iOS 14.6 podcast app draining battery

Apple Discussions is a user-to-use your knowledge sharing forum and, as you can see, we are all sharing some of the pain with the Podcasts app upgrade. The best bet is for all to submit problems and suggestions to Apple at Apple Feedback, https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-podcasts/

The iOS 14.5 & 14.6 Apple Podcasts app upgrades are still bug-ridden. I’m sorry podcast users have had to serve as guinea pigs for such flawed versions, it doesn’t make sense to invest time trying to answer questions about such an unpredictable piece of software.

On the Apple Podcasts Server side new episodes for some Shows are listed three days after they are available on TuneIn, Stitcher, SoundCloud, etc.

On the Apple Podcasts app side:

• the app gets stuck and remain in loading mode with some users when first opened,

• Episodes sometimes mark themselves as played after just a few seconds,

• some Shows do not list the most recent unplayed episodes even when the Show settings are chosen to do so.

• Station lists sometimes do not list unplayed episodes available in Show lists, even though the Station settings do not limit episodes,

• some users experience difficulty deleting episodes from lists,

• some episodes download once in Show lists, others simply do not, even the toggle for Automatic Downloads in Show settings is On,

• the app causes a heating problem and excessive battery draining, particularly when select other apps are open in the background or foreground,

• a change in key default settings in the iOS 14.5 Podcasts app upgrade caused numerous unwanted automatic downloads in Shows with tens or hundreds of episodes.

Hopefully, some heads have rolled for those responsible, clearer thinking people have replaced them and the bugs will be straightened out soon. Apple is an excellent company which has made this experience frustrate us more.

I found a solution to iOS 14.6 Podcast app draining my battery and overheating my phone.

Exit Podcasts.

Select Settings.

Scroll down to Podcasts and click on it.

Scroll down to Automatic Downloads.

Turn off "Enable When Following".

(You might also consider turning off Cellular Data" if you don't want Podcasts to use megabytes you pay for.)

(Consider turning on "Block Downloads Over Cellular").

Exit Settings.

Open the Podcast app.

Select Library.

Select Shows.

Choose the first Show.

Click on ... (three dots at upper right).

Choose Settings.

Turn off "Automatic Downloads".

Click Done at upper right.

Click the back arrow at upper left.

Choose the next show, click ..., turn off automatic downloads, click Done, click the back arrow.

Repeat for all your shows.

This will stop the automatic downloads of unwanted shows that are overheating your phone. In addition to turning off automatic downloads, I also turned off notifications to avoid being notified about every new episode for every show.

If any Apple people are reading this, I suggest that you communicate to internal app developers that they should choose default settings that do not overheat the phone, or drain the battery, or overfill the memory, or overuse data.

1) Automatic Downloads should default to off.

2) Background Downloads should default to off.

3) Notifications should default to off.

4) When I go to Settings, Podcasts, and turn off Automatic Downloads, this should turn it off for all shows. I should not have to go to each show individually and turn off Automatic Downloads.

I have got iPhone 11 Pro. After installing iOS 14.6 my iPhone gets very hot after using Podcast app for 5-20 minutes. The only problem solution is to terminate the Podcast app and disable the background activity of Podcast app. I can see that the Podcast app uses 80-90% of the battery during this short time! As a workaround I have subscribed to my podcasts in Spotify. I can listen to them in Spotify for hours without any problems.

Here's another faster solution --

Go to SETTINGS: Podcast

Turn off: Notifications

Turn off: Background App Refresh

Turn off: Cellular Data (unless you have unlimited cellular plan)

Turn on: Block Downloads over cellular

Turn off: Continuous playback (until iOS update improves podcast app functionality)

Turn off: Automatic Downloads - Enable When Following

This is just an experimental work-around to address the heating up and draining of your battery and the damage that's already shortened your battery's life and length of operation between charges.

Good luck to all.

For me it's not a workaround at all. I like to subscribe to podcasts and let them download all new episodes automatically using my WLAN (no cellular updates). This allows me usually to listen to my podcast everywhere without downloading them manually.

At the moment my only real workaround is to re-subscribe to all my podcasts in Spotify. This way I get the same automatic downloads again. It works very well for me.

I hope somebody from Apple would read this and accelerate the bug fix of the podcast app. Soon I am done with all my podcasts movement to Spotify and will not use Apple Podcast app at all. I really disappointed, that Apple does not fix issue. I have been using Apple Podcast app for a very long time. But now I have to replace it, if I don't want to spent my money for battery replacement next time. The summer time and hot battery are looking for the trouble. ;-)

Agree. I too have been an Apple Podcast App user for a very long time. The latest refresh is a big step backward in functional simplicity and has the added battery drain issue. I'm experimenting with the app Pocket Casts , the free version seems to work well for me, and no battery issue.

I do hope that someone of influence from Apple is reading these posts and paying attention

I have the exact same problem. Honestly I just downloaded a different app to use for podcasts and haven’t had any issues with the other app. I have to double check where I was on the things I’m listening just so that I can listen to podcasts while I’m at work. I’ll probably use apple podcasts again if they fix this problem but it’s not worth the trouble of using an external charger 4 times a day.

[Edited by Moderator]

I also have been experiencing rapid battery drain whenever Apple Podcast App is refreshing. I loose 10-20% battery in less than a minute, every time the app refreshes. I spent time today screen sharing with apple support and deleted and re-downloaded the app and the battery stabilized. But a few hours later the app is ravaging my battery again.

You can try to make a feedback about the Podcast App.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

What I meanwhile think, that this happens, if you have subscribed too many podcasts, with lots of old, never heard episodes.

Because it currently looks so, that it kind of "repairs itself". Don't know how, but this is effect of sucking the batteries dry has been going down the last weeks. Not perfect as it was, but much better since 4 weeks ago.

I have for example about 85 Podcasts and a lot of never heard stuff, I estimate over 3000 episodes never heard (I've chosen "load only new episodes" and "delete heard episodes"). Currently the podcast app takes about 8,4 GB of iPhone memory. 8-) Its a bit much, but I have podcasts when I like it.

How many do others have?

I’m having identical problems- iPhone 12 Pro Max. I’ve found that turning on low power mode seems to help to some degree, but this is an awful bug.

Agree. Since update to iOS 14.6 Podcast App is sucking battery power. My iPhone is heating up when The App is engaged.

I really dislike the functionality ( or lack thereof ) of the latest version of the Podcast App. However that’s a separate issue from its power hunger.

Overall a huge step backwards.

Another reason why this isn’t a viable solution— despite having the same problems others have mentioned (rapid battery drain/heating, laggy interface, sometimes crashing on load, etc.) on my iPhone XS, automatic downloads were already disabled on all of my subscriptions.

This wasn’t a problem at all until iOS 14.6. On every previous version, the Podcasts app was zippy, efficient, and something I used to specifically recommend to others as a great iOS feature.

That’s no longer the case.

I too have experienced the same issues and have deleted the app and downloaded it again with no success. This is clearly an issue with the recent update, please fix this.

I add to this list for apple podcast app:

• the app sometimes hangs for no obvious reason.
• for longer episodes (>1hour) it sometimes will repeat it over and over, even if I say “mark as played” or actively select next episode. It takes some minutes for the app to recalibrate before it works correctly again.
• sometimes forgets that I already played an episode.
• it sometimes means, that I never heard any episode of an podcast with over 200 episodes.

This app is obviously programmed not having in mind, that there could be 100 podcasts with >200 or much more episodes each.