Podcasts App... Not Syncing Correctly.

You may not be able to do things the way you have been doing them and the Podcasts app is an absolutely horrid alternative that was broken, is broken, and Apple does not seem to care about fixing. For starters and this is a major sticking point for most, it does not sync through the cloud to Macs. Only to other iOS devices. Downcast is an alternative Podcast app. It has tons of more features. It has a Mac app & an iOS app and everything syncs between your devices without doing anything. Episodes, settings, marking as played, deleting, location you left off, playlists, everything just syncs and works automatically. I can not recommend it enough. You can also export your podcast list from iTunes to Downcast so you don't have to resubscribe to everything.

Thank you. Got the app, now to the downloads!

I have found that whatever they have recent done, it has solved all of my podcast app problems. I am enjoying my podcasts TROUBLE FREE for the first time in nearly a year. Thank you Apple!!

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The OPML import worked and Downcast is now importing my podcasts! I hope the "played" status will show up correctly, too, but you are a lifesaver. Why Downcast doesn't highlight this prominantly is a mystery, but I'm sure glad it seems to be working!

I've installed iOS 7 and the Podcast app on my iPad and iPhone. I've installed iTunes 11 on both my Macs. So far, all is looking good. Podcasts are syncing correctly across all of my Macs and iOS devices, including keeping track of where I am in playback. For the first time, I feel optimistic that some of the most major issues have been addressed.

I'll keep testing and report back.

It seems that when you move to iTunes 11.1 and IOS 7 that the workaround to delete the podcast app and play podcasts through Music no longer works, and you are forced down the route of the Podcast app. I've reluctantly downloaded it, and my main concern, that of not being able to see my playlists appears to have been solved. You can now see them as a menu option from "My Stations".

Still haven't done much investigation into the Stations idea as there doesn't appear to be a way of playing individual episodes from podcasts rather than selecting all of the episodes of an individual podcast. However, if it keeps replicating the iTunes playlsts, that will be ok for me.

There are reports of podcasts vanishing, and it still doesn't look like the phone is syncing correctly with iTunes, but I'll need to investigate that later. The biggest complaint, and this is off topic for this forum I know, is that iTunes on your Mac/PC is now showing all available episodes to download when viewing in list form. So, you have to plow through 100s of old episodes to see the ones you have downloaded. It also seems to be downloading huge amounts of back catalogue of individual episodes (Tii for example) - luckiky I've got unlimited broadband or I'd have used my entire allowance overnight.

So, a small step forward thankfully

An update to my previous first impression of iOS 7 + iTunes 11.1:

1. If you keep everything in the Cloud, the ecosystem seems to sync quite well. I've tested with two Macs, two Apple TVs, an iPhone, and an iPad – and I seem to be able to move seemlessly between them.

2. If you download local copies of Podcasts to your Mac, the problem of iTunes on the Mac not reporting progress back to the Cloud seems to still be an issue. In fact, I found that downloading a Podcast episode basically cut the ties with the Cloud-syncing ecosystem. There may exist some mechanism of manual syncing, refresh, etc., that addresses this, but I haven't found it yet.

3. The Podcast "App" on Apple TV is still not syncing with Macs/iTunes, which means it's still pretty useless. However, if you select "My Computer" and select Podcasts from there, the ATV will feed off of the Podcast data in iTunes, and it updates it with progress info too. That works for me.

It would be great if someone can outline exactly how we should have the setup so that we can sync podcasts and progress between the iOS devices and Macs.

From the posts here in the last few days, tt seems that they may have finally fixed this. Thank you!

P.S. I pretty much deleted all subscriptions from my Mac and have been subscribing/downloading podcasts using the Podcast app on the iPhone only. Whenever I sync/backup my iPhone, it will download the episodes to the Mac. But between sync/backup, there is no updating of the podcasts on my Mac, so I stopped listening to podcasts on my Mac altogether.

I switched Downcast and just deleted podcasts from my Mac and the Podcasts app from my phone- so I can't lsiten to Podcasts on the computer anymore, either.

It was a small hassle getting everything migrated over, but now that its done it "just works" how it's supposed to- even if that's more limited in functionality than what I had before.

There is a Mac version of Downcast that syncs with the iOS version.

Interesting- I'll go look that up! Thanks.

Still seems a bit inelegant to me, though - un-Apple-like. Now I've got an extra app on my phone and maybe another one on my destop. It makes sense to me that all my audio media should be in the same place. I'd much rather they split off videos into it's own application.

I download podcasts exclusively to my Mac Pro and then want to sync to my iPhone. I do not want to download another copy from the "cloud" when I already have a copy on my Mac. Even though iTunes is set to sync the last ten unplayed episodes of all podcasts, that doesn't happen. I see the list of podcasts on my iPhone but have to download the episodes over the air.

Why?

Am I missing something in the configuration? Or does Apple expect us to stream everything every time we play it? I don't always have a good WiFi or cellular data connection, and don't want to drive my cell data usage up for duplicate feeds.

I have managed FINALLY to make it work most of the time, sometimes a pod cast or 6 has not downloaded /synched to my iphone so i usually check and sometimes I need to synch again. I did have to re subscribe to some but not all of the podcasts on my list .

I travel a lot and spend much of my life with neither wifi nor cellular data, am fed up with the universal assumption that i can stream at any time. I find it one millions times easier to download everything onto my Macbook Pro with high speed broadband and synch it all cleaning up as i go than to to do it all on my phone. I synch my ipad as well so its just less air waves isnt it!

I do have Downcast BTW as i needed to use it when travelling without my mac book. I am hoping that now i can just stick with itunes podcast etc ..

This is why I use a first gen iPod Touch with a 2003 iMac G4 - it still syncs podcasts the old way with no fuss!