Kodi (RSS Podcasts addon)

This page covers using the third-party Kodi addon RSS Podcasts by Heckie75 to import your PodFetch subscriptions into Kodi. The addon talks to PodFetch’s gpodder-compatible Simple API.

Prerequisites

PodFetch reachable from the Kodi machine over HTTP or HTTPS.
GPODDER_INTEGRATION_ENABLED=true on the PodFetch container — see Adding GPodder support § Activating the GPodder API.
A PodFetch user with username and password — see Adding GPodder support § Create a user via the CLI.

Setup in Kodi

Install the addon. In Kodi, go to Add-ons → Install from repository → All repositories → Music → RSS Podcasts.
Configure the provider. Open the addon and select Configure → Provider: gpodder.net.
Enter the hostname. Use the bare host only — for example podfetch.example.com. Do not include a scheme (https://), port suffix, or trailing slash; the addon adds those itself.
Enter credentials. Username and password of the PodFetch user you created in the prerequisites.
Import subscriptions. Open the addon and choose Import subscriptions to group, then pick a Kodi group name. Your PodFetch subscriptions appear inside that group.

The “RSS Podcasts” addon talks to PodFetch on a deliberately narrow surface: it logs in once for a session cookie, then downloads your subscriptions as OPML. Everything else — episode play-state sync, device management, pushing changes back from Kodi — is not implemented by the addon itself, regardless of what PodFetch supports. The addon is effectively a one-way subscription importer.

Feature	Kodi calls	PodFetch route	Status
Login (Basic Auth → session cookie)	`POST /api/2/auth/{user}/login.json`	`login` in `gpodder_api/auth/authentication.rs`	endpoint exists ✓
Import subscriptions (OPML)	`GET /subscriptions/{user}.opml`	`get_simple_subscriptions` in `gpodder_api/subscription/subscriptions.rs`	endpoint exists ✓
Push subscription changes from Kodi	—	—	not supported by the addon
Episode play-state / position sync	—	—	not supported by the addon
Device list / management	—	—	not supported by the addon

The ✓ rows are empirically confirmed working end-to-end against recent PodFetch releases. If you hit a problem on either of those rows, please report it on issue #372. If you want bidirectional sync (episode actions, push), use AntennaPod via the GPodder tutorial — that flow exercises the full gpodder API.

Troubleshooting

Empty group / 401 after “Import subscriptions to group”

The most common cause is a reverse proxy stripping or failing to forward the Authorization header. PodFetch’s Simple API uses HTTP Basic Auth.

First, confirm the endpoint works directly:

curl -i -u <user>:<pass> https://<host>/subscriptions/<user>.opml

A working response is HTTP/1.1 200 OK with Content-Type: text/x-opml+xml and an OPML body. If curl works but Kodi fails, the proxy is stripping Authorization.

nginx — make sure no auth_request directive overrides the upstream auth, and that any proxy_set_header block does not unset Authorization. nginx forwards it by default unless you remove it.
Traefik — by default the Authorization header is forwarded. Check that no custom headers middleware lists it under customRequestHeaders with an empty value (which would strip it).

“Provider gpodder.net” rejects credentials

Check, in order:

GPODDER_INTEGRATION_ENABLED=true is set on the PodFetch container and the container has been restarted since.
The user actually exists. From the host, run docker exec -it <container> /app/podfetch users add — if it reports the user already exists, that confirms the account.
The hostname field in Kodi has no scheme prefix (http:// / https://) and no trailing slash.

Import succeeds but the group is empty

PodFetch’s OPML endpoint only emits <outline> entries for podcasts the user is currently subscribed to. Add at least one podcast in PodFetch first (via the web UI or AntennaPod), then re-run Import subscriptions to group in Kodi.

Reporting issues

If you hit a problem not covered above, please comment on issue #372 and include:

PodFetch version (e.g. 4.2.2).
Kodi version and platform (e.g. LibreELEC 11.0.3 / RPi3).
“RSS Podcasts” addon version.
Reverse-proxy software and any auth-related config (redacted).
The relevant excerpt from the PodFetch server log.

PodFetch Documentation