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iTunes redownloading podcasts

How do I get iTunes to just stop downloading podcast episodes I've already listened to? Literally, I can listen to an episode right now, and then delete it, and the next time iTunes updates, it re-downloads it. And episodes from a year ago. Or three years ago. Or six years ago. It's completely random.


The ONLY way I could think of to at least work around it was to use a smart playlist to only select podcasts that were released within the last week. But the 'release date' is the only field that isn't available to use in the rules. Added date and Modified date are useless because they are the date they were downloaded...which is always today.

Posted on May 17, 2014 7:17 AM

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17 replies

May 21, 2014 2:30 PM in response to KaaSerpent

Jeez. Unsubscribing from and resubscribing to the podcast not only didn't fix the problem, it caused a whole new one. Not only did it redownload the same old episodes as before, but when I told it to refresh, it unsubscribed from the podcast again. Now it won't stay subscribed. No matter how many times I subscribe, the first time I refresh, it just goes away entirely.


It just seems ****-bent on making podcasts impossible to manage.

May 24, 2014 7:20 AM in response to KaaSerpent

I was able to get the podcast to stay subscribed by leaving one of the old episodes alone until they posted a new one. Now it stays. But it's still downloading the same old episodes over and over. And this morning, it randomly downloaded ALL episodes of an NPR podcast. Some 200 of them. Just...who knows why.


I DID get contacted by someone from Apple with whom I'm going to chat later today (Saturday, May 24, 2014). So we'll see what he has to say. I'm hoping it's something I'm just doing wrong and that it'll fix right up.

May 24, 2014 8:00 PM in response to KaaSerpent

One possibility: mark the podcast as played - don't delete it. I've found that sometimes if I delete an episode, it's recorded as unplayed, and therefore the system concludes that I must still want to play it - so it downloads once again.


Deletions also seem to "stick" better if you mark it as played, wait a while for the servers to figure out that it's been played, and then delete it. Sometimes if I mark as played and then immediately delete, it'll download again, I guess because the "mark as played" tag didn't upload?


However, as you say, the behaviour is random. There are patterns I can see, but there certainly don't seem to be any clearcut rules.

May 24, 2014 8:13 PM in response to Lost in Asia

I've found that no matter what I do, it continues. The first thing I did when it started doing this was to mark them listened to. I even tried "listening" to them -- playing them again, but skipping through them -- to see if that made a difference. With the 11.1 update(?), a 24-hour wait between listening and deleting was added, and it would delete them after 24 hours . . . and then immediately re-download them. Like, within the next couple of refreshes. I tried unchecking them and marking them played. I tried both of those + then deleting them. I tried unsubscribing and resubscribing. I tried unsubscribing, resubscribing, then immediately right-clicking the podcast itself and saying 'mark played.' (That's when it then unsubscribed me from the podcast, and I had to resubscribe.)


None of that worked in any way. It downloads at least six played episodes of one podcast including the most recent few and then a couple six to eight months old, several episodes of another one or two . . . and then, this morning when I got up, it had re-downloaded something like 200 episodes of a podcast I'm subscribed to, but I've listened to every episode. I marked all of those played, unchecked them, and deleted them. So far, it hasn't re-downloaded them, but the day isn't over. 🙂


I also tried going to the feed view, and marking them all read and unchecking them from there.


Also didn't work. I'm pretty sure that either I have done something very bad and corrupted a database OR there's a bug. Or I've managed to get the settings so messed up that it's in some mode . . . who knows.


I did speak with an Apple support person earlier tonight (on a holiday-weekend Saturday!), and I uploaded a log and some other files for them to sift through to see if they can identify what my problem is. I could not be more pleased with the interaction so far. I hope they find something, even if it's a loose nut at the keyboard.

May 29, 2014 8:57 AM in response to KaaSerpent

My MacBook just downloaded and installed version 11.2.2, which contains the following lines of description: "This update fixes a problem where certain podcast episodes may download unexpectedly after upgrading and includes several stability improvements."


Looks like they WERE able to use my uploaded logs to find out what the problem was, and this update directly addresses it.


Thanks, Apple!


(The proof of the pudding will be in the taste, as they say. I should know within 24 hours or so if this fixes my problem.)

Jun 1, 2014 11:13 AM in response to Paul Bines

It did resolve my problem. SORT OF. It quit re-downloading all those old episodes.


Instead, last night, it just deleted all several thousand old podcast episodes -- which I had not listened to, yet -- that I was making my way through. Boom. All of them, gone.


Then it started randomly downloading episodes from all of my subscribed podcasts that somehow failed to get marked as "listened." There were two copies of some of them, one of which had a little (((o))) icon associated, and the other of which didn't.


I have no clue, but I can tell you I'm mad as ****. Sure, I now have some 200G free on my hard drive that wasn't free before, but I was keeping those unlistened-to episodes for a reason. Which iTunes just ignored.

Jun 2, 2014 12:50 PM in response to Paul Bines

Previously, I was having the smart playlist problem, but not the re-downloading problem. This latest patch has now given me the re-downloading problem. [Windows] I have an iPod Classic, so using an iOS app isn't a solution for me. Unless and until they fix these bugs, I'm using MediaMonkey to sync podcasts to an old Nano I still had. Unfortuntately, syncing music from iTunes and podcasts from MM to the same Classic didn't work too well. And while I like MM well enough to use it for podcasts, I don't like it well enough to move all my music to it, too.


--Charlene

Nov 4, 2014 10:59 PM in response to KaaSerpent

I suffered through this in iTunes 11 and it's no better, seemingly worse, in 12.0.1.26 (running on Windows). This used to work flawlessly on every version I can remember up through 10.


This is a serious irritation--I queue up a batch of podcasts so I can be hands-free listening to them and I frequently get episodes I've heard weeks or months ago and need to skip over them.


Please fix this continuing problem. I've heard the iTunes team doesn't care much for podcast listeners but this is mostly what I use it for!

iTunes redownloading podcasts

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