Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player turns a public podcast RSS feed into a polished, searchable episode library for your WordPress website. A customizable, responsive podcast player for WordPress with a shared full-width audio player, optional sticky controls, three layouts, light and dark themes, transparent mode, episode search, season filtering, display controls, subscription links, Podcasting 2.0 transcripts and chapters, block and shortcode support, and no analytics or paid features.

Add your podcast feed, choose a theme and layout, decide which feed details to display, and place the player anywhere using the WordPress block or shortcode. Episodes continue to be hosted by your existing podcast provider, so there is no need to recreate or upload them to WordPress.

The integrated audio player displays the complete episode title above full-width playback controls. Listeners can play or pause episodes, seek through the audio, adjust the volume, mute playback, and change the playback speed. An optional compact sticky player keeps those controls accessible as visitors browse the page.

Choose between light and dark themes, three responsive layouts, or a transparent outer background that blends into your website. Search and season-filter controls are styled to match the selected theme, while the sticky player remains opaque and readable even when transparent mode is enabled.

Free forever—without catches

Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player is free and will always remain free.

There is no premium edition, feature paywall, recurring subscription, license key, required account, advertising, or limited trial. Updates and new features are available to everyone.

The plugin is open-source software released under the GPLv2-or-later license.

Features

Integrated audio player

• Professional custom play and pause controls
• Complete episode title displayed above the player
• Full-width seek bar
• Elapsed and total playback time
• Volume slider and mute control
• Multiple playback speeds
• One shared player for the entire episode library
• Optional compact sticky player
• Opaque sticky controls for reliable readability
• Native browser audio controls as a no-JavaScript fallback
• Responsive design for phones, tablets, and desktops
• No autoplay

Episode browsing

• Instant episode search
• Theme-matched search field and season selector
• Season filtering when season information is available
• Progressive “Show more episodes” browsing
• Configurable number of visible and available episodes
• Expandable show notes
• Professional SVG icons that do not depend on the active theme’s fonts
• Protection from conflicting WordPress theme form and link styles

Themes and layouts

• Light theme
• Dark theme
• Transparent outer background
• List layout
• Card layout
• Compact layout
• Site-wide appearance defaults
• Per-block and per-shortcode appearance overrides
• CSS custom properties for advanced customization
• Built-in CSS customization guide

Feed display options

Individually show or hide:

• Podcast artwork
• Podcast description
• Episode artwork
• Expandable episode notes
• Publication dates
• Episode durations
• Season and episode numbers
• Podcast and episode authors
• Explicit-content labels
• Episode webpage links
• Podcasting 2.0 transcripts and captions
• Podcasting 2.0 chapters
• Listen and subscribe links

Missing optional feed information is omitted automatically.

Podcasting 2.0 support

• Transcript and caption links supplied through podcast:transcript
• On-demand chapter files supplied through podcast:chapters
• Interactive chapter markers that seek to the appropriate playback position
• Chapter data is loaded only after a listener requests it
• Direct chapter-file fallback when interactive loading is unavailable

Podcasting 2.0 features appear only when the podcast feed provides the corresponding information.

Listen and subscribe links

Add optional links for:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• The podcast RSS feed
• Two custom destinations of your choosing

Only links with a configured URL are displayed.

WordPress integration

• Dedicated Podcast Player section in the WordPress dashboard
• One site-wide podcast feed
• Dynamic Brainstorm Cafe Podcast Player block
• Primary [brainstorm_cafe_podcast_player] shortcode
• Backward-compatible [simple_podcast_player] and [podcast_feed_player] shortcode aliases
• Optional feed override for individual blocks or shortcodes
• Per-embed theme, layout, visibility, browsing, and Podcasting 2.0 overrides
• Saved-settings preview
• Built-in shortcode documentation
• Built-in CSS customization documentation
• Manual feed-cache refresh
• Settings preserved during uninstall by default
• Optional complete settings cleanup

Privacy-minded by default

• No plugin analytics
• No advertising
• No tracking pixels
• No external fonts
• No third-party JavaScript
• No Brainstorm Cafe account
• No license server or subscription service
• Search, filtering, pagination, and playback controls run in the visitor’s browser

WordPress retrieves the podcast RSS feed, while audio, artwork, transcripts, and chapters are delivered by the hosts selected by the podcast publisher.

Version 1.4.3

Renamed the four global PHP constants with the complete plugin prefix.
Updated every reference throughout the plugin..

Version 1.4.1

First public release.