iOS 18.2 Improves Apple's Podcasts App, But My Biggest Complaint Remains the Same

Apple's Podcasts app has recently received major updates, like a killer transcription feature, and iOS 18.2 is bringing more. But all these improvements came while the app’s core problem remained unsolved.

Two new iOS 18.2 features improve podcast discovery

Let’s start with the good.

iOS 18.2 brings two improvements to Apple Podcasts aimed at podcast discovery.

You can now select your favorite podcast categories, which should improve podcast recommendations in the app.
The app’s search page is now personalized, highlighting categories and curated collections that better match your listening habits.

Both of these changes are welcome additions to the app and complement each other friend.

For example, once you select your favorite podcast categories, they instantly become more visible in Search.

I'm all for making the Podcasts app better, but despite this year's updates, the core of the app still feels broken to me.

I'm talking about the “Up Next” interface on the Home page.

Apple Podcasts' Core Feature Feels Broken

For those unfamiliar with the Apple Podcasts app, Up Next works much like it does in Apple's other media apps.

In Music, it's called “Best Played for You”
In TV, it's now called Continue Watching, and it contains shows and movies you've watched or saved for later
In Books, it's called Continue, and it contains all the books you've read

In every app, you'll find it at the top of the Home tab: the most prominent section of the app's default tab.

Apple Podcasts makes Up Next the primary way for users to play podcasts from shows they subscribe to.

In other words, unless you're constantly searching for and discovering new podcasts, the vast majority of your app's usage will involve interacting with Up Next.

It's meant to be a one-stop hub for podcast playback.

But since Apple adopted the Up Next system a few years ago, it's developed a few flaws that make it a pain to use.

Five Reasons Up Next Needs Attention

Here's a quick rundown of five issues that make Up Next feel broken to me:

Information Density: You can only see one and a half podcasts at a time, so it’s hard to get an overview of everything that’s available to listen to.
Slow Scrolling: This problem is made worse by the fact that Up Next doesn’t allow you to quickly scroll through podcasts — it forces you to scroll in steps, which slows things down.
Hidden Episodes: If you have multiple unheard episodes of a show, Up Next has no way of telling you. It only shows the latest episode, with no visual indicator of how many others are available.
Cluttered Feed: Most of the time I listen to podcasts, I listen to shows that I follow. However, when an episode of a new show is recommended to me, I listen to it and wait for it to finish. Unfortunately, the next episode of that show is then added to my Up Next feed, cluttering it up. Apple needs to know that if I wanted to keep listening to future episodes, I would have followed the show.
Adding to Up Next: By the way, when I listen to a one-off episode (for a show I don’t follow), it’s surprisingly difficult to add that episode to Up Next. Podcasts let you play the next episode or save it, but neither of those actions adds it to Up Next, so I usually forget the episode even exists. I recently noticed an improvement in saving episodes, so I'm hoping Apple has implemented a fix.

Wrapping Up

I've been using Apple Podcasts for years, so I know there are ways to navigate to other parts of the app to get around many of the issues above. But that's not the point.

Up Next is meant to be a one-stop hub for users' podcasts, but it's currently doing a poor job of that.

What do you think of the changes to Podcasts in iOS 18.2? What do you think of Up Next? Let us know in the comments.