iOS 15 Podcasts app - Up Next gone screwy

Yep, same here. Podcasts is just shamefully poorly built right now and getting worse. Major issues:

1. Queue is frequently wiped for no reason. Very frustrating as I have lots of podcasts that I don't listen to every episode of so I keep a pretty complex queue to manage my listening. In a number of cases I'll have individual episodes of a podcast I don't subscribe to and then, when the queue is wiped, I can't remember those random episodes and re-add them.
2. The current episode is frequently automagically (autocraptastically) added to the top of my queue so it plays a second time and I have to skip it the second time.

Honestly this is just pathetic basic engineering problems and the software team should be ashamed that this is the state of a product of theirs.

Just wanted to let you know I have put in a ticket as well. I referred to the number of users here that have said they have the same issue. Apple Support should know by now it is NOT an isolated problem.

I have hated the Up Next format since the last big overhaul of the Podcast App. I have about 30 different podcast episodes downloaded my phone at any one time; why does the software think that what I want to listen to next is an older episode that I have already listened to rather than one of my unplayed episodes???! The only explanation I have is that the dev has sub-contracted the work to their 4-year old child, AFTER the child has found the key to the drinks cabinet.

However I have now started to experience the problem of it randomly playing different episodes after a pause.

• first time I paused my headphones (Bose not Apple) to ask my wife a question. I then hit play and it started midway through a different episode of the same show that I had listened to the day before.
• The second time I parked up at work and turned off the engine part way through an episode. At the end of the day I started to go home and instead of picking up where I left off it played a different episode from the same show that I listened to the previous week.
• On my way home I had to briefly stop and get out the car. Before I got back into the car, I checked what was showing as 'Now Playing' on my phone and it was the same episode I was listening to when I parked up. As soon as the car started, it played an episode from a completely different show, that I had listened to a few weeks ago.

This has now gone beyond a joke, the app is utter dross. It is the worst piece of software that I currently use. Can anybody recommend an alternative that doesn't harvest all your data to sell to advertisers?

Thanks to the posters who included the feedback link. I have used it to complain that Listen Now is a broken feature.

Same! I’m always behind on my podcasts so I had a list of 50+ alternating with all my different shows from oldest to newest. GONE. Tried to go back and do just a few and as soon as I close the app it’s immediately cleared. Closed out of the app, tried restarting my phone. Nothing works.

Same here! Ever since the update pausing and leaving the podcast app for any amount of time or closing it has a high chance of deleting the up next/queue. Nothing i’ve tried has helped so far- just have to go back in, re-add episodes and hope they stay put for a while.

Thanks to @kkuja for providing the Feedback link.

I just submitted my feedback, hopefully everyone here can do the same!

Would love for this to be fixed!

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

I don't think anyone from Apple has acknowledged. I just spent some time on chat with Apple support. They recommended leaving feedback here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/ under the Podcasts app. I haven't done that yet - had to update from 15.1 to 15.1.1 so now I'll wait to duplicate the issue in 15.1.1before leaving feedback. (But I'm not expecting the update to fix the issue.)

I have all the same issues. It seems that if I resume listening to a podcast after pausing it by tapping my AirPods or hitting play on car stereo, it will continue playing, the episode, but it seems to make a second copy of this as a one-off queue. Like others, the only way I have found to correct this is to add another podcast to the queue. This however leaves the original podcast episode that was playing still in the original queue, even though it is marked as played, thus losing the position it was paused.. note that with all of this, Up Nest is not the same as the user created queue.

Once the playing of the one-off queue is over, the app will either:

1. Play the same podcast over again if you have added an episode as ”play last” to restore the queue, or
2. Play the podcast episode you added as “play next” to restore the queue
   1. This leaves the episode that restarted and broke the queue still in the queue, but now after the episode(s) added as play next
   2. This second copy will play from beginning when it is up again in the queue, or
3. Play the next podcast in the “Up Next” section as another single-podcast queue if no new episodes were added to restore the queue.
   1. the Up Next section seeems to be based on the most recent episode of my subscriptions, not my created queue. Once that it over, the app will either play the same podcast over again if you, or sometimes will play the next podcast in “Up Next” as another single-podcast queue.
   2. “Up Next” seems the be in the order of most recent episode downloaded, not my created queue.

Please fix this.

This also is happening to me.

iOS 15.0.2

iPhone 11 Pro

1. Create a queue of downloaded podcast episodes.
2. Begin listening.
3. Pause listening.
4. Close phone, come back after a short period of time.
5. The episode I was currently listening to has changed (typically reverted back to a previously played episode) and the queue has been removed.

i am having a very hard time with this app.

1. played episodes replay instead is going to the next one in now playing.
2. episodes i mark as "play next" don't show up in now playing at all.
3. and all the same complaints other people have been saying.

Similar to what others have said, I like to use the Up Next list to order my podcasts. But there have been a number of issues lately.

• Far too frequently, when I've left the app for some time the entire Up Next list disappears. Sometimes there simply is no Up Next list at all. Sometimes it assumes I'll just want to continue listening to further episodes of the same podcast.
• When I go to re-add episodes to the Up Next list, sometimes adding a single episode will cause my old list to suddenly reappear back as it was, but now with that single episode also in the list. So I have my list back, but need to remove the one I just added because it's now there twice.
• But sometimes, adding an episode again does not trigger the old list from reappearing. So I have to just go on adding the entire list back again.
• Perhaps the most maddening thing is when I go back to the Podcast app and my Up Next list is still there, but the currently playing episode has been added to the top of the Up Next list. So when the episode ends, the next episode is the one I just finished. I'm constantly deleting this phantom repeat of episodes.

Sadly, nothing in podcasts is mentioned in the bug fixes included in 15.2, but I'm going to hope something is there anyway. I really don't want to switch to a new podcast app, but you never know what motivation a long weekend with idle time might create.

Steps to reproduce is quite simple. Just queue some episodes and then force quite the app. Before ios15 queue would've been preserved. Now it is just wiped. See screenshots. First is with the queue, second after the force quitting.

This makes me wants to throw my phone away.

I have 15.2 it’s not resolved on my iPhone. Use a different podcast app would be my advise Pocket Casts is brilliant

totally correct! same happening to me. queued yo a whole season of dr death.. episode finished and nothing played after. inlloked at the queue and everything that was once there, was gone.. i did this twice and noticed they would disappear within minutes