Are playlists missing from the podcast app again in iOS 11?

And I've done that, too. It doesn't work the same. My playlist was oldest-to-newest; the station only plays newest-to-oldest. Rearranging shows ("Up next") is tedious, and wastes a lot of time when I've got 30 or 40 shows in the queue.

As you've learned, if you have 15 Shows in a Station and it is sorted Oldest to newest, the episodes are mixed together and ordered by the date-times applied by the producers.

If you have one or two of the Shows for which you like to check the Episodes before downloading them, you should put them in a Station for which you have chosen Station>Settings>Play>Manual. Then go to the Shows screen for those Shows regularly and review the episodes listed to choose the ones you want.

Jeremy

You would have my wholehearted support and eternal gratitude if you decided to proceed with an iOS app that synced podcast playlists from iTunes. Given that no other iOS podcasts app seems to even attempt the feat, it is possible that this functionality is not exposed to developers.

For help on the iTunes side, check out Doug Adams' site Doug's Applescripts for iTunes. I do a lot of scripting in iTunes (to manage my playlists, of course) and Doug Adams is a genius in this realm. I am not sure where to look for insights on the iOS side.

Best of luck.

Just a note: That will work...sporadically. I've found that about 30% of the time, my phone finds my playlists that way. The other 70%, it looks online, in email, etc. WILL NOT SEE the playlist, no matter what I try. I finally gave up and abandoned the app altogether. If Apple can't make a simple thing like this work -- and make SEARCH work the same way every time -- then they are useless to me.

I view this as a theft. I purchased 2 additional iPods for my daughter and grand-daughter because we were all having trouble sleep as my daughter went through cancer treatment. My time and money is wasted, as it must be with thousands of others using podcasts to study, to stay informed, and more. I too spend hours with tech support before learning this was intentional. What about people under stress who spend hours on the internet and hours with tech support and give up? This is a real black mark on Apple. Is there someone at Apple with some compassion who might re-evaluate this decision?

I’ve already posted, but have no hope that the people who make this decision would be swayed by comments on a feedback page. People would go months thinking this was a solvable problem before finding out it is not. I spent hours over weeks before I was told the truth.

The need has been presented to the development staff twice by me and expressed by many others and ignored. I’m not sure what drove this decision, but I was probably some feature designed to sell more iPods instead of continuing to provide playlist capability to people who paid for it. It definitely was not a software issue – it worked before so it could work again.

I have asked several people I’ve spoken with at Apple to find someone I can talk to who cares about integrity and compassion to reconsider this decision. It is not take this from iPod buyers. People lay awake at night without the podcast playlists that put them to sleep, struggle to keep up with professional information, miss study time, have one less option to provide their kids with entertainment they can control, etc. If you know someone who might have some influence and who would care about the harm that has been done, please have him/her call me.

I’m sure the contract protects Apple against this theft, so I’ll take other avenues. Initial ideas that come to mind include:

1. Posting the effect of this theft on specific communities who really need this capability on my growing list of forums.

2. Contacting people who review products about what Apple has decided to do.

3. Contacting competitors like Sony, Microsoft about what Apple has done.

4. Using social media to get support to boycott Apple products – especially those that would be most hurt like parents of children with handicaps, students, and people who have problems sleeping. We’ve got several groups to target with a simple, engaging message.

5. Posting reviews everywhere there is a forum.

6. This is a great media story.

I put my order for a Walkman to try to duplicate the relief my family needs as we deal with this family crisis. If I can, I’ll get two more for my daughter and grand-daughter.

Whoever is reading this now, please be a person willing to take a step to right a wrong.

Shame on Apple,

Judy Gremmel

It took scores of hours over several weeks (at least 10 of them on the phone with Apple) to finally learn my inability to sync my podcasts was a conscious decision made by the development team at Apple.

Bad timing. Family in crisis. I had just made over 100 soothing podcast playlists for night-time terrors and bought additional iPods for other family members.

Why won't podcasts import into music playlists any more? They are simple mp3 files. Tried renaming. Tried moving them in a variety of ways. I finally bought Walkmans. No problem. Both the playlists and the podcasts moved right over with the Sony software. Miss my beautiful iPods and the additional capabilities, but at least sleep easier.

What about people who don't have time to get the truth? They bought the product, fought the problem, feel frustrated and probably a little dumb. What was Apple weighing in this decision? Free podcasts vs iTunes purchases? Additional features to get additional sales?

Now I'm on a mission to post to every news organization and point of sale I can find. People need to be warned that Apple takes more than iPhone speed.

Ah, OK. This would be a good comment to leave on the feedback page. 🙂

I left similar comments. I also mentioned that if they're going to do stations (I had a hard time finding them!) they need a filter that limits to on-device files.

I discovered that Overcast has the ability to adjust speed, in fact you can set it per podcast. It just wasn't obvious how to do it, but it's done by tapping the currently running podcast, and swiping the window.

How do I convert podcast playlists to Stations? In particular, I have a podcast playlist that merges three different underlying podcast streams, then takes only those podcasts from each stream that are under six minutes in length, then sorts by least recent. Can Stations do that?

Yeah, I wasn't keen on it either. I really hate having to make the playlist on my phone. Point. Final. If I can make a music playlist on my computer and export to my phone, I don't know why Apple thinks I wouldn't want this in Podcasts as well.

I have a huge catalogue of downloaded podcasts. Some of them aren't even on iTunes anymore. So 'Stations' are not going to do one bit of good there, either.

You know, it just occurred to me:

Apple is spinning this as 'moving toward simplicity.'

BS.

Somehow, this is going to turn into money. Off the top of my head, I'd be looking for Apple to monetize their podcast app, the same as some other apps have.

Because Apple isn't making enough money.

I would also love to know if it is possible for an iOS developer to access iTunes smart playlists and sync the content therein. Actually, I think from iTunes, you can drag the playlists onto your iOS device and I think the content should then automatically sync from that point forward.. at least it works that way before the new app update. But since that functionality is in iTunes rather than in the app, I think the playlists and their content should already be on the device if the user drag-drops it there. The question is: How is that information stored, that an app developer could get access to it? I don't write iOS apps, but I am a software coder, and would consider learning if I could help develop a podcast app that was basically just a list of one's hand-created playlists, that one could click and play. Wouldn't that be marvelous.. no advertising, no stations, no recommendations, no album art, not even show descriptions. Just a brain-dead simple app for you to play your podcast playlists. The problem is that when I went to the bookstore a few weeks ago, and thumbed through the three shelves full of iOS development books (and all their indices), I did not see a single reference to anything playlist related, i.e. how a developer could get access to playlists and podcast content on a device. Not a single book talked about that. Granted, I didn't read every one in depth, though. If anyone has any ideas or knowledge, would you share that?