Best Usenet On Android Devices

Downloading files from Usenet is possible on an Android device. You just need the right app and a good index, and a good provider.

Here’s how you do it:

Subscribe To A Good Usenet Provider

I like Usenetserver the best. See my article The Best Usenet Providers for more recommendations

Navigate To A Usenet Index

In a browser on your device, navigate to a Usenet Index like Nzb.Su, and search for the NZB file you want. Download the NZB file to your device.

Open A NZB Downloading Android App

Launch an NZB downloading app — the only one I’ve found that works well is PowerNZB. You can no longer download this app from the Google Play store, you must download it from this page. If you haven’t already entered your Usenet Server info into the app, do so now.

Update July 2nd: Apparently another good app is Nzb Leech+ — this is available from the Google Play store.

From within the app, load the NZB file you saved earlier.

Download The Media

PowerNZB will start downloading your media, and it will be saved your download folder. PowerNZB will also do all the unarchiving for you.
You should get a reasonable download speed, but it’s usually not as fast as on a desktop computer.

Need To Play Video?

My pick for the best video player for Android is the rather strangely named BS. Player. Most video players on Android are plagued by video stuttering. However, this app incorporates hardware accelerated video playback. BS. Player supports a wide range range of video and audio formats, namely: avi, divx, flv, mkv, mov, mpg, mts, mp4, m4v, rmvb, wmv, 3gp, mp3.