Podcast goes haywire on iTunes 11.1

All my podcasts went away when they were still in my iTunes Library in my Home Music folder. This is almost unexpeptible. Plus what ever I do in my podcasts (I had to resubscribe) I can't stop the Pocast from playing the next automatically. What ever I do iTune now plays the next pocast track. I tried unchecking shullfe but it keeps doing continuies playback.

What happens if you recover the lost podcasts from the Time Machine, and then immediately change "Media Kind" to Audiobook or Music? Do they remain in the library long enough for that to work?

General tip: if you want to keep a podcast episode in the long term, change the Media Kind - Apple has (annoyingly) designed podcast use around the assumption that they're only in your library for the short term, when of course lots of podcasts - language lessons and music ones, for example - don't really fit the "talk radio episode" template that Apple/iTunes seems to try to shoehorn them into.

Sorry to hear that. One last suggestion: recover the missing podcast episodes from Time Machine, but to a folder on your desktop, rather than directly to iTunes (I think that's possible!). Then try adding them to iTunes.

Oh, one other possibility: upon adding the file back to the library, mark it as unplayed, or Reset Plays. Perhaps iTunes is deleting the episode because you've already played it, and iTunes seems to believe you'd never want to keep a podcast you've already listened to.

What seems to go on in iTunes' podcast system: the List view as of 11.1 shows all episodes of podcasts currently available. Some podcasts, such as This American Life, only go back one episode: they don't have older episodes available through the normal podcast system. Other podcasts make everything available back to their very beginnings, so they may have hundreds or even thousands of available episodes. (Most seem to fall between these two extremes, and go back a couple of months.)

iTunes occasionally sometimes seems to decide that, if a podcast isn't "currently available" - i.e. if it's an episode of This American Life that you downloaded six months ago - that episode doesn't in fact exist, or at least shouldn't exist, and will therefore wipe it off your system. I have no idea what particularly prompts this behavior, but it's happened to me a few times.

This seems to be working for me:

Podcasts playlist in iTunes is empty

If the podcasts playlist in the Source list of iTunes becomes empty unexpectedly, don't worry—they're still on your computer and can be easily added back into iTunes by following these instructions.

1. Open iTunes.
2. Open iTunes Preferences:
   Mac users—From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
   Windows users—On the Edit menu, click Preferences.
3. Click the Advanced tab. Your iTunes Media folder location is displayed in the iTunes Media folder location window.
4. Make note of your iTunes Media folder location. Click OK or Cancel to close the Preferences dialog.
5. In iTunes, add the podcast files back to the Library:
   Mac users—From the File menu, choose Add to Library.
   Windows users—On the File menu, click Add Folder to Library.
6. In the resulting window, navigate to your iTunes Media folder (the location you noted in step 4), select the Podcasts folder inside of it, and click Choose (Mac) or OK (Windows).

iTunes will add all of your downloaded podcasts back to your iTunes Library and to Podcasts in the Source list. To resubscribe to your podcasts, select Podcasts in the Source list, then click any desired Subscribe button.

Last Modified: Mar 27, 2012

This sounds like the same problem I am having. After upgrading to the new version of iTunes most of my podcasts disappeared. I re-downloaded them (several hundred podcasts) and iTunes deleted them again. I tried to restore them from Time Machine and iTunes deleted them again. This is crazy. For whatever it's worth, eunicekhong, you're not alone.

i also have this problem. it is infuriating. i have restored the previous library and it brought back file *names* but the actual files are deleted. I have searched for them manually. I can see on my hard drive that I have suddenly got much more free space, which I can only assume came from the files itunes 11.1 has stolen from me.

For me, itunes is deleting podcasts from my hard drive but not from my library. Many of my podcasts, over half, now have a "cloud" next to them, which I guess is the new "download now" symbol. I think what they've done is taken the liberty of removing many of the listened-to programs from our harddrives while still giving us access to them if needed. Like they're doing us a favor. I can see all of my podcasts (I have over 385 days worth of audio), but many of them are "in the cloud". This should be an option but not something that is suddenly mandated.

I'm also having problems syncing with my iphone to the point that I can no longer plug it into my computer. Fortunately, the phone downloads my new podcasts automatically so I am able to listen to them as they are available.

I assume this will all be resolved within a week or so but it's very frustrating.

I'm having the same problem with a slight wrinkle: older podcasts i have downloaded directly to my ipod appear with the blue 'unplayed' dot in iTunes in list view. Not on the overall podcast mind you, like when you have a real new episode! And I cannot 'Mark as Played', so the blue dots stay there, on podcasts that have not yet been downloaded onto my computer! (They still have the little 'cloud' icon.)

Grrrr!

Ditto here.

I've signed into my account on both the latest iTunes OS X and on Windows 7, same behavior on both.

It's happening to several podcasts I was and am subscribe to, and always the same episodes.