Themed rows under Good Morning / Afternoon Break, ranked to your taste — not the same charts forever.
About
A podcast app that actually learns
Most podcast apps call an open API, do word-for-word search, and show charts. Spotify and Pocket Casts personalize — if you pay with ads or a subscription.
boxlore is free. It learns as you listen: natural-language search, personalized picks, discovery beyond typing a show title, stream or download for offline, and a queue you can actually manage. No ads. No paywall for the stuff that matters.
What makes it different
Built for Android with Material 3 — search by meaning, get For You picks, and keep listening offline.
Semantic search
Episodes live in a vector index (bge-m3 embeddings). Ask in plain language — “stories about startup failure” — and get meaning matches, then a light on-device taste reorder. Not title bingo.
Personalization that lives on your phone
The API gathers candidates and themed Home rails. Your phone re-ranks them with a local taste model — so For You, discovery rows, mixtape, and queue get sharper the more you listen. There is no cloud user-profile store.
Semantic neighborhood
Try a query, then tap an episode. Neighbors light up because they sit nearby in embedding space — the same idea behind boxlore’s meaning-based search.
Pick a query to see which episodes land in its neighborhood.
Match
Taste meters on device
Plays, likes, queues, and early skips update local affinities for shows, genres, duration, and more — then a small ranking brain boosts what fits next time.
- True crime strong
- History rising
- Tech explainers steady
- Long-form (>45m) prefers
- Sports talk fading
Broader Explore picks, plus more shows like ones you’ve already enjoyed.
Keeps you in shows you finish; down-ranks what you keep skipping.
How a recommendation is built
Not one magic score — a short pipeline you can feel in the UI.
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Gather candidates Subscriptions, API rails, trending, and semantic search hits.
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Rank on the phone Blend API priors with your local model — exploration ramps in after you’ve listened a bit.
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Shape the screen Cap repeats per show, keep a novel pick, and avoid the same title owning every rail.
Privacy: the learned model stays in a local database on your phone. Only an opt-in encrypted backup can carry it. Cold start is safe — charts and curated themes first, then personal ranking grows in.
Inside boxlore
See it in action
From discovery to playback, every screen is built to keep the podcast—not the chrome—in focus.
Start how you already listen
Pick the path that fits — AI onboarding, import your library, or jump straight to your shows.
New to podcasts?
AI onboarding turns a short chat about your preferences into semantic matches and a personalized feed to subscribe to before you enter the app.
Switching apps?
Import OPML from Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, AntennaPod, or any exporter — then get similar-show recommendations from what you brought over.
Know your shows?
“I know my shows” opens search during setup — subscribe manually, grab suggestions, or skip setup and explore on your own.
Get boxlore
Free on Google Play, or grab the latest APK from GitHub.