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

What really ticks me off is that this is the third time I've gone through some mess like this. They keep screwing around and making it worse with no apparent benefit.

I also fixed this problem by performig a clean install of iOS7 on my phone. I reinstalled the apps to the phone from iCloud. Subsequently, I synced with iTunes adding the podcasts and songs that I selected to the phone. The process is a bit long, but it appears to have solved the problem. Before I performed the clean install, I monitored the iphone sync process in Console and found that the syncing process failed. That lead me to believe the problem was not the podcast app, but a iproblem in the iOS.

I had the same problem. This how I resoved it:

1. Before syncing uncheck all podcasts

2.Recheck all required podcsta manually

3. Sync

All podcasts checked should be playable

I think this is it. Consistent with everything I've seen.

I managed a work around - full actions below. Some or all may be necessary, this is just what worked for me.

Firstly: Apple...? Is there an official response to this? When can we expect a real fix? It shouldn't be arcane. If we have a check box that says a file is going to be synced, it should be synced - or we should be told it cannot and why. It should just work. If it is complicated under the hood, the software should hide that from us.

What I did:

Unchecking and rechecking didn't work for me.

I tried to make it as simple for the system to honour my requests as possible:

* I deleted all podcasts from my phone, and as far as the phone is concerned, it isn't subscribed to any, and it has none listed. I did this to avoid any conflict logic that may be happening when it tries to determine if a specific file should be synced or not.

* In iTunes, I check the specific podcasts I want to be synced to the phone using the 'sync podcasts' checkbox but not the 'automatically include' checkbox. Again, I did this to reduce any logic issues that may be happening when I tell it what I want to sync to the phone.

After a sync, there are still no podcasts on my phone.

If I look at the 'on this phone' tab in iTunes, it thinks they are on the phone (they are greyed out, with a dotted circle next to them, but they are listed and they each have a checkmark)

That lead me to look up what the dotted grey circle meant. Seems that is a a mess all of its own. Basically, it indicates files it know you want to sync, but can't (lack of memory? DRM/license issues? Because it is Friday? Who knows)

The fix for this was to check 'manually manage music and videos' in the summary tab in iTunes.

Hope this helps.

I want to reenable the auto logic at some point as I'd like to listen to a new podcast episode without always doing a hard sync to my computer - but for now, I'll accept this.

You all are probably aware that Apple recently provided an upgrade to the Podcasts app. Keep in mind that even a fixed app may not help individual podcast episodes that were already damaged in the past. An earlier post mentioned that it appeared the damaged podcast episodes were partially deleted by the problem. If that is true, a corrected app would not change that and one would need to delete and download again (or perhaps see if there is some kind of undelete or file recovery app available).

That said, I'm wondering if anyone still encounters the problem with new podcasts after upgrading. Here is Apple's description of the changes in this version.

What's New in Version 2.0.1

This version of Podcasts includes the following improvements:

• You can now pull to refresh subscriptions in My Podcasts
• Resolved an issue that may cause playback to stop unexpectedly
• Fixed a problem where subscriptions may stop updating with new episodes
• Includes additional improvements to overall stability

I'm not surprised that they don't mention this issue specifically. It may or may not be covered by the more general statements, such as about "additional improvements to overall stability".

I saw this; I too had the same curiosity. I've updated-- will post here if I run into the issue again. Curious if anyone else runs into it too after updating.

Wow -- I just updated to the new version of Podcasts on my iPhone, and the problem seems to have vanished!

I've just updated to the new version of the Podcasts app, and the latest version of iTunes. For me too, the problem now appears to have been fixed.

By the way, now it's fixed, I want to publicly say thanks to Sam and the podcasts team at Apple for getting this done. I know it was a tricky one.

Issue seems to be fixed here with the new version too!

psynixis, you know someone on the Podcasts team? 🙂

This isn't fixed for me. This is a long thread and perhaps the problems and solutions have drifted as it has grown.

I just want an option that lets me select (check) content in iTunes on my computer, and have that sync to my iPhone when I connect it and click 'sync'. Nothing else.

