setting to not automatically add anything to the queue

That's already possible, if I'm not mistaken: Settings > Playback > Queue > Enqueue Downloaded [disable to get what you want]

You might also want to have a look at 'Smart Mark as Played' to auto-delete episodes that aren't fully listened.

Hope that helps. If yes, please close the issue :)

Hi keunes, thanks for taking a look. Unfortunately I already had that disabled and it doesn't quite do what I want.

I'd like to be able to stop "half played" items from being automatically added to the queue. I.e. only add items to the queue when I explicitly add them, not when I just normally play items.

I'd like to be able to stop "half played" items from being automatically added to the queue.

Sorry, how do you work then? From your wording it seems you listen half of an episode, and then it gets added to the queue. But normally things you want to listen to get added to the queue (by you or automatically) and you initiate playback from there.
Then, if you don't want to listen to the rest of the episode you can tap 'skip' (next) and, if 'Keep Skipped Episodes' is disabled they'll be removed from your queue normally.

I'd like to keep the queue completely empty normally so I can make my own queue when I want to.

I guess I never skip episodes but just switch to something else I want to play so my queue is constantly full of things I don't actually want to listen to.

Ok, I believe I understand your use-case: Once in a while you download/initiate playback of an episode, which automatically adds it to the queue. Half-way many of the podcasts you stop listening, and the episode remains in the queue. Since the episode is only partly listened (thus no effect Smark Mark as Played), and episodes aren't skipped (thus they're kept in the queue), it doesn't get auto-removed by any mechanism. What we don't know yet, is if your episodes are downloaded by the 'automatic download' mechanism (thus if Episode Cleanup has any effect).

What you would want is that manually downloaded/played episodes do not get added to the queue automatically, but some other way to keep the queue clear of these half-listened episodes would also solve your use case.

Correct?

Kind of correct. I don't have "Enqueue Downloaded" enabled, so yeah, I'd also like to be disable "Enqueue Played". I can't imagine how else it could work but if they are removed immediately in some other way that would work too.

Thanks for all the replies & input - gives a clearer picture of the use-case. I'm not a developer so I wouldn't be able to help you anyway, but tbh I think a slight change in behaviour can already solve your issue: disable 'continuous playback' as well as 'Keep Skipped Episodes', then when you're done listening to an episode, skip it, instead of pausing, and your episode will be removed from the queue.

EDIT: Since this slight change of behaviour (I think) can already cover your use-case, I would argue for not introducing another setting. The app has many settings already, so the fewer we need to add the better. Also, the queue is kinda the central organising mechanism - circumventing it would IMHO go against the central principles and would make storage management much more difficult: all those half-listened episodes that aren't added to the queue wouldn't be deleted from your device, taking up a lot of space in the long run.

Following your advice I tried to use skip. The issue is that I don't have anything to skip to so skipping doesn't make sense and doesn't get me to the podcast I want to play. Picking another podcast is what I want to do. I guess if switching podcast counted as a skip it would solve it too but it does seem a bit round-about to that automatically adding and removing episodes in the background needs to happen just so I can keep my queue clear.

An alternative to another setting could be to have some other "playlist" where things are never automatically added but where I can just add things myself and play them in sequence.

I don't have anything to skip to so skipping doesn't make sense and doesn't get me to the podcast I want to play

True, but at least it'll do (or rather: avoid you having to do) over half of the job (at least until step 5): stop playback and remove the item from the queue.

An alternative to another setting could be to have some other "playlist" where things are never automatically added but where I can just add things myself and play them in sequence.

If downloading & playing in sequence is what you want, you should have a look also at #1077.