Remember Apple’s television ads for the iPhone 3G? The ad would tell you, regardless of any problem you need a solution for, “There’s an app for that.” When you think about it, for any subject matter that you have an interest in, there’s a podcast for that. And if you are an iPhone user, you probably use the Apple Podcasts app. But until recently, the app had a serious problem that was preventing users from listening to the latest episodes of certain Podcasts stored in the user’s library.
The bug prevents the latest episodes for affected podcasts from showing up as these episodes will not automatically be downloaded. This means that these podcasts won’t appear in the Up Next queue. If the user knows that a new episode for a podcast he/she follows has dropped, the episode can be discovered by looking for the new episode in the app’s search tab. But many podcast app users rely on getting alerted by the app whenever a new episode is ready and thanks to the bug, this is not happening.
It’s unknown exactly how many podcasts are affected by the bug but complaints on social media seem to indicate that the problem is widespread. And there is the aforementioned workaround. Open the Apple Podcasts app and after tapping the Search tab on the bottom right of the screen type in the name of the podcast you want to hear the latest episode of and tap the blue “search” bar next to the space bar on the virtual QWERTY keyboard. Press the Episodes filter above the search results (which is also below the search bar) and the latest episode will be on the top of the list. Just press the play button on the right of the listing to hear it.
You might not have to do this much longer because some users say that they are now getting new episodes automatically sent to their Apple Podcasts app. If so, that’s good news. If not, try the workaround until your Podcast app is working perfectly again. By the way, if you don’t have the app on your iPhone, click on this link to download it from the App Store.