For me:

• I have 1 Mac with all of my content. I want to connect my iPhone to this Mac and be able to sync content of my choice.
• iTunes is aware of what content is what and lists them in the correct place (podcasts in the podcasts section, music in the music section, etc.) so I know there is no issue with how the data is tagged etc.
• I have now turned off (deselected) the "manually mange music and videos" option. Now I know what that option is for, it isn't what I want to do (and actually it is surprising it worked at all)
• I only have the "Sync only checked songs and videos" option turned on. I'm assuming that this really means "Sync only checked content" and is not restricted to music and videos (so it should work for photos, podcasts, books, Tones, etc.)

From here, I check all of the content I want to sync on the respective page, and 'sync'. However:

• It is failing to sync my podcasts:
  • My iPhone is only exposing me to two podcasts (with 20 episodes in total)
  • I have checked 4 podcasts (with 42 episodes) in iTunes.
  • The "On This iPhone" tab in iTunes thinks that the podcasts I want are on the iPhone, if they are - they are not exposed in the podcasts app. It thinks I have all 42 episodes.
  • Perhaps the most bizarre part: I was part way through a podcast episode on my phone before trying to sync. That episode is still there and can be accessed via the 'now playing' option. However the podcast (and therefor this episode) is not listed in the "My Podcasts" list
• It is also failing to sync my music:
  • Newly added tracks in a playlist are not pulled in (39 songs in the playlist now, only the original 27 on my iPhone).
  • In the Music section of my iPhone in iTunes (where I select the music I want to sync) it says I want to sync 608 songs
    • However in the "On This iPhone" section, it says 683 items
    • Previous manually added songs are still there.
    • Many songs are listed with the dotted-circle (so it thinks it should have them on the phone but doesn't for some reason.

I'm sure at this point that this is some mix of user error on my part and iTunes voodoo that could perhaps be a little more "it just works" that we all love from Apple.

And I know that adding things to the phone directly (through the iPhone's app/music/podcast stores) can be confusing to the system - but I'm happy to resolve that each time I plug it in to my Mac by explicitly selecting the content I want and don't want. But that doesn't work.

I see in the iTunes/Preferences/Store Preferences dialog that there is a "Sync Podcasts subscriptions and Setting" option. However when you click on the help/question-mark button - this one option has no explanation.

Good grief my posts are long winded. Thanks in advance for any help.

100000% agree. I want the original probelm fixed as well. Still does not work for me after the latest update.

Pete Andrew wrote:

This isn't fixed for me. This is a long thread and perhaps the problems and solutions have drifted as it has grown.

I just want an option that lets me select (check) content in iTunes on my computer, and have that sync to my iPhone when I connect it and click 'sync'. Nothing else.

Oopps! I spoke too soon. Problem not really fixed for me either. Today, all my unplayed podcasts were deleted. The symptom is subtly different though. Now what happens is: the podcast shows as unplayed but deleted i.e. the iCloud icon shows up.

Previously, there was no indication that the unplayed podcast had been deleted from the device.

psynixis wrote:

Now what happens is: the podcast shows as unplayed but deleted i.e. the iCloud icon shows up.

That's what I've been experiencing the whole time... and if one more person says Downcast, I'm going to punch them. That app is crap.

wakazashi wrote:

psynixis wrote:

Now what happens is: the podcast shows as unplayed but deleted i.e. the iCloud icon shows up.

That's what I've been experiencing the whole time... and if one more person says Downcast, I'm going to punch them. That app is crap.

You're going to punch them? I know you're frustrated, but the people suggesting Downcast are not the problem here.

Look, I want the Podcasts app to work as well, but I've moved on to - dare I say - Downcast because I value my time and sanity too much. It has its moments, but on the whole it does what it does much more consistently than the current iteration of Podcasts. I can also subscribe to Podcasts that require a password. Sometimes, bugs just don't have good workarounds. I had to conclude that the issues with Podcasts.app are such a case.

Downcast is a solution. It is well supported, and if you contact the dev team, they will respond and try to be helpful, which is more than we can say for Apple at this point. The people offering it as a choice are trying to be helpful because Apple has been dragging its feet on the Podcast app since they introduced it.

The problem is that Apple is not sufficiently supporting their software.