It’s fine to listen to one podcast at a time, one episode at a time. Of course it is. You’re more than welcome to just download and tap your way through your podcasts on a one by one basis. I’m not judging.
Sometimes, though, it’s great to queue up a whole bunch of sweet podcasting content, especially when the content is a bit shorter, or you’re on a super long drive and don’t want to have to fiddle with your iPhone or iPad when on the go. That’s where playlists come in.
Here’s how to easily set one up in Apple’s Podcast App, which calls playlists “stations.”
Launch your Podcasts app with a tap, and then tap on My Stations at the bottom of the iPhone or iPad screen. On the iPhone, you’ll see a list of pre-built playlists, including On-The-Go, Most Recent, and All Unplayed. Tap the On-The-Go playlist, then the Add button at the top, to put any downloaded podcast episodes from those you’ve subscribed to on your iOS device into a nice list. If you add an un-downloaded episode to a playlist, you can then tap the Download All button to have them ready for playback. On-The-Go is the only playlist/station that will let you add single episodes.
To create your own station, it’s just as simple, though limited to entire podcasts. In the My Stations area, tap the New Station button at the top of the iPhone screen (it’s in the upper left corner of the iPad screen). A dialog box will pop up, allowing you to type in any name you choose for this station. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a list of all the podcasts you subscribe to.
Tap on every podcast you want to include in your station, or toggle the Include All Podcasts button to ON, which will add everything on your device to the station. Tap Done when finished. You can then tap the Settings button at the top right. Here you can rename the station, decide how many recent episodes to include (from one to all), limit to specific media type (audio vs video), and edit which podcasts are included in the station. If you tap on the podcast name at the bottom of this settings window, you can set how many episodes are in the playlist from each podcast individually, which should override the default above.
If you want to delete a podcast from the station, simply hit the Edit button, then the red delete circle, or you can swipe across any podcast title in the list and tap the red Delete Episodes button.
Now you can add all your favorites to stations, or individual episodes to the On-The-Go station.
