Can't sync podcasts ios7.0.3 - terrible

Thank you for the "Speedup Player Lite" suggestion. It's nowhere near decent, but it'll work for basically letting you access podcasts files that are on your device.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just got so fed up with the stupid Podcasts app... It simply doesn't update my podcasts effortlessly and I am not spending time futzing with podcast files just so the app likes them.

Speedup Player works effortless for me and it's such a relief to get back basic functions lost when Apple separated podcasts from music.

It was $3. Well worth it and it even has some nice bonus fuctions over the reliable old Music/Podcast app.

Hurrah!

iCatcher also works effortlessly for the same $2.99. The Podcasts app is so useless, I spent a good 3 precious hours of my time looking for a fix for this miserable app and nothing worked. My podcasts never showed up in my iPad. The price of those 3 hours spent fiddling around, surfing the web and reading long, frustrated threads like this one was far higher than the 3 minutes it took me to set up iChatcher.

Plus, I keep HATING that minimalistic BORING plain white look of all Apple apps lately. It was so awesome the previous look & feel of the old Podcasts app. It seems that the coolness of the app's look went the way of the dodo along with its core functionality!

Will iCatcher sync with my podcasts an podcast playlist on iTunes?

It won't. iCatcher only works directly on the device and will download your content with iCatcher. It doesn't sync with iTunes.

Whoit,

Thanks a million! your additional tagging has worked for me, almost....

I too am facing the exactly the same problem with the new Podcast v2.0 app.

I am using iTunes 12.0.1.26 on a windows 7 x64 machine. I have lectures, speeches etc (which I like to listen at 2x speed) that are in mp3 format from different websites etc that I download to my PC. These aren't technically podcasts to begin with and haven't been formated/configured as podcasts nor. I add them to iTunes and change the "Media Kind" from Music to Podcast within iTunes, I have no problems applying this process, the categories & titles appear in the podcast menu and are synced perfectly fine onto my iphone 4S IOS 5.0.1. I was naturally using the standard music app to listen to the podcasts and I was happy as I wanted a faster listening speed.

I am now on an iphone 5S iOS 7.1 and have added the podcast app to listen to the podcasts. I do exactly the same process as I have detailed above, I have no issues in iTunes, I can even see the numerous titles in their seperate podcasts listed under the podcast menu under my iphone in iTunes - so they have been physically synced over to the iphone. The problem is in the apple podcast app, I only have one podcast with one title listed, (the newest one) all the other podcasts & titles are not shown anywhere. This must have been due to the ITUNESPODCASTID which didn't exist in these manual podcast files.

Before finding your thread, I was happy to have the media kind as Audiobook and listen to them that way, however being a matter of principle. it is definitely a loss and shame that Apple have decided to not give their users (of iphones, ipads, etc, itunes & the podcast app) the ability to manually add their own mp3 files via iTunes and have them listed as podcasts. Obviously Apple have created their own ecosystem for podcasts, if it doesn't fit into their model, it can be played on their iphone app. Typical!!

Your workaround worked, I could even add a fake (dummy) ITUNESPODCASTURL url, I get a little exclamation point next to the podcast in itunes saying it can't update it - obviously, as they aren't real podcasts for apple iTunes.

The only issue I have is out of the 40 titles listed in itunes on the iphone for the podcast, I can only see 9 in total in the podcast app. that *****.

I have some testing to do as I want to see after I listen to those 9, will the others appear or now... I am also a little upset that I lost on the play history and ratings when I removed them to add the tags and them bring them back in... I assumed they too were tags that itunes set in the file, but no... no biggie.. I will see if I can add the tags to files already in Itunes to see if I can keep the play history. I get back to you to let you know how it goes..

I'm also going to scour the web to see what I can find about these additional tags etc. I plan on doing some more tests to get it down to a fine art. I appreciate that there was someone here that actually contact Tim cook. perhaps we should get a change.org petitiion going to see if we get enough people to add this possibility back in to the podcast app.

thanks again!

