Why did iTunes 11.1 (126) delete all (SEVERAL HUNDRED) Podcasts?

I'll joyfully "pile on" and "beat a dead horse" here.

I too lost all of my podcasts...had to manually re subscribe to them via the store.

Thanks icrappytunes for screwing up a reasonably nice bit of software.

I'm also very unhappy with the literally hundreds and hundreds of podcast episodes that are now on my itunes in the "list" tab?...Why oh Why did the idiots at Apple do this? I've already listened to the podcast or don't want to and want to delete them from itunes permanently but now we can't. They sit there in some stupid "cloud verse".

I've also had to learn how to place podcasts in a "playlist" to listen to. Normally I could easily drag the podcasts I wanted to listen to to the "podcasts" playlist I created in itunes. That easy to use feature is gone...but it is located in the "my stations" section on the iphone...you have to go into "list" in itunes, right click on the podcast and click on "add to playlist" then choose the playlist you have created. Once sync'd you can find the play list in the "my stations".

What a pain in the arse to go through to add podcasts to a playlist.

For all the whoop I am not impressed.

itunes was the only thing keeping me using an iphone. There is no better system out there, that I can find, for managing/down loading, etc. podcasts...BUT now that Apple has fubarred itunes/podcasts it is time to see what else I can use and sell my iphone for a Samsung Note, which I prefer for reading as I use a Galaxy 5 Player as my ereader.

On placing podcasts in a playlist: do you use smart playlists? One of my main ones is simply "Media Kind is Podcast" and "Plays is 0". That usually works better for me than drag and drop does.

And just avoid the List pane now in the Podcasts part of iTunes. That thing is a nightmare. (OK, if you're stubborn: go into List view and Command-Click on one of the arrows: that will open or collapse all the podcasts, so at least that way you can limit how much you see the zombie-episode-cloud army, even if you know they're still lurking under those arrows.)

Do you have the Podcast app on more or more devices? What are the settings there? For me it essentially wiped out every episode that was in the series that I synced with my devices, and that wasn't still on the device. The 30 series that don't sync to my iPhone/iPad were left alone, the 12 that were synced were virtually erased. And at least one of the series I subscribe to only lets you download for a week, so there is no going back for the older episodes if you don't have a backup!

I had initially assumed it was only played episodes that got deleted, but thinking about your assumption above I'm now sure that only the episodes that were still on my device were preserved in my library so unplayed episodes were deleted too. 😠

The mantra backup, backup, backup, particularly before an update, has been proved once again.

tt2

I do have back-ups, but I don't the the disk space to back-up my iTunes. This is still the stupidest bug I've ever come across.

I DID have iTunes synced to my iPod Touch's Podcast app, but I have since turned syncing OFF. It was STILL deleting files.

I've just deleted the Podcast app from my iPod Touch. I'll see what that does.

Any of your hard drives can fail at any time... Invest in another as a backup.

YMMV but nothing has been deleted again since I changed the settings to Keep all in the podcasts app, restored the backup episodes, rolled back to my pre-upgrade library, and told iTunes not to sync podcast settings.

And yes, this is a stupid bug, but that's what happens when carefully tested software meets the world of real users rather than the things the designers thought to test. 😮

tt2

I had this happen to me too, 95GB vanished.

I'm trying to work out what this sync feature is trying to do when it erases the podcasts. How is this new feature trying to help us?

My last back up was in Feburary, I have old podcasts on that bootable back up.

I first tried to revert back to iTunes 11.04, that didn't work, so now i have a messy podcast list with lots of missing files.

Somehow i managed to get the podcast list back using time machine, but i have no recent files as my podcasts folder was way to big for my time machine drive to keep doing daily backups.

In my case the podcasts are still on my Mac, but they don't appear in the browser.

http://tech.kateva.org/2013/09/itunes-111-is-unable-to-browse-some.html

They do show up in Smart Playlists though. I think some of my old podcasts-like recordings used to show up as "Music", but they don't now. So I wonder if my particular bug is because some 50 or so of my old podcats don't fit Apple's newest media categories.

Nasty bugs, they should have been caught before release.

Since I had an 'invisible' (to 11.1) podcast in my smart playlist, I tried changing media type from podcast to Music. That made it visible to both iTunes browser AND iTunes search.

Others might want to try this experiment. Use Smart Playlist to make 11.1 display your lost podcast, then try changing Media Type to Music.

You are failing to understand that there are a LOT of folks, just like me, who have had the physical files REMOVED from the directory where iTunes looks to play back the files. The completely missing (i.e. not there) files, coupled with the podcasts removal from iTunes itself, makes it impossible to just "fix" this. One has to go back and resub to the missing podcasts. If it is a podcast that no longer exists, you are even more hosed.

I had mentioned in a prior post "In my case the podcasts are still on my Mac". I think there's more than one bug with podcast management in iTunes 11.1. Some people have the files but they are hidden from most iTunes search (but not smart playlists). Others have lost data.

This post is similar to what I see:

http://www.mcelhearn.com/itunes-11-apple-has-broken-podcasts-but-heres-how-to-pa rtly-fix-them/?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

My personal iTunes 11.1 bug seems to be related to Media Type problems.

iTunes 11.1 seems to have been rushed out as a side-effect of the iOS 7.x crunch -- it's a bit of a hot mess.

A bit more progress on working ONE version of this bug. In my case files were invisible to iTunes browser/search but NOT iTunes Smart Playlist. So in my case no files were "lost", but since only a PART of iTunes could see them they might vanish from a sync'd device or from the Cloud.

The bug I see has to do with Media Kind. Using Smart Playlists I isolated the affected podcasts, changed media Kind to Audiobook (Music switch failed) then BACK to Podcast and they are visible again.

I wonder if this bug with Media Kind can result in file deletion when one enables Cloud sync or sync with Podcasts.app (I don't).

More details: http://tech.kateva.org/2013/09/itunes-111-is-unable-to-browse-some.html

(Note: Media Kind is unrelated to Genre. One can have a Genre of Podcast and a Media Kind of Music for example.)

I just rebooted my macpro laptop and the new installed & updated iTunes gave me a corruption warning and now ALL of my libraries and playlists are gone!!!! Geezus! Now i have to go back and rebuild them. Talk about aggrivation. What the ******! happened!??!!!! I was enjoying exploring iOS7 on my iPad Mini and my iPhone5 and now this!

I love Apple but sometimes......grrrr.

But all that does is tells the library to point to the location where the files are stored, correct? If that is the case, that won't help any of us that had a completely empty podcast folder after everything went south, right? So, this won't help someone like me, right?

Oh well, nice try.

The process above is for when the media is still present but the database has been corrupted. If the podcasts have been deleted, but can be restored from a backup, then the same process can also be used to restore a library that "knows" about the podcasts, which were played when etc. rather than importing the episodes into the library as fresh files.

tt2

I hear you on the not being able to delete already listened to podcast episodes!!! It is horrible that I have to see all these episodes with the cloud.

Very HORRIBLE update on iTunes as far as podcasts go.