Updated the podcast app, now all podcasts come up as temporarily unavailable

Try Downcast. It's not quite as pretty as Apple's podcast app, but it works very well and has more granular control too.

I've given up and started listening to all my programs on Stitcher. Has its advantages and disadvanteges but Apples non-response to this is quite lame. (Galaxy, anyone?)

Well, I finally downloaded the newest iTunes 11.1.3 and guess what? I refreshed my podcasts, and synced my iPhone 4s with my iMac. Tried to play a podcast and . . . "This episode is temporarily unavailable from [name of podcast].

The whole exercise was a total waste of time. C'mon Apple!

I've been having the same problem for almost a week now. Very frustrating that it is taking Apple this long to find a resolution.

I cant believe that apple has screwed tis up so badly. I have gigs worth of training videos that have been converted to podcasts and used to play fine on my ipad. I the went and purchased the ipad Air 64gb so that I could carry more with me. The ipad air will not sync enyof them correctly now. While my ipad shows 50gb of space taken up with the videos I only see 1 video in the podcasts app. They all appear to have been located in a single file so that I cannot just navigate to a particular episode. Ive deleted the app and redownloaded it. Ive tried tagging the videos as movies and they do not appear on the ipad. This is so lame of Apple and I would expect so much more. Ive spent thousand of pounds on apple hadware and am now thinking of distching them completely its an absolute joke. Where is the apple support guys whay are they not proactively working on this or at leaset acknowledging the issue it cnt be that harwda to fix. They wont even allow me to not use the podcast app if I wish to sync. This is complete crap.

Adrian

Yep, I have exactly the same issue. My podcasts are sitting there in iTunes but can't be synced to my iPhone or iPad. Some old podcasts that I wanted to keep have also been deleted. It's horribly frustrating. The podcasts app is usless. Why does Apple persist with this shoddiness? I don't understand why podcasts were ever separated from iTunes. It used to work perfectly but now it is unusuable. I can't listen to any podcasts through my iPhone any more.

Just wanted to confirm what some others are saying - this problem seems to happen when you sync your phone with iTunes (even if you have configured iTunes not to sync podcasts).

Yep. Same problem here, started in late Oct. Very annoying. Apple -- please FIX!

I was having the same issue and also noticed that some of my songs were not available to play on my phone either. Although I did get everthing working again. I had tried deleting the Podcasts app, reinstall, shutdown, check for updates for anything involved and none of that worked. I then did a restore iPhone from from backup and that only made things worse. At that point nothing would sink to my iPhone, music, podcasts or apps. I then did a restore as new and was able to sync anything I wanted to my phone. I then restored a backup to my phone and that also worked. So I got my phone back to the way it was before the restore as new with out the sync or podcasts unavailable issue. I did this a few days ago and so far everything is working fine.

I have the same problem with podcasts not able to be downloaded with my iPad and iOS 7.0.3. But I do not sync it with iTunes, rather via iCloud. Strange thing is that the podcast app works fine on my iPhone 5 (also running on iOS 7.0.3). I tried serveral times to erase the podcas app, restart iPad, re-download the app... still the same problem...

I was having the same problem, but after having a different problem with my iPad and finding that reseting the iPad (no data loss) fixed it, I tried the same solution on the iPhone. After, I tried to sync again, and PRESTO!

Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

Given that this was the solve for two different problems (three if you consider that I had this problem AND some podcasts outright not appearing on my device), I suspect a device reset is the answer to most seemingly unanswerable issues.

The problem is solved! I suspected yesterday that the error message could somehow be misleading and that maybe a shortage in memory space could be the problem. And indeed I only had half a GB disk space left on my iPad. So I deleted some apps/data and – bingo! the podcasts are being synced and downloaded as they are exptected to.

To all those whose problem is not lack of space (I had > 14 GB free) and is not fixed by a reboot, I would suggest taking a look at the following Preference setting in iTunes on your Mac. (I currently have iTunes 11.1.2 (31) on OS X 10.6.8.)

1) In iTunes, go to the Store menu and Sign In with your Apple ID, if you are not yet signed in.

2) Go to the iTunes menu -> Preferences... -> Store Preferences -> Sync podcast subscriptions and settings

If this setting is checked (i.e. On), then uncheck it to turn it off. (You may still need to reload any saved podcasts on your iPhone that are already corrupted, either using Add Old Episodes, or by going to the "i" information on the corrupted podcast, choosing to Remove Download, and then choosing Download Episode. If you can't download the podcast again, you might see if there is an Undelete utility for your device that could find and restore the deleted file. I don't know if that is available for mobile devices.)

Notice that this setting is not the Device setting that has been mentioned earlier in other posts. I have a couple reasons to suspect that this setting may be a key factor in the problem, at least for some people.

For me, everything worked fine even after upgrading my iPhone to the new operating system -- as long as I was using the podcast that had been set up originally in iTunes on my Mac. The trouble started *after* I added a new podcast directly on my iPhone, which meant that its settings had to be synced with iTunes on the Mac. At my next sync with the Mac, the sync did not go well and subsequently the saved podcasts on my iPhone were corrupted as described.

It was after making this Preference change that the problem has disappeared for me. I can have different settings between devices for my Podcasts (e.g. on my Mac, going to Podcasts -> select one -> Settings -> unchecking Subscribed and setting Download to Off). Yet, while there is no longer any syncing of the settings, the saved podcast recordings still do sync between my iPhone and my Mac. New episodes downloaded to my iPhone are synced to my Mac. Adding old episodes on my Mac will sync them onto my iPhone. But with no problems of corrupting my saved podcasts -- even if they have never been listened to at all. (No need to listent for just a couple seconds to keep them safe.)

There could be different causes for similar symptoms such as with this "temporarily unavailable" issue. I hope this solution helps some others who have not found the other solutions to work for their situation.

On top of the disaster zone that is the podcasts app, I also subsequently started having the same problem with iTunes playlists. Tracks I bought from iTunes would appear in the "Purchased" playlist on my iPhone, but would not sync to any other playlists I added them to. My 5GB iCloud storage was completely full so I backed up to my pc and then deleted the iCloud back ups. I then synced my iPhone to iTunes on my pc and - hey presto - the podcasts and purchased tracks magically appeared. Hooray!

Many thanks for your advice here, everyone. I would never have worked that out for myself. And big fat boos to Apple! I wish I had never updated my iPhone 4 to IOS7. It now runs so slowly it's painful. Well, thanks for that, Apple. My phone is little more than a very expensive paperweight at this point. I would upgrade to the 5S, were they not as rare as hen's teeth where I live. Samsung here I come!

Ugh, my iPad4 now refuses to update, however. How can that be? It's the same iTunes account, the same (empty) iCloud account. There's 15GB of free space on my iPad too. How can the iPhone update but the iPad not? Both are running the latest version of IOS7. 😠