Q: iOS9 podcasts play order

This is nonsense. Will Apple ever make an update to this dreadful app that doesn't actively make some part of it worse?

There seems to be a workaround.  If you go to "My Podcasts" and click "All Unplayed" at the top of the list, it brings you to a page that (my goodness!) has "settings" on it, where you can set oldest first.

I don't have an All Unplayed at the top of My Podcasts.

Is this on desktop iTunes? I don't see it on the mobile version. Did you create that station?

As best I can tell the "Unplayed" panel is useless. You're stuck with playing through all your podcasts from the newest onwards (what on earth do Apple's software engineers think we do with podcasts?!). Plus all the description is a massive bloat in the interface.

More useful: "My Podcasts". When you first check that pane it looks ridiculous - a long list of all podcasts you've ever used, with most of mine at least having 0 episodes. But in the upper left corner you can press the "+" button to add a podcast or, more importantly, a station. You can then make a station that will include the podcasts you want: in my case, it's all of them, in the order I set them to long ago. There seems to be some moderately fine-grained control in the settings, although I haven't played with it yet. You can also set up a bunch of different stations. After that, when you choose the "My Podcasts" tab, any stations you've made will be listed at the top of the screen.

Unfortunately it seems like the app always opens to "Unplayed" rather than "My Podcasts", but I guess like with the Music app, I'm going to have to get used to clicking through a few pages before I get to the list of playlists that I want.

There is no default All Uplayed Station in the My Podcast Tab. You create your own Statiins and name them whatever you want. By creating a Station, including all your podcast subscriptions, then in the Station Setting Play Oldest to Newest, it will achieve just what you want.

Go to "My Podcasts" and scroll to the top. You'll see "Most Recent." That's where you can access settings (also at the top) and change the play order from oldest to newest.You don't have to create a new playlist. That makes the whole unplayed vs. most recent work exactly opposite of the way the was it used to in the previous version, but it at least allows you to play all podcasts in oldest to newest order.

I agree that the "unplayed" playlist is pretty useless for how I listen to podcasts.

When you scroll to the top of "My Podcasts" the only thing revealed is a search bar. There is no "Most Recent" or any other sorting option. Lost in Asia and cyberbiker's responses are accurate. See attached image for reference. Note I've already created a station called "Old to New" - this station will obviously not be present on others' devices.

Most Recent doesn't exist on the mobile version.

Thanks for the "old to new" tip! 

AMes77, Most Recent is one of your old Playlists. It is not a default Station on the new Podcast app. Create a Station and in it's settings select all your subscriptions, choose unplayed only, and set the play order to Newest to Oldest or the reverse.

IF i go to my podcasts and click on a podcast I get a screen that shows the episodes and has a settings Gear. I can go into that gear and there are numerous settings. Hope I didn't misunderstand your issue.

Thanks but with me there is no gear symbol, just the word "Edit" which does not show what your setting gear cog does.

I have a 5S with 64 Gig, and ios 9.2

Also There is also no rectangle with played / unplayed nor a square box with up arrow in it.

I live in Australia but surely that can not make a difference?

Ok I worked it out to get to the setting area where you can adjust the listed order of podcast episodes do this:

1.) Go to iphone ( etc)

2.) Open podcasts app.

3.) Click  "My podcasts" button at bottom.

4.) click on a podcast. You will now see the episodes of the podcast, AND a small gear symbol, (up the top but lower than "EDIT" ), tap the gear symbol and chose the play order "Oldest to Newest" or "Newest to Oldest"

5.) I think you also need to adjust the sort order and select oldest on top, so the podcast episodes are listed with oldest one on top and newest on bottom so click on top one and play it and it should just play in order from oldest to newest.

The issue of course is that you need to go into every podcast!

I have 30! so what a pain, there should be an overall setting for all podcasts.

Anyone....? know of one?

I also have an ipod  Nano which automatically lists podcast from oldest to newest, and I love it. So could not understand why the 64 GB 5S was worse!

Tip: If you truly want easy podcasts, music and audio book access get an ipod nano, it all just works. Also the lack of apps means nothing to get in the way of media consumption, plus if you are diving you can do stuff safely as it only plays files so you can do what you want quickly and easily and no virus issues etc...

Hope this helps.