Q: Podcast app crashing in iOS 9

I was so excited as I thought it was fixed.  Like others, I was able to open and see my Podcasts and then eventually it crashed again.  I tried to delete podcasts but couldn't do that before it would crash again.  SO FRUSTRATING, I am supremely disappointed in Apple.  Since this community is hosted by APPLE you would think they could have had someone chime to let their customers know they are aware and working on it and an ETA for a fix. Jobs famously said "people don't know what they want until you give it to them", he should have added "or when you take it away" which actually is a bigger thing.  Look at ALL the frustrated and disappointed customers they have and all of the trust they have lost.  None of these people will trust them with software updates again.

Remember that these are community forums. I don't think you'll see an Apple representative participating here.

However, there's evidence that they keep an eye on some things here.

I was able to eliminate the crash with this tweak:

• Upgrade to 9.0.2
• Enable Airplane Mode
• Open Podcast App
• Delete all downloaded podcasts.
• Close Podcast App
• Disable Airplane Mode
• Open Podcast App
• I then went through my podcasts and identified the individual episodes I wanted to re-downlaod from the "Feed" section of each podcast.
• Episodes downloaded and the app has been playing episodes for the past hour without crashing.

I hope this works for you.

One thing I noticed...my podcast playlists are all messed up. A small price for me to pay to clean those up.

I was able to eliminate the crash with this tweak:

• Upgrade to 9.0.2
• Enable Airplane Mode
• Open Podcast App
• Delete all downloaded podcasts.
• Close Podcast App
• Disable Airplane Mode
• Open Podcast App
• I then went through my podcasts and identified the individual episodes I wanted to re-downlaod from the "Feed" section of each podcast.
• Episodes downloaded and the app has been playing episodes for the past hour without crashing.

I hope this works for you.

One thing I noticed...my podcast playlists are all messed up. A small price for me to pay to clean those up.

Same here. Downloaded 9.02 fix, it recognized and loaded my library, downloaded new episodes BUT can't play anything! Plays a few seconds then crashes. Not fixed!

same here.  i get past updating, but it crashes after about 5 or 10 seconds.  But at least I can see my podcasts are still there, albeit for only a short period of time.

and here is a diagnostic clue.  If I turn off wi-fi, it does not crash and I can play podcasts.  It seems to be a bug with the updating process.  So the initial update worked on wifi, but subsequent updates crash the app.  By turning off wifi, apparently it will not attempt to autoupdate.  It still crashes on cellular if you try to manually update podcasts.

so you can listen to your old podcast episodes, but you can't download new ones. Pitiful, but hopefully Apple is collecting diagnostics from some of us and won't just write this one off.

Airplane mode is part of the answer.

What seems to be working is :

1. place device into airplane mode

2: start podcasts app

3: wait for the unplayed badge to appear and populate bottom left of screen

4. wait a bit longer

5. take device out of airplane mode

the podcasts app seems fairly stable at that point

i updated to iOS 9.1 beta 3 and the issue is still the same for the podcasts app

I thought that worked for me for about 30 seconds, then it crashed again. But it played twice as long as it used to! Maybe I can just listen in 30-second chunks. I tried everything including restoring the phone. I had high hopes when the update came out today, but no improvement at all. Rrrrr!

Now THAT worked! I had tried airplane mode before--I guess I didn't wait long enough! Tried everything else short of restoring iOS8! thanks!

Okay... thanks for the post.  I did each step as instructed.  Ugh!  But so far it is playing.  I downloaded a few and then started playing one of them.  It is still playing after several minutes so I thought I would pass along this bit of good new.  Thanks again.

Yes, airplane mode, or wifi and cellular data off, then start podcast app. It seems to be OK. Then restore wifi/cellular data and it's still running. This seems to be a fix until Apple gets this fixed. Also prompted me to try Overcast, which seems to work pretty well.

This worked like a charm.  I only had to delete one of my larger podcast series & it seems to be fine. I even seemed to Be able to add the larger one back!

This is what fixed it for me:

1. Update to 9.0.2

2. In the Settings app under Podcasts, set Refresh Every to Manually

3. Enable airplane mode

4. Launch Podcasts

5. Delete a podcast (swipe left in My Podcasts list and tap delete)

6. Disable airplane mode

7. Pull down to refresh in My Podcasts

8. It crashes

9. Relaunch Podcasts

10. Pull down to refresh.

11. If it still crashes repeat 3-10

12. If it didn't crash you've found and deleted the offending podcast. You can now resubscribe to the other ones you deleted.

Hey a lot of people are having this issue. I was too. I updated to iOS 9.0.2. I was able to open the app and see my podcasts but after 5-15 seconds the app would crash again. I was able to get it to stop crashing though after going through a few steps.

1) keep opening the app until it stops updating your podcast list.

2) once all of your podcasts have stopped updating, double click on the home button to bring up the app switcher (not sure if that's what it's called but I hope you know what I mean)

3) close the Podcast app by sliding it up in the app switcher.

4) open the Podcast app again and click on the first podcast you see. The quickly hit the power button to lock your phone while the podcast is still playing. When you do this the app will stay open and keep playing that podcast.

5) let the podcast that you started listening to play all the way through and then let it start the next podcast in your list automatically (if you have any in queue).

When I did the above, the next time I opened the Podcast app it didn't crash and it hasn't since. Hope this works for you.

I did almost the same thing and it hasn't crashed for me since then either