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

I couldn’t get that to work for me. Search would not find my playlist. Luckily, as of last week, Apple was still signing 10.3.3 for iPhone 6s. Downgraded that, (although I'd hardly call it a downgrade), and also went back to iTunes 12.6. Incidentally, 11.1 was chewing through my battery, too. Yeesh.

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.

Steve, when I add a new station in the iphone it has synced (and been added to) those in iTunes (Windows). If I removed a podcast station, it gets removed from iTunes in a sync too. If I create a station in iTunes on the laptop, then head off to a meeting, The new station will appear and update when I open the Podcasts app.

As Apple moved from playlists to stations in Podcasts app in iOS 10, did you see your iTunes podcast playlists carryover and cleanup of variances once you had done a few syncs. I found some played episodes still lingering in iTunes podcast subscriptions long after they should have automatically been deleted. Once I cleaned up the podcasts list in iTunes and the iPhone, they have stayed in sync well.

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?

It doesn't seem to matter what you name it. I named mine QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ and it would find it one time, and then after that, it wouldn't ever see it, or maybe it would RANDOMLY see it about 30% of the time...

I finally just went with Overcast. It's nowhere near as full-featured as the OLD Podcasts app was (before they "fixed" it), but at least it doesn't crash 30 or 40 times per day.

It's so stupid.

Don't know who at Apple thought this was somehow a good idea.

I used to mix and match podcasts in my playlists. Like Smodcast, there's like 4 different shows from that network I would have in one playlist ordered just right using a MOUSE to order them.

Or I put track numbers to my pods and organize them that way. Like for audio files that don't have release dates.

So now if a pod doesn't have a release date it just goes to the bottom of a station. Sure if I want to reorganize I can but that's such an insane pain in the ***. Using the touch screen to drag and drop and scroll through 60 shows in a station.

That is so NOT user friendly where it was before.

Really hope they fix this... but I know they won't.

Swipe up on the now playing screen. It took a while to find.

Yes - but you have to swipe from the middle of the screen, not the very bottom (or you'll just get the general controls screen instead of the podcast-specific options)

That's actually the "up next" list, not the playlists. Those were removed.

Eloquently put. Please go the feedback page and say that. 🙂 They need to hear it from as many as possible.

Feedback - Podcasts - Apple

Tell Apple how you feel. Maybe, just maybe, if enough people complain they might restore functionality to this now useless app.

Feedback - Podcasts - Apple

I misread who were you replying to in your post. Never mind. 🙂 I had to spell out almost the entire list name in order to find mine, in spite of the fact that my playlists have somewhat unique names. Hope you can find them. 😟

Kaa, I'm sorry you feel I'm challenging you. I am not. There is no question your former playlists did not convert to stations. Though I can't honestly remember what I did in September 2016 when iOS 10 came out, I must have deleted my iTunes playlists on the laptop and recreated them as stations on my iPhone, then synced since I have none of the glitches you and some others have. Taking the time to delete and recreate the iTunes Playlists and Stations is obviously the solution as my transition to the iOS 11 version was seamless (with the exception of the loss of a couple key functions like 'Mark as played' and one-click autoplay in Listen now, etc).

There is no question the changes in iTunes and iOS Podcasts have been significant. A small white paper on why would have been nice. It seems Apple was in such a rush to finish it didn't even have time to put a short video on YouTube explaining how to use the iOS 11 version.

Anyway, I hope you consider the delete-recreate solution. I have to think Apple made the changes for a reason and is unlikely to roll back too far.

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*