Apple Podcasts

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R1] 4/5 · US Great App! Just needs more video game choices.: I love it but I constantly need to look for more podcasts about games I like and some people add like one episode which is annoying.
2. [R5] 5/5 · US Language development: This is the most helpful app that I’ve ever used for improving my English skills! Now i see myself using this app everyday. Is there any way to get rid of this addiction? Haha Please keep this app FREE!
3. [R38] 5/5 · US It helps me: I wanna learn marine biology, and it has the correct things for me.
4. [R75] 5/5 · US 🤟: All the podcasts I could possibly want and more. Easy downloads and searches.
5. [R14] 5/5 · US Pods: Really easy to use and found all my podcasts on this app
6. [R143] 5/5 · US My review: Very easy to use and high quality! Love it!
7. [R4] 4/5 · US Great but…: This app works great. I’ve been using it for a long time but recently it’s had this glitch where without me touching anything it starts speeding up first two times speed then four then eight then 16 etc., and the only way to stop it is to manually delete and reinstall the app
8. [R10] 1/5 · US Video issues: The playback experience has become incredibly frustrating. If I pause a podcast and come back later, it often restarts from the beginning instead of resuming where I left off, causing me to lose my place. On top of that, there are times when commercial audio plays over the podcast audio at the same time, making it impossible to listen. These issues happen frequently and have made the
9. [R17] 1/5 · US New updates breaking the app: Seems like while they’re trying to add video compatibility, taking away transcript selection, and cut down on ad skipping, the actual operations of the app are suffering. Often cannot resume episodes, gets stuck restarting, etc.
10. [R22] 2/5 · US This app has become incredibly buggy.: For over a year this app has become more and more buggy, and as of writing this review it appears to be in the worst state ever. The app has become unresponsive and unusable. Transcripts are unusable and podcasts constantly fail to load. It's not being addressed.
11. [R2] 1/5 · US Worst app ever made by Apple: Just try doing a search / it’s the biggest piece of trash you could ever imagine. It is absolutely unfathomable how something that is used by so many people can be so unbelievably useless for things like search. Literally everybody who worked on this app should be fired.
12. [R3] 1/5 · US Can’t search for episodes: I can’t search any episodes for shows in this app. So if my favorite show had a topic or guest years ago, the only way to find that old one is to scroll and scroll and scroll. Crazy such a feature is missing.
13. [R9] 3/5 · US Love podcasts but this app is the bare minimum: The app itself could offer a far superior experience. They seem to only offer up Top Shows. Those are the easiest to find. Seems like it needs an overhaul so people can find shows they’ll like more easily.
14. [R241] 3/5 · GB Good but could be improved: It is good but sometimes it is hard to find the thing ur looking for
15. [R6] 1/5 · US Do apple devs use this app?: This app lacks so many features other apps offer on their free tier. It makes it so confusing to listen to one podcast with only the unlistened episodes in any order new to old or old to new, it jumps to different podcasts when I want to listen a specific podcast episode after episode, it replays episodes I have already played…. I feel with a little bit of interest and
16. [R19] 2/5 · US This app could be so much more.: Why are you limiting this app Weirdos?? Put the features in that Every Other Podcast app has. Get it together.
17. [R27] 1/5 · US Terrible: The interface for this app is terrible. It should not be so hard to do simple things. You can’t even set all the episodes from 1 podcast to play in order. Absolutely ridiculous. A lot of options sure, but most of them won’t even play. If I could give 0 stars I would.
18. [R28] 1/5 · US Upgrade design and layout: I transferred over from Spotify and it’s been 8 months and Apple layout and design needs a major overhaul. It’s so BORING AND BASIC AND somehow confusing so much so that I’m thinking about switching back to Spotify. Apple, with all the money you got c’mon do better.
19. [R11] 3/5 · US Used to be better: Quit making changes! I use this app a lot. But now if I select one show from a podcast to download it leaves the podcast showing in my downloaded podcasts even though none are downloaded. I get tired of deleting and reloading the app.
20. [R12] 3/5 · US Has a few issues…: Podcasts have a tendency to not play on occasion, and on any kind of parental control/restricted mode, you can’t even listen to the clean episodes of a podcast if it has ONE explicit episode. Oof. You should at least be able to listen to the clean episodes. Also, the interface is pretty buggy, my settings for podcasts keep getting reset, especially the ones that dictate what e
21. [R29] 3/5 · US Good organization/ bad download functionality: Non-explicit episodes labeled explicit for unclear reasons. An entire program went from played to unplayed inexplicably. The automatic download setting is somewhat broken… at the very least it is inconsistent. And the automatic play It’s generally a good app otherwise, but these are core functions that it fails at..
22. [R52] 3/5 · US Frequent Download Bugs: Every few days the app just refuses to download podcasts. They will begin the process but then can’t get past about 15%. Extremely irritating.
23. [R37] 1/5 · US Random issues: -video podcasts don’t play well even when it’s just audio -podcast external controls are not working despite changing preferences in settings -for some reason it randomly stops playing and changes the playback speed when I press play again
24. [R44] 2/5 · US Skipping purposefully?: The podcast app is very simple, easy to use. However, I believe Apple plays games with some of them. It’s weird that suddenly around election season every year, right-leaning podcasts are suddenly skipping around and not following conversations fluidly. Left-leaning podcasts flow just fine. i.e., listening like normal, suddenly skips backwards a couple minutes (the media pl
25. [R25] 3/5 · US Can’t control the queue: Is no one noticing that you can’t drag and drop the order of shows in the queue? You have to remove everything and then re-add in the order you want. I always end up ending this and then going to another device.
