Podcast hosting platforms and apps that support HLS video in RSS

The beauty of RSS in podcasting is that you only need to publish your episodes in one place.

Until recently, to do a video podcast, you had to publish video episodes outside your RSS feed (on YouTube or by uploading them manually to Spotify).

But now, using HLS and the podcast:alternateEnclosure tag, you can publish video to your podcast’s RSS feed. Audio-only podcast apps will continue to play the audio version, but podcast apps that support HLS will be able to offer consumers the video podcast experience.

Podcast hosting platforms that support HLS video in RSS

As of August 2026, these hosting companies publish HLS video via podcast:alternateEnclosure:

And these have committed to shipping support:

  • Blubrry
  • Buzzsprout
  • Spreaker

If your hosting company isn’t on this list, ask them to support it!

Podcast apps that support HLS video

Screenshots of various podcast apps showing an episode titled 'Acquired By Bending Spoons', featuring a group of speakers.

These apps currently support HLS video from RSS:

Currently, Apple Podcasts uses HLS to deliver video in its app, but you have to submit HLS video episodes via its proprietary API (it won’t consume HLS video from the RSS feed).

What is HLS?

HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) is a streaming protocol Apple developed back in 2009. It’s the same technology behind most of the video you already watch on the internet (Netflix, YouTube, etc all use it).

Instead of one giant file, HLS breaks your video into small segments (usually 2 to 10 seconds each) and publishes a manifest file (.m3u8) that lists them. The player reads the manifest, and streams your media segment by segment.

The benefits for the consumer are:

  1. You can start watching immediately.
  2. Quality adjusts to your connection. On Wi-Fi, HLS might upgrade the resolution to 1080p; on a poor 3G connection, the player drops to a lower bitrate.

RSS technically supported video before this. You could put an MP4 in your enclosure tag. But that meant asking every listener to download a multi-gigabyte file before they could watch anything,

What is alternateEnclosure tag?

podcast:alternateEnclosure is a tag from the podcast namespace. It lets you offer additional versions of media in you podcast’s RSS feed for an episode alongside the standard audio enclosure.

Why does this matter for the open podcast ecosystem?

HLS in RSS is open by design: there’s no proprietary API, which means any hosting company can publish it, and any podcast app can support it.

From a podcaster’s perspective, it’s a simple solution. Instead of having to upload your video episodes to multiple places, you just upload your media to one place. Your RSS feed remains the single source of truth for your podcast (which is the way it should be!).

The Podcast Standards Project is a group of hosting platforms and apps working together to coordinate the adoption of new RSS features for podcasters. If you want to get involved, head to our contact form.

​Cheers,
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm,
Founding Member of Podcast Standards Project