I recently upgraded my iPhone 14 Pro to iOS 16.4 and encountered an issue with the Apple Podcast app. I have a large collection of old Howard Stern shows in .m4a format that I listen to on the app. They've always played perfectly in the past, but after the update, they disappeared.

I managed to resync them with iTunes and got them to play again, but I found that if I close the Podcast app (swipe up), all the episodes are gone again, and I have to resync them. For now, the workaround is to keep the app open, but this isn't ideal since I use my phone for work, constantly switching between a barcode scanning app and a spreadsheet app.

I've tried restarting, reauthorizing iTunes, and deleting the app, but nothing has worked so far, except for a hard reset and reinstall (which I want to avoid). Does anyone have recommendations on how to fix this issue? Or should I just wait for an iOS update?

Alternatively, if you know of a good podcast app that can play .m4a files offline, please let me know.

Best regards!

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ozrycet t1_je9oaey wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:00 PM

iOS 16.4 broke podcast app. It was deleting all my downloaded podcast. I can even see them deleting it. This is so annoying since I listen to podcast while working. Urrggh

glewis_reddit t1_jea3s1z wrote on March 30, 2023 at 2:57 PM

I am experiencing something very similar, since updating to 16.4.

I have moved a way from automatically include method and am having to manually select podcasts to sync. I can listen to podcast this way. I can uncheck podcast I have listened to, check new ones and am able to re-sync. Using this method, the podcast stay on the phone only for a while. Then all of sudden when I open the podcast app, the podcasts start disappearing before my eyes, or I go into one of my station - that says I have podcasts in it before I go in - and in it, it shows no podcasts. They when go back to iTunes to re-sync to put them back on the phone and find all the podcast I checked to sync are unchecked. I have to re-check podcast to sync.

If I automatically include podcast to sync, I cannot get them to stay on the phone for very long (less than an hour) and have seen them disappear before my eyes in the app.

glewis_reddit t1_jeas893 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 5:38 PM

I noticed that restarting the phone, causes the podcast app to disappear podcasts too and unmark them in iTunes, too.