A sneak peek at a techy thing: how Apple Podcasts HLS streams work.
Some may/will have better information than I do here; but I’m publishing this later today, and would, of course, welcome any feedback of the things I’ve got wrong. Feel free to quietly do that via email if it helps - editor@podnews.net will find me.
Of note - advertisers *can* require their ads not to be skippable, according to the spec. But we don't know whether Apple Podcasts is going to honour that.
https://podnews.net/article/apple-podcasts-hls-tech
James Cridland
npub1g5…9t5sr
2026-02-23 07:34:32 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1g5h6rwmps922vx6m3rfj23r9wlkkp9dzrwefuyzfkjktqnfwvxasc9t5srPublished at
2026-02-23 07:34:32 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "21ae21cbf89684bd55ce92a85a45028cc1e630cdf02624976ce3a2235a9230e4",
"pubkey": "452fa1bb618154a61b5b88d325446577ed6095a21bb29e1049b4acb04d2e61bb",
"created_at": 1771832072,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://bne.social/users/james/statuses/116118786675713265",
"activitypub"
],
[
"client",
"Mostr",
"31990:6be38f8c63df7dbf84db7ec4a6e6fbbd8d19dca3b980efad18585c46f04b26f9:mostr",
"wss://relay.ditto.pub"
]
],
"content": "A sneak peek at a techy thing: how Apple Podcasts HLS streams work.\n\nSome may/will have better information than I do here; but I’m publishing this later today, and would, of course, welcome any feedback of the things I’ve got wrong. Feel free to quietly do that via email if it helps - editor@podnews.net will find me.\n\nOf note - advertisers *can* require their ads not to be skippable, according to the spec. But we don't know whether Apple Podcasts is going to honour that.\n\nhttps://podnews.net/article/apple-podcasts-hls-tech",
"sig": "27cdbc9029f990dd690836dae0d6b61e07a0d45f964a32f917ba2f169f750d145fb4f4eb1590f197f3a75c0524e0c5cc839fb166eaf5d7c18311533497411737"
}