Shortcuts no longer supports shortcut file imports and workflow.is links no longer function. Any links to shortcuts in this post have been updated to use iCloud links.

After creating a static blog generator in Workflow that also generates an RSS feed, I started toying with the idea of using Workflow to create a personal podcast feed that I can curate and add individual episodes to, in much the same way as Huffduffer.

The result of this is a workflow to create your own private Dropbox-hosted podcast feed and add links to individual podcast episodes you come across on the web, without needing to subscribe to each individual podcast, and it even works with DRM-free audiobooks.

Get the Personal Podcast Feed Workflow.

Usage

To use this workflow, navigate to a podcast’s episode page (for example, a recent episode of Upgrade on Relay FM) and then run this as an action extension. The workflow will do its best to detect the title and description of the podcast, as well as the link to the audio file, all of which are displayed in an input dialog so they can be confirmed when running. If it can’t automatically detect any specific information, you can still enter it manually.

The workflow outputs two files to your Dropbox /Public folder:

podcast-feed.txt

workflow.rss

Every time you add a podcast episode, it’s prepended to the podcast-feed.txt file – this is the list of all the podcast episodes you’ve added which the workflow uses when creating the workflow.rss feed each time.

The workflow only needs three pieces of information to add an episode or audio file:

Title

Description

Link to audio file

If it can’t detect them automatically, the text input dialog will simply be blank for you to manually provide them.

Subscribing

Both of these files are placed in the Dropbox Public folder so that the direct public link to the RSS feed can be used when subscribing. You can get this from the Dropbox web interface by selecting the workflow.rss file and then “Copy Public Link”.

Add the direct link of the RSS feed to your podcast app of choice and any time you add an episode using this workflow, your podcast app will download it the next time the feed is refreshed.

Limitations

A couple of things to keep in mind when using this workflow:

Every podcast website works differently and there’s no standard layout for providing a podcast episode link or its show notes. I’ve tested this workflow with a variety of different shows, both on podcast networks and individual offerings, and added some fallbacks for detecting the direct audio file link .

. Similarly, show notes are tricky because of the way they are often formatted. Instead, this workflow will pull a short description of the episode and include a link to the episode page.

It won’t be able to detect any information if you run it directly from within podcast apps if you try and share a show – this workflow only supports visiting a particular show’s episode page.

Further Usage (Private audiobook feed, anyone?)

Similarly, you could make some tweaks to this workflow and use it to create your own podcast RSS feed, directly on your iOS device. As a basic podcast workflow, you could:

Record an episode in Voice Memos and then save the recording to Dropbox

Add the recording as a podcast episode to a feed using this workflow

Provide the RSS feed for people to subscribe to

Going beyond podcasts, you can use this to add any audio file you come across on the web. For simplicity, this workflow filters out anything that isn’t an MP3 or M4A file, and none of the episode detection is required. Each step requires confirming the text or filling in the blanks, so you could simply run this as a normal workflow and enter the title and description, along with a direct link to an audio file.

If you’ve got an audiobook in a DRM-free MP3 format, for example, you could host it on Dropbox and then add each file using this workflow. This is a great way to use Overcast‘s speed features with audiobooks.