Although Apple Podcasts is struggling with stiff competition from Spotify and others, Cupertino doesn’t seem to want to give up its own podcast service. TechCrunch has already announced that Apple is introducing several new features in Apple Podcasts and they will benefit both users and podcast creators.
Apple Podcast gets storage cleaning tools, annual subscription support
New features for Apple Podcasts on the iPhone, iPad and Mac come with the latest software updates that Apple is now distributing to support devices. The main features included in this update are options for managing podcast storage on various devices and tools for activating annual podcast subscriptions. For podcast creators, Apple announced a delegated delivery system, but more on that later. For now, let’s focus on what podcast listeners will get with Apple Podcasts.
First, you probably know that downloading Apple Podcasts is displayed on your device, and this can cause the app to consume a lot of storage space on the device. This can be a problem, especially if you have a 64GB iPhone or iPad with less storage space, as it can make you unable to take new photos or install new apps and games.
On top of that, Apple Podcast users may have been even more annoyed when iOS 14.5 included an error in the app that caused unwanted, older episodes of downloads to be downloaded. Yes, to the extent that instead of saying “Hungry as a wolf” we can say “Hungry as Apple Podcasts for storage” … no? All right. Moving of!
Apple knew that Apple Podcasts became very hungry for storage, so with the release of iOS 15.5 and iPad 15.5, Cupertino tackled the problem by including new tools for the Apple Podcasts diet, we mean tools that will allow you to easily remove the accumulated downloads of the show, potentially freeing up storage space (if only losing real weight was that easy …)
Back to the topic, when you go to the iPhone and iPad Settings app, you’ll be able to tap “Auto Download” from the podcast sections and choose how many episodes you want to download and save. The following options are: download a number of recent episodes (such as the last three, five, or ten) or choose to download all recently released episodes (such as the last server, 14 or 30 days). You may even want to download nothing by selecting the “Off” option and making Apple Podcasts more streaming service.
By default, users of the brand new Apple Podcasts keep the last five episodes for all episodes, and all episodes are saved for serial shows, according to Apple. Yes, we advise you to go and configure what is convenient for you to avoid unpleasant surprises (especially if you carry a 64GB iPhone)
Once you’ve selected your preferences, the app will prompt you to automatically remove downloaded episodes that no longer meet the app’s newly selected criteria. To a large extent, this works as a group cleaning tool to remove many episodes. Prior to the update, this was a manual and quite painful process.
You can now configure these preferences at the show level for more customization.
The new option will also appear in your iPhone’s recommendations for cleaning the device’s storage. You can access it from Settings> General> iPhone Storage.
Podcast creator options
Apple Podcasts also got some useful options for podcast creators.
Apple is now introducing the option for podcast creators to have annual subscription plans for premium podcasts along with monthly options. Keep in mind that the annual subscription will now be selected by default, so when you subscribe to a podcast, be sure to check your payment option.
Delegated delivery, on the other hand, is a feature not currently introduced with iOS 15.5 and iPadOS 15.5. This feature will arrive later this fall on supported podcast hosting providers. Delegated delivery allows podcasts to easily distribute their podcasts directly to Apple Podcasts from third-party hosting providers. The first hosting providers that will be able to do this include Acast, ART19, Blubrry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio and RSS.com, and more services will be added over time.
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