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

Yes. It's utterly useless. Please go to the feedback page and let them know you want the old functionality back. I've been on the phone with an apple support person twice, now, and ... they don't really have much of an idea how people are using their app. So we need to tell them. He encouraged me to get as many people as possible to complain so they'll know it's an issue.

Product Feedback - Apple

Nope. Before answering, please go to iTunes and create a podcast playlist and then sync to see what we're all talking about.

In iTunes, creating playlists is a snap, especially when organizing large lists of podcasts. These playlists are no longer syncing to or appearing on the iPhone. If it's good enough for songs in Music, why isn't it good enough for podcast episodes? I don't want to stream, and I want my long list of shows and episodes to play in a particular order without spending an hour organizing them on my little phone screen.

You can only create an Up Next queue on the phone, not in iTunes. It's cumbersome and takes far too long.

If I create a station and organize it in iTunes, that doesn't sync to my phone like a playlist, either. Make either of those work like playlists, and maybe there's an argument to switch over. A this point, it's just a missing feature. This has happened in previous releases, so I hope they'll fix it. Again.

Between this and Siri's changes that force me to look at my phone while driving, I'm finding my iPhone to be more and more of a hassle.

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 had HIGH hopes for 11.1, which they released a couple of days ago. Nope.

I can only continue to hope that they will eventually listen to the users and put it back. But my hope is dwindling.

If you used the feature they removed, do go by their feedback page and make sure they know. They don't read these threads, but they DO see the feedback.

Product Feedback - Apple

Shame on Apple for ruining a useful feature. I hope they fix it SOON. Stations cannot replace a playlist because you can't control the order in which episodes play. Be sure to tell Apple how you feel about this at Product Feedback - Apple

In the meantime, I have found a workaround for playing my podcast playlists!

Make your playlist as usual on your computer. Give it a distinctive name, and then sync your iphone as usual.

Now, on your iPhone's home screen, pull down from the center of the screen to bring up the search screen. Type the name of your playlist, or a few distinctive letters from it. Your playlist will appear in the search results. Tap it, and it will open in the Podcasts app, and the podcasts in the playlist will populate the Up Next list, and they will Autoplay!

Unfortunately, if you pause your playlist and open other apps, or even have your phone sleep for a while, your playlist will again go into hiding, so you will have to do the search all over again.

But at least you will have Autoplay of your carefully crafted playlist for the current session.

It looks like they replaced playlists in ios 11 with the "Play Next" or "Play Later" option. This does not seem like a good deal to me since in iTunes I can create Smart Playlists and have them auto fill based on the parameters and not have to manually create a list on the phone from the 100s of podcast episodes I have there.

It seems to be a bug that hopefully gets fixed. You can find your playlist by using search function on the phone. (But not the search function in Podcast App)

It will open the playlist in Podcasts. But if you scroll backwards to "Episodes," it will disappear again.

AHA!!!!!! So they ARE still being synced to the damned phone!

PhoneJoe, will you go to the feedback page and share that? I'm going to call the guy that I've been in touch with in support and tell him this, as well. I get the distinct impression that they all think we're insane.

HarryMeissner, read the couple of entries above yours. Someone posted a "workaround" and I'm using it right now. Also, follow the link I give above and make some feedback to Apple about this issue. The more times they hear it, the closer they'll listen.

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. 😟

Mine is weird. It'll find 'em one time, and then I search for the SAME string again, and it can't see it. The search feature favors everything else above playlists, apparently. But when it DOES find them, it works just like it used to before they purposefully handicapped the app.

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.