Q: How podcast works with "unplayed" and "feed" in regards to automatic download
Hello, I asked this question on the Producing Podcast forum, but I will try my luck here
"I have a question, which I haven't been able to get answered by searching with Google.
We are producing and making available audio books, and one of the ways to listen is to use the Podcast app on an iPad or iPhone.. there are several other ways, but it is one of options that are available.
The problem is that when you subscribe to the podcast (which is a specific audio book), you only ever get one track/episode as unplayed, which mean that only one track of the audio book is automatically downloaded. You then have to go to "Feed" and manually select every track for download, which can be quite tedious for our users to do, as there can be up to several hundreds of tracks.
Is it possible to somehow make the tracks/episodes all marked as unplayed/new when it is subscribed to? Another option could be to have a setting that makes it download all the episodes, unplayed or not, but unfortunately the Podcast app doesn't have that option, only unplayed or new episodes can be automatically downloaded.
Thanks in advance!"
This was a response I got:
"When someone subscribes to a podcast in iTunes they see all the episodes but only the latest one is automatically downloaded. They can play any other episode simply by clicking on it, whereupon it streams; or they can click the download icon to actually download it. They can download all the episodes by control-clicking (Mac) or right-clicking (Windows) on the name of the podcast (rather than an episode) and choosing 'Download all'.
There's no way of changing that: someone who subscribes to a podcast with a large number of previous episodes isn't going to want them all downloaded automatically. I'm not familiar with the Podcasts app but given the relatively limited storage on iOS devices I wouldn't have thought downloading everything was a likely option - however I don't know about that."
To which I responded:
"There is no problem with iTunes, as you say, it's quite easy to download all with just right-clicking and selecting Download all. There seems to be no such action however in the Podcast app, so it's quite a hassle for an user to select each and every track to download them.
So is it correct that in all circumstances, only the latest episode in any Podcast is marked unplayed when it is just downloaded?"
Also, am I correct with that there is really no other way to download all the episodes in a podcast than selecting each and every episode to mark it, and then download them after they are all marked? There is no "mark all" option right?
Hopefully there is an expert on the Podcast app that can answer my questions.
Posted on Jun 28, 2016 7:19 AM