iTunes deleted hundreds of podcasts. Again.

I had the same problem -- 7 of my 21 podcast subscriptions were deleted during the 12.7 upgrade. I regularly save an opml list of my ever changing podcast list so at least I know what I lost. I was able to resubscribe in most cases, but a podcast like This American Life only has the most recent episodes in the RSS feed so it was necessary to get the old MP3s from Time Machine and import them into iTunes to get back to where I was.

Similar issue here. About 2/3 of my podcasts lost on my iMac. Episodes are still listed in iTunes Music Library.xml (as far as I can tell from a cursory check) but no longer show up after upgrading to 12.7 and rebuilding of iTunes Library.itl as part of this process. Actual audio files also deleted from iTunes Podcast Library. There seems to be some intransparent synchronization going on between iCloud devices, e.g. podcasts I only had on my MacBook Air suddenly showed up on my iMac.

This is extremely annoying as I use many of the podcasts for my research and teaching. Luckily, I have a recent backup but I am no longer able to easily access the episodes nor download and store related metadata.

Apple, please provide a way to revert this totally intransparent update process!

You could try an unerase/undelete tool (perhaps http://www.easeus.com/mac/mac-undelete-free/ ?), then use Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash, to recover a recent backup of your library. See Re: Why did iTunes 11.1 (126) delete all (SEVERAL HUNDRED) Podcasts? for a possible explanation. Given it has happened to you before where is your backup?.

tt2

I'm on iTunes 12.3.44. My podcast settings (because I've been bitten by this before) are set to not delete played episodes, not to limit podcast episodes, and not to sync podcast subscriptions across devices. But iTunes is still randomly deleting old episodes of my podcasts against my will.

I'm getting tired of restoring podcasts from backups and remarking them as played. What's the point of a "don't delete" setting if it's regularly ignored?

Is there any work around available for this stupid behaviour?

See this backup tip. It only happened to me once, but when it did I was able to restore the podcast folder and a good version of my iTunes Library.itl quite quickly.

tt2

Backing up and restoring is what I'm currently doing, but it doesn't endear me to using the software. Does anyone know why iTunes is deleting podcasts set to not delete?

I just found out I had years of podcast collection deleted because the default setting went to delete played episodes on its own. I remember one in particular was only posted on the air for a couple of weeks and was a rare interview. Unbelievable callousness on the part of Apples towards customer's private collections.