio silhouette) and the player icons. Its warm dark colours and amber accent come from the radio: brass and the glow of its dial.

Install

1. Copy Podlite.apk (Android 4.1+: Podlite-api16.apk; Tenda picks the right one by itself) to the phone (USB to the SD card, or download it in the browser).
2. On the phone: Settings → Applications → Unknown sources → tick it.
3. Open the APK from a file manager and install. Podlite installs to internal storage (about 1 MB): an app on the SD card is killed whenever the phone shares its SD card over USB, which stopped playback and broke HTTPS until a restart.

Connecting

At home, the simplest option is your server's local http:// address, e.g. http://192.168.1.10:13378.

Sign in with your username and password, or tick "Use an API key instead". It works with both current servers (2.26+, short-lived access tokens that Podlite refreshes automatically) and older ones (single long-lived token).

HTTPS (from outside your home)

Android 2.3 only speaks TLS 1.0, which modern servers refuse, so since 1.7 Podlite brings its own TLS 1.2 (Bouncy Castle, the same client as Plexamp Lite, with Mozilla's root certificates, keep-alive and session resumption). Sign in with your server's normal https:// address, at home or away; nothing changes on the server. (A legacy TLS 1.0 port set up for older versions keeps working too.)

App: certificates

• Built-in roots: Podlite checks certificates against Mozilla's current root list (assets/roots), so Let's Encrypt, Google Trust Services, Sectigo/ZeroSSL and the rest just work.
• Anything else (self-signed, a private CA, a new root): Podlite shows the certificate's SHA-256 fingerprint and asks once. Compare it with the fingerprint your computer's browser shows for the site before tapping Trust. It then trusts the CA that issued it, so renewals keep working.
• Settings → Certificates you trusted lets you forget them.

App: streaming

Android 2.x's media player can't stream modern https:// URLs, so for HTTPS servers Podlite runs a small proxy on the phone (127.0.0.1 only, random unguessable URLs). It forwards seeks and gets a fresh sign-in token for each request, so long episodes don't break when the token expires.

Using it

• Latest: "Continue listening" plus the newest episodes across your podcast library. Tap the library name at the top to switch libraries.
• Shows: every podcast; tap one for its episodes. Menu key → sort oldest/newest, hide played.
• Saved: episodes downloaded to the SD card, plus download progress.
• Tap an episode to play. Long-press for Download, Delete download, Mark as played/unplayed, Go to show.
• Player: skip back/forward (set the amounts in Settings), seek bar, show notes. Menu key → sleep timer, mark as played, download, stop, close Podlite.
• Close: Menu key → Pechar Podlite (on the Latest/Shows/Saved screen or the player) saves the position, stops playback and closes the app.
• Headset buttons: play/pause; next/previous skip forward/back. Playback pauses when headphones are unplugged and during calls.

Colored dots: blue = new, amber = in progress (with a bar), grey = played.

Progress sync

Playback opens an Audiobookshelf session and syncs every 15 seconds and on pause, so progress follows you to other apps. An episode only counts as played when playback gets within a minute of its end: a stream that drops or a saved file cut short is retried or reported, never marked as played. If playback says it's playing but stops moving for 12 seconds, Podlite says so. Saved episodes play offline; their positions are kept on the phone and sent to the server next time you're online (or tap refresh on the Saved tab).

Android 4.1 build

One build per Android level, never per phone (the same pattern as Tenda and Plexamp Lite): build/Podlite.apk for Android 2.2+ and build/Podlite-api16.apk for 4.1+, from the same source, package and key. versionCode is the manifest's × 100 + the level (13 → 1308 and 1316), so a phone that moves up a level gets the newer build as an ordinary update. What only one level can do is in platform/api8/…/Platform.java and platform/api16/…/Platform.java (the same methods; keep them in step), plus platform/api16/res (Holo). The Android 4.1 build adds:

• ExoPlayer 2.18 (platform/api16/…/ExoEngine.java) behind the small Engine interface the player service uses (MediaPlayerEngine on Android 2.x), with playback speed (the button at the top of the player: 0,8× to 2×) and skip silences (Settings → Reprodución). It keeps up to 3 minutes buffered. An episode ExoPlayer can't decode is retried with Android's own player.
• A notification with the cover and −15 ⏯ +30 ✕ (pull it down for a larger one); swiping it away while paused stops.
• Lock-screen controls with the cover (⏮ ⏭ skip back and forward).
• Android 4's Holo dialogs, menus and Settings; a ⋮ button on phones without a Menu key.
• "Download on Wi-Fi only" means any network that doesn't cost: a phone's Wi-Fi hotspot counts as mobile data.

Limits

• Episodes are streamed with direct play. Formats Android 2.x can't decode (e.g. Opus) can't be played, since the transcoded HLS stream isn't supported on 2.x.
• No playback speed control on Android 2.x (its media player doesn't support it); the Android 4.1 build has it.
• Downloads need an SD card. "Download on Wi-Fi only" is on by default.

Building

With the toolchain Plexamp Lite's tools/setup_toolchain.sh prepares (~/android-toolchain: aapt2, dx, the API 8 jar, Bouncy Castle renamed to com.minamp.bc, a Python venv with cryptography), plus for the Android 4.1 build the API 16 jar, ExoPlayer (tools/fetch_exoplayer.sh), R8 (d8.jar from build-tools 34, in ~/android-toolchain/calendar-tools/) and a JDK 11+ (build.sh finds Homebrew's openjdk@17). No Gradle, no SDK:

./build.sh          # -> build/Podlite.apk (Android 2.2+) and build/Podlite-api16.apk (4.1+)
./build.sh 16       # one level only

Per level: aapt2 → javac (Java 8 bytecode against that level's android.jar) → for Android 2.x the Dalvik 2.x link check and dx, for 4.1 R8 (tools/r8-rules.pro: keeps the app whole, shrinks ExoPlayer and Guava, one dex) → tools/signapk.py (v1, SHA-1, the classic SignApk format Android ≤ 4.2 needs) → tools/check_dex.py. The APK is signed with miniabs.keystore (JKS, password and alias miniabs; build.sh converts it to a PKCS#12 copy in build/ for the run); keep it to install updates over the top.

All sizes (text, rows, buttons, covers) are in res/values/dimens.xml; change them there and rebuild.

src/com/miniabs/net/ is the bundled HTTP/TLS client shared with Plexamp Lite, Noticias Lite and Calendar Lite; assets/roots/ holds Mozilla's roots (regenerate with Plexamp Lite's tools/make_roots.py).

JSON_JAR=/path/to/json.jar test/run_tests.sh (any org.json jar) runs the API, JSON, progress, HTTPS-trust and streaming-proxy code on the desktop JVM against a mock Audiobookshelf server (test/mock_abs.py), over plain HTTP and over TLS with good, expired, wrong-host, forged and self-signed certificates (test/make_pki.sh).