Paid feeds from Supercast have strange titles for episodes rather than the correct episode title from the feed #20

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opened 2026-05-22 09:47:39 -07:00 by serrebi · 2 comments

serrebi commented

2026-05-22 09:47:39 -07:00

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I have two paid podcast feeds from the Supercast platform. All episodes in the list appear with the title ⚙️ Manage Subscription; instead of properly labeling them with the correct titles. I'd share a feed as an example, but I'm not sure I should since I pay for them and they're supposed to be private.
The downloaded files also have this ⚙️ Manage Subscription; name rather than for example NoSleep Podcast - S24E16.mp3.

I have two paid podcast feeds from the Supercast platform. All episodes in the list appear with the title ⚙️ Manage Subscription; instead of properly labeling them with the correct titles. I'd share a feed as an example, but I'm not sure I should since I pay for them and they're supposed to be private. The downloaded files also have this ⚙️ Manage Subscription; name rather than for example NoSleep Podcast - S24E16.mp3.

serrebi commented

2026-05-22 09:47:50 -07:00

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@slannon97 Send them to serrebi101@gmail.com and I'll have a look

@slannon97 Send them to serrebi101@gmail.com and I'll have a look

serrebi commented

2026-05-22 10:37:59 -07:00

Author

Owner

Fixed in d5a171e.

Cause: BlindRSS has a heuristic (enhance_activity_entry_title) that rescues the real story title out of an entry's description HTML for Ning-style "activity feeds," where the actual item title is just a generic line like "User posted a video." The problem was that this heuristic ran on every feed, not only activity feeds.

Supercast subscriber feeds append a Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription footer made of <strong><a> links to the bottom of each episode's description. The heuristic saw those bolded links, scored them as a likely "real title," and overrode the correct episode title with ⚙️ Manage Subscription — which then also flowed through to the downloaded filenames.

Fix: The title-rescue now only looks into the description HTML when the existing item title is missing or actually reads like an activity-log line (posted, replied, commented, updated their, etc.). Proper item titles like podcast episode names are left untouched, so the Manage Subscription footer can no longer win.

I verified the fix against both feeds you mentioned (without storing anything private): NoSleep Podcast (763 episodes) and Six Minutes (374 episodes). Before the fix, 81 NoSleep titles were being mangled into Manage Subscription; after the fix, 0 — every episode keeps its correct title (e.g. NoSleep Podcast - S24E16, S5 EP33: A World Without Sad Country Mixtapes). Added regression tests so this can't silently come back.

This will ship in the next release. Thanks for the clear report! 🙇

Fixed in d5a171e. **Cause:** BlindRSS has a heuristic (`enhance_activity_entry_title`) that rescues the real story title out of an entry's description HTML for Ning-style "activity feeds," where the actual item title is just a generic line like *"User posted a video."* The problem was that this heuristic ran on **every** feed, not only activity feeds. Supercast subscriber feeds append a `Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription` footer made of `<strong><a>` links to the bottom of each episode's description. The heuristic saw those bolded links, scored them as a likely "real title," and overrode the correct episode title with `⚙️ Manage Subscription` — which then also flowed through to the downloaded filenames. **Fix:** The title-rescue now only looks into the description HTML when the existing item title is missing or actually reads like an activity-log line (`posted`, `replied`, `commented`, `updated their`, etc.). Proper item titles like podcast episode names are left untouched, so the `Manage Subscription` footer can no longer win. I verified the fix against both feeds you mentioned (without storing anything private): NoSleep Podcast (763 episodes) and Six Minutes (374 episodes). Before the fix, 81 NoSleep titles were being mangled into `Manage Subscription`; after the fix, **0** — every episode keeps its correct title (e.g. `NoSleep Podcast - S24E16`, `S5 EP33: A World Without Sad Country Mixtapes`). Added regression tests so this can't silently come back. This will ship in the next release. Thanks for the clear report! 🙇

serrebi closed this issue

2026-05-25 11:55:38 -07:00