Q: Podcast appears multiple times on my iPhone 6
My podcasts on my iPhone have been totally out of sync compared to iTunes on my MacBook Pro for ages now.
What works: The same shows appear both places, and if I pause a podcast on my phone, iTunes accurately represents where I left off once I sync the two.
What doesn't work: The settings for each show on my phone have no correspondence to the settings I've chosen in iTunes, in terms of subscribed/not subscribed, play oldest or newest first, display oldest or newest first, auto-download or not, etc.
At the same time, one particular podcast ("Snap Judgement") seems to replicate over and over until it is shown on my phone dozens of times. It also always appears as "not subscribed" even though I am subscribed to it in iTunes. I can manually delete these extra copies but they always come back.
Today I did the following:
1) While my phone was connected to my computer, I used iTunes to un-check "Sync Podcasts." When iTunes warned "this will delete all podcasts from your phone," I told it to go ahead and sync. Now iTunes said my phone contained 0 podcasts.
2) Then I re-started my phone using the home button and power button. Spoiler: all my podcasts were still on there.
3) I manually deleted each podcast off of the Podcast app on my phone, then re-started the phone again.
4) Then I used iTunes to re-select "Sync Podcasts." In the past I've selected "all unplayed episodes of selected podcasts," but this time I chose "all unplayed episodes of all podcasts" for simplicity's sake. Then I synced the phone.
5) Starting the Podcasts app on the phone again, and choosing "My Podcasts," first the app crashed. So I re-started it, and watched each of my podcasts re-appear... but all under "Not Subscribed." None of them reflect the settings for that show in iTunes (display order, play order, subscription, etc.) ALSO, 8 copies of "Snap Judgement" are back, most of them reflecting different numbers of unplayed episodes (ranging from 4 to 21).
I have checked my settings on my phone. "Sync Podcasts" is on.
This is driving me crazy.
Please don't tell me "use another app" that doesn't sync with iTunes.
See below for screen shots of my Podcasts app after syncing (showing everything as "not subscribed" and the multiple "Snap Judgement" appearances.
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
Posted on Jul 29, 2016 10:45 AM