Podcast Filter Not Remembering "Unplayed" Selection (defaults to "all episodes")

[squidgewinkle]

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherlands

Device

Samsung Galaxy s10e

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

I've selected "unplayed" under the sort menu of a podcast I listen to, and whenever I leave navigate away from the podcast and then back again it has reset to "all episodes". This is really frustrating, as I listen to most podcasts from oldest to newest... and so I need to constantly click sort by unplayed again, every time I go back into that podcast.

I would rather not do a clean install of Spotify, as I've had to do it so many times already. Is this a known bug and can it be fixed?

Thank you

[squidgewinkle]

I've noticed that if I go to to my Library and then choose the podcast it remembers my filter. But if I choose the podcast from my home screen it doesn't remember it.

[squidgewinkle]

Your croc-wearing wicked daughter analogy absolutely made my day...!
And now we are sharing recommendations for other apps. Spotify - get your sh!t together

[Edwin71]

"and she's wearing crocs" 😂

If Spotify wants to become a big player in the podcast world, then they better look at some dedicated podcast apps out there and instead of reinventing the wheel, learn from the best.

There's another bug that is too laughable to put in words. But I'll try anyway ...

When I'm listening to a podcast and I want to skip forward or backward from the lockscreen widget (the one with 15 seconds backward and forward buttons) it will do exactly the opposite! The same is true for the Spotify widget in the notifications drawer. Go figure!

[Wobberjogged2]

I wasn't able to access that link but found a similar vote here:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Spotify-Mobile-App-Save-podcast-sort-preferences/idi-p/5...

[Jaymema]

I have free premium as a trial and will cancel because of this.  Always having to sort by unplayed is too frustrating and not a good thing while driving

[squidgewinkle]

Hi Alex,
Please take a good look at the feedback in this thread. You have some really good feedback here from people who use the app. The fact that this basic design element hasn't been implimented means that Spotify doesn't really care about the Podcast section, or doesn't care if people look elsewhere for their podcasts.
If you guys actually want to take your Podcast section seriously (and you want people to use it) then you should absolutely bring this up in a meeting with your app architects. Until such time, people will find other apps to use.

[dan_gan]

I could not access the previous idea entries for this massive oversight. I get access denied error. 

I created a new entry here:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Idea-Submissions/Remember-podcast-played-filter-setting/idi-p/56410...

Please upvote it. 

[squidgewinkle]

Nice one!

[squidgewinkle]

Hi Alex,
Please read the comments - everyone wants this change. Why is it so hard to implement such a simple change? This change would make such a big improvement to Spotify's otherwise very sub-standard Podcast section.
Please, take our feedback where it counts - to the developers. It's clear to me that their budget for the podcast section is way too small, or they have their ears blocked. I don't know why I'm even persisting this... I abandoned Spotify's podcast section a long time ago and I'm very happy with CastBox. While Spotify continues to ignore very basic "feature" requests like this, they will continue to be at the bottom of the pile when it comes to podcast apps.

[SmokinBud]

This is the most annoying thing in the app, I just stopped using the podcast part and use Apple Podcast app and believe it or not this app remembers the Unplayed filter 🙂

The original post is 2 years old.. geez.. what a mess this company became.. time to move.

[Edwin71]

Indeed 2 years and this bug (it obviously cannot be "by design") is still not solved. And it is not the only super annoying software deficiency. About time the tech press and tech sites stop bragging about how good a company Spotify is, because it is not.

[squidgewinkle]

I have a solution!
Find a better app.
It's become abundantly clear that Spotify doesn't care about podcast functionality, so it's time to support a company that does actually put in the effort to make their app functional.

[spthomas01]

With Google podcast discontinued, the search is on for a decent podcast player. With a long standing bug like this and others, they don't care about podcasts. So who's found a good podcast app?

[visualalchemy]

May 2024 and this simple issue has still not be fixed. It's so frustrating because not only is it unintuitive, but when an already-played episode starts playing again, it loses is already-played status. So now you have to go in and mark that episode as played again, then resort your episodes again, then find where you want to pick up again.

[KrisTea1]

I have my podcasts set to "unplayed" but it keeps resetting and playing old episodes - I particularly find this happens when I get in the car and link to Android Auto.
I am using a Samsung A35 Android 14 Premium Duo sub in Australia.

[spthomas01]

Well I did give up on Spotify for Podcasts.  Actually I gave up on Spotify altogether. If I can't have music and podcasts together, I'll go back to Youtube Music for music.  For podcasts I looked around and found Pocket Casts does everything well (including retaining my "played" settings for podcasts I've listened to).  I didn't need Spotify after all. 

[Andi51]

This feature has only recently changed, as I’ve been listening to a particular podcast on Spotify since 2022, so it definitely change be changed back 

[mrpadilla]

Huge +1 here, just remember my filtering settings, how hard is that for 13 bucks a month???

[jasonhpchu]

How is this not already implemented? Who designs these interface?

So much push to have podcast on spotify, yet don't give any effort to make it work good.

[spthomas01]

I know. I gave up.  Podcast apps must be difficult to implement, since a leader in streaming like Spotify hasn't been able to figure it out. So I've gone to a specialized app just for Podcasts.  It's called Pocket Casts, and it seems to do everything I need. So I stay with Spotify for music, and go to Pocket Casts for podcasts.

[udimohen]

well, I don't know when they applied this feature, but it was working for the last few months, but somehow it stopped working these days. I came here to see if there was an issue about it, if they rolled back this feature somehow. let's wait