metasaval

same here. tried jerboa and thunder for a but always come back to eternity. maybe it's just cause I've been using infinity for so long lol.

since it sounds like you're talking android maybe, with the pixel feed on the left of the home screen, I just switched to the neo launcher + neo feed [1] this week and it's been working great. the launcher is a pretty good open source nova-like launcher on it's own, but the feed is just an RSS reader that is on the left of the home screen like Google would be. it's been super nice to have that similar feed but with my chosen data.

as for images, you should def have some. there are feeds that don't include it, like techcrunch, but most do. you can try the verge or rockpapershotgun as examples.

[1] https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Feed

I'm with you on this one. it's really easy to go "lol another Google app dead," but this one case I'm ok with. YouTube has become the place for video podcasts. it wasn't something YouTube pushed for, it just naturally happened as the site was well built for it. I used to have to use YouTube for video podcasts and pocket casts for audio. now I can just use YouTube music for both, and I find the UI much better at separating music and podcasts then Spotify.

it's annoying as hell that they don't have basic features in YouTube music yet tho, like mark as played or notifications for new episodes, which is crazy. you can't even search the RSS directory for audio podcasts, you have to manually put in the feed url. it's the Google Play music shutdown all over again. but I still believe the idea of moving audio podcasts to YouTube music makes sense.