Podcast Not Marked As Played

Your last post detailed some frustration in trying to get things downloading/syncing again, unfortunately although I saw the email briefly it appears to have been modified and your post only contains an "a" now (I deleted the mail message before logging on to the forum), so I will try and respond from memory.

The previously played episodes that are now appearing on your iPhone but are no longer in iTunes occurs because when played via iTunes that information was not successfully synced by Apple's system, more than likely they will show as partly played, but it's enough to get them returning. The only way I've found to stop this is to either play them to the end on the iPhone or go in to iTunes and under the "Feed" tab manually mark them played.

To avoid using cellular they need to be pre-downloaded on the iPhone when on your wifi network at home or synced from iTunes via usb.

For the first method turn off "Mobile Data" and set "Download Episodes" to your choice. For the latter "Download Episodes" needs to be off and you enable syncing in iTunes.

You do that by selecting your device in iTunes (the iPhone icon top left), select "Podcasts" under Settings Section and then tick "Sync Podcasts", you then configure as required.

Some additional screen shots that might help you, for iTunes to limit episodes for any given Podcast, mines set to 3.

iTunes Preferences.

And similar for iOS the Settings section from within the Podcast (circle with three dots).

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a "reset switch" that cleans everything out from all your devices and Apple's system in one go to allow you to start afresh, so when you are confident syncing is back up and working both ways again, you just have to let the mess reappear and once it does start "manually" marking previously played episodes to get things back to how it was.

I hope some of the above helps, best of luck.

ps. Please note I've setup to download by iTunes only and not to sync that content to devices or allow devices to download content, but played information and episode availability still syncs OTA.

I’ve had similar issues to yours in the past, but now the only one appears to be if I play a podcast on my iMac and let the screen sleep it still shows a minute to play on my iDevices, if I keep the screen awake that doesn’t happen and they then appear fully played on iOS as well. Strange thing it doesn’t occur in return.

With respect to marking as played on iOS, I don’t think you can, all you can do is fast forward and let the last bit play, then it should change to “Played” (and shows a tick bottom right of artwork). But you can use iTunes and with the relevant podcast, select “Played”, it should then sync across through the cloud.

I‘ve also found when the “link“ appears broken between devices/mac is to remove the Podcasts App (as suggested by Karina), but don’t delete any of your actual podcasts from within the App, go to Settings/General/iPhone Storage and tap “Podcasts” then “Delete App”. Once done restart device and then go to App Store and install the Podcasts App again.

In iOS Settings/Podcasts make sure you select “Sync Podcasts” and unselect “Continuous Playback”.

In macOS iTunes under Preferences/Store Preferences select “Sync Playback information across devices” and “Sync podcast subscriptions and settings”, I’ve always had the two enabled but not sure just for Podcasts if the first is necessary, but it’s never caused a problem so left alone.

Those are the key areas I’ve found that sync played, position of played and subscribed data, “Delete Played” and “Download Episodes” can also be selected under iOS/macOS if you require the App to manage removal and downloads itself.

Lastly, immediately after you redownload the Podcasts App it’s best to go to Settings first to configure as required, then when you first open the App it will start to populate and be setup the way you desire.

I hope some of the above will help.

Glad you got the syncing back into action, I keep continuous playback off in iOS otherwise it will just keep playing through all your “new” podcasts until none are left if you don’t (I believe Stations can be created/used but it’s just too much like hard work).

With respect to downloading, I’ve now turned that off for both iDevices, preferring to just have the copies on the iMac (I rarely listen to podcasts on the go anyway), for the odd occasion I do, manually downloading the specific one is all that’s required.

I suppose I’ve gone away from using the Podcasts App largely due to the fact it’s just not that intuitive, lacks functionality and just seems hard work when compared from what was offered in the early days.

Can only think of one other area to try if syncing between devices/macs isn’t going as planned for music/podcasts, namely to logout on both. For iOS go to Settings/iTunes & App Store and select your ID, then “Sign Out”. The same needs to be done in iTunes (think it’s in the toolbar under Accounts), give it a few minutes then sign both back in again.

I’ve had issues on and off since Apple introduced syncing through the cloud, before that, when it was just over usb (the good old days of the iPod) it never seemed to go wrong, I suppose that’s what we call progress.

Best of luck.

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

...Clearly Apple has some work to do on their Podcasts app, at least for those of us who sync their podcast episodes with iTunes and do not subscribe on the phone.

I believe the root of the problem stems from the fact if we choose to manage Podcasts solely via iTunes you can't completely stop the Podcasts App (on iDevices) from getting some info over the cloud as well. This was never the case in the good old days of the Classic iPod (I still have a v5.5 iPod), that never had WiFi so it's update info could only come from iTunes when you connected for a sync, and I must say reliability was a lot better for that fact.

Because I often got two copies of the same episode appearing on my iDevice, one coming from the cable sync and the other from when the App decided to call home, I eventually decided to turn off iTunes sync altogether. I now let every device/computer update itself, so the iMac downloads an episode, the iPhone does the same and so does the iPad. Talk about going backwards, 10 years ago I would download once and sync twice, now you are forced to download three times.

The situation is not unlike that for managing Apps, they are all now managed "device independently", it's as though Apple are trying to get us away from using iTunes as a "hub".

The only suggestion I can offer is to forget iTune syncing, enable and setup each device/computer to download the episodes independently, but switch your iDevices to do that only via WiFi (so they don't use cellar data), and then let the syncing with regards to what's been played happen over the cloud.