26. [R51] 3/5 · US Behind the Times: Functionality needs to catch up with Spotify. We should be able to clear the queue without swiping through every single automatically-added episode.
27. [R13] 1/5 · US slow garbage: so slow to just switch between pages and shows on this - they broke something, junk
28. [R47] 1/5 · US Latest episodes don’t load: Apple Podcasts has become painfully slow. Latest Episodes takes 10+ seconds to load every time, even when I just exited that same section. Unfollowed shows and cleaned things up, but the app still lags badly. For a built in Apple app, this performance is frustrating and unacceptable.
29. [R56] 3/5 · US Slow: Takes several minutes to load anything since the update. Switching apps for now, as this one has become too inconvenient to bother with
30. [R61] 1/5 · US Worse after every update: I’ve tried to write this review multiple times and unsurprisingly every time I go to save it, it errors out. i’ve used this app for over 10 years and it gets worse. Every time they make an update This last one is the final death by 1000 cuts. It takes forever for anything to load now so I’ve finally gone with a different podcast app. I hold on as long as I could hoping t
31. [R15] 2/5 · US Commercial, commercials, and commercials.: It's been a while since I listened to a podcast on my iPhone using the Apple Podcasts app, and I honestly can’t take it anymore. The commercials crammed into a single podcast are beyond excessive. It completely ruins my listening experience. At what point does enough become enough? Does every app have to squeeze every possible dollar out of its users?
32. [R41] 1/5 · US The amount of adds is disgusting.: 3-4 minute adds every 15-20 minutes. It doesn’t push me to pay for any type of add free subscription, it pushes me to delete the app and never use it again. The adds are more aggressive then YouTube, Netflix or any other streaming service.
33. [R46] 1/5 · US Commercials are very loud and hurt my ears: New complaint: Every time I go to another app, when I come back to Apple Podcasts app it keeps reverting to the manager and then I go have to manually go back to the podcast. Really wish that podcasts that I subscribe to couldn’t push and download random podcasts thatI have to delete and then it keeps loading because I didn’t listen to. So i have to m
34. [R64] 1/5 · US Don’t Pay For Subscriptions Through Apple: Twice! I have tried to give Apple Podcasts a chance to redeem themselves by subscribing to my favorite podcasts show to remove ads and it never works! Ads still come on and there’s no way to report the issue to get support. I requested a refund and both times got denied. So as much as I hate to, I am switching everything over to Spotify because they seem
35. [R50] 1/5 · US Overheats iPhone 15: Turns a phone into a hot brick. Use other third party podcast apps.
36. [R65] 5/5 · US Overheating my phone: Does anyone else’s iPhone 16 Pro Max overheat when the podcast app is open? Mine gets so hot it’s scary it feels like it might explode. I can’t even hold it.
37. [R177] 3/5 · GB Drains battery and...: This all seems to drain my iPad's battery quickly and makes it fun quite warm. There is no option to view 'oldest to newest' without following the desired podcast and then searching it from your library.
38. [R48] 3/5 · US Needs a History Feature: Overall not the worst app. For the most part it works, although transcripts sometimes get lost during and after ads, where spoken words do not match what the transcript is saying. The user interface is okay, although a bit clunky at times. I would highly suggest they add some sort of history feature, because if I’ve added a number of episodes to my queue and then accidenta
39. [R49] 1/5 · US Awful UI, forced “AI” “features”: This used to have all the characteristics of a default app: no frills, FUNCTIONAL, intuitive, simple. Now the UI has been completely bastardized to force the AI transcript “feature” down our throats. It defaults to full screen to the exclusion of basic functionality like the skip forward and back buttons. This is garbage! Simplicity and intuitiveness of navigat
40. [R66] 1/5 · US Recent update: The recent update is obnoxious putting the transcript in front of me instead of the areas I use.
41. [R30] 1/5 · US GARBAGE that FORCES podcasts I DON'T WANT to download: I DO NOT WANT *ANY* RECOMMENDATIONS EVER! I don't want to have to skip through random nonsense that I didn't ask for. This is MY phone and these are MY subscriptions, if I didn't subscribe to a podcast, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT! NO MEANS NO! Consent matters Apple.
42. [R132] 3/5 · US Sharing podcasts to socials: Spotify will allow you to share whatever podcast you’re listening to on stories. Podcasts are clearly no longer a niche thing, and I wish this app would also adapt with the times and let me share whatever podcast I’m listening to my socials, like Instagram stories. This should be an easy fix for the Apple team and I hope we see it before 2027 when Spotify has let podca
43. [R407] 3/5 · AU Can we please have some important upgrades here?: The worst Apple App, is this really made by Apple? I’ve been using Apple Podcasts for a while now, but I’m consistently disappointed with the user experience. You can’t save podcasts in different groups, Sharing podcasts, which should be a basic feature, is unnecessarily limited. You can only share entire shows and most recent episodes or all of