Audiobooks and podcasts NOT WORKING after iOS 8 upgrade

When I try and launch podcasts I get the 'updating library' screen in white, it stays that way for a few minutes then crashes .. this is irritating as it's nearly the only thing I use my phone for. Is there a way to reinstall the software?

Another data point. OTA update to IOS8 with an iPhone 5. When I sync MP3 audiobooks to my phone, then mark them as audiobooks using iTunes, they will initially show up in audiobooks. When I try to play them however, each mp3 is quickly flipped through, then removed from my phone! At least from the phone's interface I cannot see the files I uploaded.

Same here, I have exactly the same symptom as enguerrand! IPhone 5 OTA upgrade, and I immediately found that the mp3 files already on the device, that had been converted to audiobooks, did not play. It flipped from one to the next in rapid succession and deleted each one. I hoped it was just something hinky from the upgrade process, so I then tried replacing the files after the upgrade had taken place, using both iTunes for Mac and for Windows, and the same thing happened. I also tried creating a playlist of the audiobooks and playing them that way. No luck. As I stared at the playlist screen on the phone, where it says "20 songs, 4 hours," I watched as the number of songs decreased from 20 down to 0 in about 5 seconds. The files are gone from the phone, not even a spotlight search can find them.

Before the files are marked as audiobooks, they play fine as songs both on the phone and in iTunes. But of course there's no way to increase the playback speed, which is the whole point of converting them to audiobooks in the first place.

I also noted that sometimes when the phone is still connected to iTunes, the audiobooks WILL show up in iTunes even when they don't show up on the phone. For example, on the phone I can't even select Audiobooks as a type under "More" because it thinks there are no audiobooks present, but at the same time I see Audiobooks listed in iTunes, on the phone under devices, and I can even see the titles. But if I attempt to play them, a little exclamation point in a triangle symbol pops up to the left of the title.

I'm really bummed about this, listening to spoken word audio files is about 75% of what I use my iphone for. C'mon Apple.

I also experienced the same symptoms described above following the update to version 8.

Same for me. Updates to iOS8 using iTunes (Mac) and since neither my Audio books (audible) not my Podcast will play.

Thought of a Kind of hickup and deleted the Audio books from my iPhone 5S and tried to pull them back using iTunes. No luck. They Show up under the device in iTunes next to the books but are greyed out. No luck so far. Everything updated.

Had to reinstall the audible-app to Play back the files. What happened here? Anybody found something about this?

Like djdonohu I use my iPhone mostly for listening to Podcasts and Audio books throughout the day.

What a mess!!

I can also confirm this happens not only with mp3 files but also with wma files that iTunes converts to AAC. The common denominator seems to be marking the type as audiobook, not the file format itself.

Hmmm...A further update to AAC encoded files. I have some I CDs I encoded with iTunes to M4A and also some WMA audiobooks encoded with iTunes to M4B. I edited their metadata tags with the program mp3tag to add ITUNESMEDIATYPE = Audiobook. These files play properly as an audiobook.

Installed iOS 8. Have most recent version of iTunes. Podcasts no longer sync from iTunes to the iPhone. In addition, lost tons of metadata in Music on the library -- not covers and album artist data is gone. Newly ripped music in iTunes did not sync to the iPhone either. The only new items that did appear to sync were two new apps.

In my case, I have iTunes set to synchronize podcasts to my iPhone 5S.

Each time iTunes synchronizes about 300 episodes, and the iPhone podcast app shows them as synced. Several moments later, the podcast app will delete all the synced episodes, showing the cloud download button once again. I have not changed any settings from the way they were before the iOS 8 upgrade. Previously, any synced episodes remained on the phone and didn't get synced over repeatedly.

Apple seriously needs to investigate why the podcast app's QA has been such a mess for 2-3 years now. Are podcasts simply not a priority for Apple? Is the wrong person in charge of QA? By now, shouldn't they have test plans that reflect how real users exercise the app?

I got audiobooks to work wonderfully in IOS8. Here is how

• Ideally find audiobook with individual files for chapters (makes it easy to skip from chapter to chapter without bothering with bookmarks).
• If you need to have bookmarks: convert to AAC (you will get .m4a files, rename them to .m4b and search for an application to add bookmarks to M4B files).
• Port audiobook into iTunes (MP3, MP4, ... format mattres little it seems as long as it is consistent, if not consistent convert to AAC version)
• It will most likely import as a music album (or even as separate files, in which case I recommend you find out how to sort your library by date added). Highlight all the imported files and click get info, confirm that you wish to edit all the items at the same time.
• Make sure Title, author, composer are the same (if it says "Mixed" or grayed out, you can click on the field and edit it)
• For the genre you can specify audiobook, but that does not seem to make any difference
• For the track, leave first field as is (should be a dash) and the second field, specify the total number of tracks (will help sorting). Should look like "- of XX" where XX is the total number of tracks in your audiobook.
• Go to artwork and upload a nice image of the audiobook (search google images for it).
• Most important step!!!: Go to Options and set media kind to audiobook, and make sure that "remember playback position" and "Skip when shuffling" are both selected (you can also set equalizer to spoken word)
• Note that Setting media kind to audiobook will remove some options from details tab, to be able to edit them again, just set media kind to music, make changes and set it back to audiobook.

That's it, you will be able to upload and use it with your IOS8 as it meant to be used. Good luck ;-)

I also had this issue and came here looking for a fix but I ended up getting them to work. I normally don't use any iTunes library to move audiobooks to my phone. By that I mean if you view my library I have no content in it. To get files to my iPhone, I have the file visible in Windows Explorer and drag them over to the "On this iPhone" section under the device in iTunes. Once I do this I go through the routine mentioned above to change the media kind to audiobook and remember playback position. Anyway this wasn't working for any Mp3 files I copied over. I got the same results everyone else is reporting. I did have a couple m4b files that were able to play.

To get it working on my phone, I added the files to my iTunes library and then updated the properties described above. Once this was done, I went to the library and located the book I wanted to move to my phone. When you select the audiobook, there is a Window that appears at the bottom that shows the tile and all the tracks. To the right of the title is a play button and another button with a >. Click this and then select Add To, and select your iPhone under devices. This copied the files over for me and now they will play.

Hope this helps.

Ditto. When I'm in my car, usually I'm listening to podcasts. Today my wife and I drove some 200 miles, and we ended up downloading them using my phone's hotspot to download a couple to her iPad which is running iOS 6. I honestly wish I hadn't upgraded my phone from 6 to 7, but that regret came after the authentication keys to 6 were flushed.

Thus I am stuck with brushing off my programming skills, learning Objective C and Swift, and writing my own podcast app.

I have exactly the same problem. The only things I listen to are audiobooks and podcasts and now I can do neither, it keeps wanting to download the podcasts from the app when I've already got thousands of them on iTunes, I can play them and the audiobooks on iTunes but not of the phone. I'm only glad that I haven't already bought the iPhone 6. I think this is the last chance for Apple, this problem has been around for a week now and they haven't even tried to address it. Looks like I'll be moving to Android.

Seems like you could set your media kind to podcast (Right click on the file(s), click "Get Info...", Click on Option tab, Change media kind to "Podcast"). After try to sync or otherwise move the files back to the iOS device.

I've tried it and it worked for me on iOS 8.

Yep, they're already all set to Podcast but they still won't sync.