Where did iTunes (podcast) Playlists go in iOS 11?

I have explained this to you repeatedly, and either you're just not reading the responses, or you refuse to accept that you're wrong. Once again:

iTunes Playlists have been working under iOS 10 for a long time. I know because I, like MANY other people in these threads, have been USING them for a very long time. Yes, they appear ON THE STATIONS SCREEN (as I've explained), but they were a separate thing that is not a station. At the top of the stations screen, it said, plainly, "iTunes Playlists >" and when we clicked on that, it would take us to a listing of all of our playlists. Which, once again, are separate from and different than Stations. Completely and utterly different.

iTunes IS STILL SYNCHING them to our phones, but the app is no longer showing them to us. I know THIS because if I do a search on my iPhone for the name of one of my playlists, sometimes (not every time, because the search function also blows) it shows my playlist, and if I select it, it opens it in the Podcasts App, and it's exactly what I've been describing to you for post after post. A PLAYLIST, not a station. When you play an item out of that playlist, it then shows the REST of them in the "up next" queue, and it plays them automatically without having to fiddle with the phone.

Please, PLEASE stop explaining to us that "stations replaced playlists" because they very pointedly did not. Until iOS 11, and we are hoping that they put the functionality that was still there before we upgraded to iOS 11, and has been for a very long time.

Do as Saudoso68 suggests above, and go into iTunes and create a podcast playlist. Give it a unique name that iPhone's search can find, and just TRY it.

I don't think you're challenging me. I think you're not getting what we're telling you. OK. Let's try this.

I have smart playlists for every single one of the 350 or so podcasts I subscribe to. When I subscribe to a podcast, I download all available episodes. Each of them goes into a separate smart playlist, sorted from oldest to newest, by the podcast name. I then use the checkbox to determine what does and does not get synced to the phone. Stations allow me to select the most recent 1, 2, 3...10...or ALL. There is no "allow me to select an arbitrary number of episodes, randomly," in stations. Useless.

Now, I like categories of podcasts. I put them into Fiction Audiodrama, Fiction, Fiction Audiobook, Fiction Anthology, News & Politics, Entertainment, Education, Science, Writing, True Crime/Weird, and Video. These are podcast folders, and I put the playlists of each individual podcast into those folders by topic. You can DO this with stations...but it's all you can do. Keep reading.

But that wasn't enough, because I was never hearing my CURRENT episodes because i had to make it through all the old ones first. So I created another smart playlist called "Current" that contained all the ones released within the last five days, say. Then I created playlists parallel to the ones mentioned above, but told the smart playlist to only contain the ones that were in BOTH "Science" (for example) and "Current" so I could listen to all the current ones first, then the archives.

There is so, SO much functionality in playlists that stations does not allow us to do.

I have a science podcast called Nature. It has episodes called Nature Futures which are not science-related, but are instead science-fiction flash fiction. So I want THOSE episodes in the Fiction playlist, not the Science playlist.

I have smart playlists that separate Nature into TWO playlists: one for the normal content, and one for "Futures." The normal content contains all episodes except the ones that are ALSO in "Futures." One goes in Science and the other in Fiction. Works BEAUTIFULLY in playlists. Can't do it in Stations.

But sometimes, I like to listen by length. Because I have 10 minutes to kill and I don't want to have to search through and find one that's 10 minutes. So I have playlists which separate my podcasts by time. < 5 minutes, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, 20-30, 30-45, 45-60, and > 60 minutes. Can stations do that? No.

How about a Station that says, as I've described above, "All the contents of this other station, EXCEPT the ones that are in a third station"? Nope.

All of that works perfectly fine in playlists. And, up until I upgraded to iOS 11, it all synced to my phone and was visible to me in the app. I could select a playlist, touch the top entry, and have it play them back to back with no pauses. I did not have to spend a half hour searching through all the uploaded episodes on my phone and manually duplicating one of my playlists -- just ONE of them, mind you -- using the asinine "Up Next" queue that they so GRACIOUSLY allowed us to have. Until they decide we don't need that, too.

We're not asking for Stations. Stations are useless to me and many other people who do what I do. We want the functionality back. The functionality we relied on.

The support person I spoke to told me point blank after he routed my question to the development team that Playlists were REMOVED from the iOS 11 on purpose. These are not "glitches." These are desired functionality that worked up until we upgraded to iOS 11 and now has been unceremoniously removed without any replacement. Saying "stations replaces that functionality" is like saying "Have a cup of Brussels sprouts instead of the double-Dutch fudge ice cream; they're exactly the same thing." Although I'm suspicious now that someone else pointed out you can still search for your playlist names and, assuming it finds them, which it does about 30% of the time, if you select it, it opens the playlist app and allows you to play them like the iOS 10 version, except "invisible." The app knows about it until you back out of it, then it forgets. So it sounds to me like someone took out the REFERENCES to it in the app, but left the functionality intact.

I've TRIED to duplicate the 300 to 350 or so playlists I have in iTunes on my phone. That was the first thing I tried. God, I spent over 5 hours trying desperately. Stations are useless for me, and many, many other people.

I'm not deleting 350 playlists and starting over from scratch especially when I've been told by someone at Apple that the functionality has been removed. What we are trying to do is get them to put back the functionality. EITHER they need to put playlists back OR they need to make Stations useful in some form.