Alzoo

P.S I too downloaded Speedup Pro app, it rocks!! kicks some serious butt over the podcast app.

Hi All

quick update,

I have managed to add the additional extended tags to the podcast tracks (mp3) files without removing them from iTunes. This way you don't loose all your play history, ratings etc

i modified two podcast sets, one which was already synced to my iphone (which wasn't appearing properly due to PODCASTID missing) and a second which hadn't been synced yet. both appear in the apple podcast app correctly. i even have 47 unplayed tracks in one of them , so in my last post, just above, where I state there are only 9 showing in my first modified manual podcast sync, there must be an issue with the tracks, not the app.

will keep playing around, not much googling has helped explain these extended tags...

Alzoo

I finally got it to work, hopefully this'll help someone.

My issue, if you don't want to read then go down to steps.

My podcasts were mp3s downloaded from website since iTunes didn't have all the podcasts listed. Only changed the Media type: Podcast at first to put it in the itunes podcast. Only a few episodes would sync even though they showed in itunes that it was on my phone. Lo and behold it was on my phone but podcast app wasn't showing them, only 1-3 out of 11. Found it on searchlight that it was located on podcasts app, but when I clicked on it, it wasn't in there. Since podcast app was the only one that can sync my computer and iphone, well I had to stick with it.

I also had some extra steps since it didn't work initially.

STEPS

1) Computer) Highlighted all Podcast I wanted to synch, changed Media type and Genre to Podcast (this is the important part, BOTH of them)

2) Phone) Settings: General: Usage: Manage Storage: Podcasts <- deleted all the data for podcasts

3) Phone) Podcast app: Manually deleted all podcasts

4) Computer) itunes, uncheck manually sync - apply changes.

5) Comp) Check sync and what podcasts I wanted

6) Comp) Sync

And it worked!

Things I did that might contribute but don't know if it'll work for you:

Phone - Settings - Podcast

Turned off Only Download on Wi-fi

Turned on Sync Podcasts

Then did above steps.

Hi All

Final update,

You need to add the the following extended tags to your MP3 files if you want them to be treated as a real Podcasts in the Apple Podcast app. This can be done for your existing recording, lectures, radio shows, etc (The only thing I haven't figured out is if you want to add more files later onto the same podcast)

a) tag=COMMENT ITUNPGAP value=0

b) tag=PODCAST value=1

c) tag=PODCASTURL value=<any URL will do i.e. http://url.com/rss>

d) tag=PODCASTID value=<word/phrase+incremental number>

little explanation,

c) As the files won't be downloading from a website, this reference does not need to be valid

d) This value needs to be unique for each file, I tried just adding 1,2,3,4,5,etc) that didn't work and I could not see all the podcasts titles. After testing it a few times and looking at other real podtcast files (like TWiT) this ID was like a path & filename, the word/phrase was the same however the filename changed as its reference or filename number was incremented, so I did something similar. I used the same word and incremented the number for each tag in in each file. EG MP3 recording01,MP3 recording02,MP3 recording03,MP3 recording04,MP3 recording05,etc I was then able to see all the titles (47) listed inthe podcast.

Hope it helps.

Alzoo

OK, I have the same problem of more than 40,000 other people based on the number of views to this discussion forum. PODCASTS DO NOT SHOW UP ON MY IPOD even though they DO show up in itunes on my PC. These podcasts were downloaded from my paid Audible account. Here was the fix for me: While in Library of the Audible application on a PC, do NOT click Podcast It. Instead click Download for the podcast of interest. The poscast will then show up as an audiobook in your iTunes library and can be transfered from the PC to the ipod like any other audiobook. Basically, the Podcast app on my ipod is worthless!

Apple was so great back in the early 90's. I worked in a large university laboratory and we had Suns, PCs, Macs, Silicon Graphics, etc. Apple graphics were fantastic and you could open anything on an Apple . . . no restrictions!!! Now the opposite is true. Apple is so controlling about songs, podcasts, movies, etc that I have PAID for but cannot open. I have a Samsung Galaxy phone and a PC and when this ipod dies, I will not replace it.