Podcasts randomly marked as Played

I’m having this issue too probably since iOS 16 at least. Subsequent software updates have not fixed it. I have however noticed that it only affects 2 of my podcast both of which are Patreon paid podcasts added manually by the URL. Just wondering if this is the same for others?

It’s extremely frustrating as I often listen to certain podcasts in the car and then switch to lighter listening ones when going to sleep.

Same exact thing for me. The one that it keeps happening on is a manual entry from Patreon. Sometimes it seems to save my spot and then all of a sudden I’ll get in the car and it’s marked as played and have no clue what spot I had been listening at. It’s incredibly frustrating and I haven’t figured out a fix yet, sometimes I’ll screenshot my spot since it’s a longer show.

I searched for that new behavior of the podcast-app and found your post. Exactly the same here. Even episodes that I heared only a few minutes of keep getting marked as completely heared on the next day. That’s definitely a SW Bug and didn’t happen before 16.4

I’m also encountering this issue and it just so happens that it’s always the Patreon-paid podcast, same as jonbell82. Thanks for posting.

I’m having the same issue in the last couple of months and it was never a problem before. I will switch shows a lot depending on what I’m doing and it constantly will mark unfinished shows as played. This is the only thread I’ve found so far with anyone else having the issue. Maybe time to switch apps I guess.

I'm also experiencing episodes from a Patreon RSS feed getting marked as played. I turned off the feature that automatically plays the next episode. I don't use the play-to-sleep stuff. It happens to episodes that I haven't listened to at all, they effectively just disappear. I then have to mark them as not played and redownload. Every couple of days...

This started happening to me recently with just one of the podcasts in my library. The latest episode is marked as played whether it has been accessed or not. It’s frustrating.

Seeing exactly the same issue unfortunately. Only for podcasts with an RSS feed that was added manually. Incredibly frustrating :(

I have this issue too and it had been isolated to a Patreon feed I use but today it finally happened to a daily podcast I grab through the Apple Podcast directory. Has anyone contacted Apple about this? I plan to open a ticket since I still have active AppleCare on my iPhone.

This is happening to me as well. I have a podcast with a huge backlog, so I’m listening though all of it, stopping only for new episodes of others. I stop mid episode all the time to listen to the new podcast episodes, but when I come back the prior show is marked as fully played and starts at the beginning. It’s pretty obnoxious

I tried getting to the bottom of this with someone at Patreon support, but I couldn't even get them to understand what the issue was and gave up. I tried to get it escalated beyond the front line of support, but all I got was the typical "have you tried deleting and reinstalling your podcast app?" lines.

Patreon are clearly doing something wrong with how they serve podcast episodes. Other podcast apps are able to keep track of the played/unplayed state of Patreon episodes, but they struggle to work out how long an episode is (see screenshot from Pocket Casts below - the episode in the centre of the screenshot is a Patreon podcast and Pocket Casts cannot determine the episode length)

Same for me. Though I generally only listen to podcasts in my car. It’s an older car with out Car Play - just regular Bluetooth. So I’m wondering if it’s because I’m pausing it with my car’s display instead of my phone. But I’ll have 10 minutes to go in an episode and it’ll just skip ahead to the next one.

Ugh, this is supremely annoying, because I listen to hours of podcasts every week. I have no idea why it's happening.

Same problem. Just for Patreon shows :'(