Does that help?

Ok, this one is my last straw with Apple.
10 years of iPhones and the batter seems to suck just as bad as the first iPhone.
Not giving an option for a wired headset on the iPhone 7 should have been my queue
... the wireless headset ***** almost as bad as the phone. Now it seems that every time
I update my phone, I lose a RATIONAL convenience. I, for one, am done.

Absolutely.... and you get another helpful for it. Apple definitely decided to dump that depth of functionality.

It probably felt the broad majority of Podcasts users were listeners of the latest episodes types like me, with an occasional interest in relistening to a saved one.

Hope you can find another podcast app that meets your needs.

I too am appalled and dismayed that Apple has decided to suddenly remove the playlists feature from Podcast app in iOS11. I have been using podcasts since 2002 and have built up a rather sophisticated automated way of sorting my feeds into different groupings to automatically download and sync various podcast types and topics. Each podcast has its own settings for number of episodes to load or time to keep, as each podcast has a different nature and priority. I can even sort some podcasts to play the oldest episodes first and others newest. Note that some shows like news you want the latest, but episodic programs you want the oldest first. Smart playlists and folder management enabled me to build play orders that really work for me. A smart playlist that selects the podcasts by type (e.g. news, comedy shows, political comment, hobbies... etc etc). This has served me well for over 15 years, but now Apple has decided it has a better way that is confusing and does not seem to have the simplicity or sophistication (as I may choose) that the playlists provide.

Actually, I much preferred it when the podcasts were available in the music player app. This allowed me to simply and seamlessly move from listening to music to podcasts just be selecting a playlist. The moment Apple decided to split podcasts into a seperate app, it's been a downhill slide for podcasts. But at least, up to iOS10, playlists still worked as originally designed, and work very well. iOS11's removal of Podcast playlists is the dumbest thing that Apple has done since they fired Steve Jobs all those years ago. And let's not forget, the name Podcast is derived from the iconic Apple iPod, a great invention. So why has Apple decided to break it in 2017?

I have left irritated feedback; thanks for the link.

I appreciate the detailed information posted here but it just does not work. My iPhone does not find my playlist even 30% of the time. It's 0%. I'm stuck if I want to continue to use the Podcasts app. Yes I am using "phone search" ("spotlight") and not the search function in Podcasts. The iPhone helpfully suggests searching on the web or in Maps.

Google is definitely less than optimal, but maybe the lesser of the two. Android phone, here I come.

A related missing feature in Podcasts: also concerns driving while listening-- used to be that if the iPhone was hooked up to power the screen would stay "live" and would wake to a screen touch-- so you could basically treat your podcast playlist like a car radio, because it would play episodes without stopping, AND you could easily change volume or speed, skip ahead, whatever. Now the phone goes into sleep mode and you need to interact with it to get it to wake up-- much less safe than before.

Would you mind coming back and giving us a quick-and-dirty review of playlists once you've done that? I'm using Overcast, but the 'smart' playlists are actually pretty stupid, so I'm looking for something that has actual smart playlists.

Steve Davidson wrote:

I don’t recall the price (funny that the App Store doesn’t show it once you have purchased something) but it couldn’t have been much more than a cup of coffee — probably worth the investment just to find out.

It appears to be $2.99. (I hate that about the App Store.)

I will just say that I had to explain what playlists were to the support tech that I spent about 3 hours on the phone with over a couple of calls. He had no idea what they were, and kept assuming I was talking about stations. Oy. I had to lead him through the process of creating one, and then convinced him, finally, that the old version of the Podcasts app used to actually display them.

I think the problem is that they have no idea how people USE their software. At all. Nor do they care. If you're using it outside the narrow band of "acceptable" for them, then you're on your own. Creating several hundred playlists and having podcast episodes going back to 2006 is just weird for them. Looking at the options on how many episodes to keep should have clued me in to that. Keep the latest 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or all. But only the LATEST ones. Because who wants to listen to something a month old? *insert eyeroll*

One thing I did that KIND of helped on that front is to create a crap-ton of identical playlists with different names, so if you can't find one of them, maybe it'll find one of the other 14. 🙂 It's almost as though the search function on the phone is geared ONLY to find files it's never found before. Because I can get it to find 'Playlist A' once...and then I never see it again.

Does everything in this program have to be completely reinvented? Why ruin something that was working just fine. If it's not broke don't mess with it. Whoever dicked this up should be held to the fire and put on notice for shoddy work, unfamiliarity with the basic functionality of iTunes and reassigned to something no one cares about. They seem more interested in creating new emojis. Apple please don't try to over engineer what already works. Because you have just made one of your most used and loved programs a nightmare to navigate. Your loyal base has just been kicked in the nuts. Shame Shame Shame on you.

I too am devastated to discover all my podcast playlists are no longer available after updating to iOS 11 yesterday. If I had known this would happen, I would have stayed on Version 10. Apple, please restore this function as I rely on these lists to help me manage a chronic illness. Very, very disappointed and unhappy!!!! Hope all other people affected complain loudly too. Any help in restoring this function will be greatly appreciated. I have read the previous replies and not happy at having to install an extra app from a 3rd party to help restore these playlists. It should be a standard part of the Apple podcast app.