iOS 11 Podcast app "Mark as Played" Missing

Sometimes I don't want an episode to delete immediately after I've listened to it. If I've listened to a few different episodes on my Commute to Work Station, I like to be able to find that episode once I arrive at my destination. Then I can Save that episode or Share it with family and friends who I think might also enjoy the episode.

In the Settings for individual podcasts, if I have Download turned on I also have Delete Played Episodes turned on. In this configuration I get 24 hours to do something with the episode, like Save or Share, before it is removed and disappears from the Podcast listing. After 24 hours, it is deleted.

Some of my Podcasts are time period specific e.g. News or Business news. <-- in this case if u missed a few a week u want to remove them without them continually downloading. The 'Mark as Played' achieved this.. I now have to fwd the old episodes one by one to achieve this else i remove them from one device and they show up or later download again when i caught up with latest episode.

Thanks for all the info. I will wade through it later. But seeing how many steps you describe makes it clearer than ever that Apple really made a huge mess out of what could have been a simple redesign. Perhaps they are trying to push users to the App store to use Overcast or other apps that have in app purchases & thus $$$ to Apple coffers.

Cheers

Note, you may not longer be subscribed to your desired podcasts. Mine were all unsubscribed with the iOS 11.1 update. Time to get a new app to replace the one from the company that created podcasts.

For the podcasts that are timely, I recommend going into the Settings for that Show. Then select Custom Settings. In here the Limit Episodes can be set to Most Recent, 2 Most Recent, 3 Most Recent, 5 Most Recent, or 10 Most Recent.

This lets you set different shoes to retain different numbers of episodes. A 5 minute daily show, you may want to retain 5 Most Recent. An hour-long weekly show, you may only want 2 Most Recent. This way you don’t have to do anything and you won’t see old episodes in the Show list or in your Stations.

You can also set up a Station that includes only those Shows and use the Include option to only have the x Most Recent episodes. This keeps them in the Show list, but you can play just the most recent episode. I use this when I want to listen to older episodes when I’ve got more time, like a road trip.

I used the Linit Episodes setting in previous versions of Podcasts because it meant I didn’t even have to go through to mark individual episodes as played. This setting is applied to the subscription and is synced across all of your devices. Download settings are specific to the device, so you can manage storage differently from your phone to your desktop computer.

If you play the whole episode it will auto Mark as Played & eventually drop off. If you have episodes to delete, the only way to do that in this new iOS 11 mess is to click on the Podcast, then click on See More Episodes within that page, then left swipe each one you want to delete. The red delete box will follow your swipe. But they won’t be deleted for at least 24 hours. I think that as the delete/ played area fills up, the earlier deletions drop off. There is no rhyme or reason to the Podcast App. You have to feel your way through it.

Are you sure you were subscribed to all? iOS 10 showed podcasts I listened to a lot without subscribing - somehow it remembered them. I lost those but before updating my iPhone (after updating the iPad) I went through that list & then subscribed on my iPad. I didn’t lose subscribed podcasts until I deleted in iOS 11 thinking I was deleting an episode. Luckily you can resubscribe. 😏

Agree. The new app is a mess. It doesn’t sync with iTunes and it’s bizarre that the functionality is so different from iTunes (eg no option to mark as played in the app). If you listen to a lot of podcasts, it’s impossible to keep everything organized.

I just downloaded Overcast today, and it seems to work great. That’s what I’m going to continue to use going forward.

Additionally, there seems to be no way to actually see the queue or manage the order of episodes to be played once added to the queue.

See My Help, is it right?

How do I create a station??

Did anyone actually beta test this?! I've got about thirty podcasts I listen to and it's nearly impossible to manage now.

Simple: you delete the whole Podcasts app and download a third party app that's actually designed so that people can listen to podcasts.

Per a separate message, suggestions? Stitcher and OverCast seem inadequate.

As an aside, your suggestion, it does not address the basic question.

I want my descriptions back and my I played episodes list back for my subscr