Podcast Downloads Suddenly Won't Download

[Cmasst]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

(iPhone 13 mini)

Operating System

(iOS 18.5)

My Question or Issue

Within the past few days, podcasts stopped downloading. I typically manually select podcasts to download for offline listening and suddenly they won't download. The download begins, immediately stops, and then the down arrow returns — as if nothing happened. Plenty of iphone storage. Troubleshooting steps tried:

• Cleared cache
• Removed all downloads
• Delete app
• Reinstall app
• Logout / log-in

Additionally, if I click on the three dots under an episode title and select "Download to this device," I recieve a prompt that says "Remove from Downloads?" This is not expected the behavior, especially since the episode is not downloaded. Clicking yes "Remove," yields no result, while continuing an endless loop of nothingness.

A search of these forums yields a 2024 thread where Spotify appeared to have a server-side issue causing this—subsequently fixed in an update of the app.

However, it appears to be happening again, at least to me. I'm using the latest app, July 2025, and here we are. 

Any help is greatly apprecitaed!

[Dessi]

Hey @Cmasst,

Thanks for reaching out!

We haven't seen any other recent reports about this on the forum, so let's troubleshoot a bit more and try to find out what's causing this. Is this only affecting podcasts or are you also not able to download music? Since you mentioned manually downloading the episodes, can you check if using the Auto-download episodes setting works on your end? You can find it when you open a podcast and click on the gear icon, which should be next to the bell. It should also be accessible from Your Episodes. 

Another thing worth checking is a different network - a different WiFi or mobile data. Just make sure that Downloads over cellular is toggled on in Settings -> Data-saving and offline -> Downloads and streaming before you test this out. You can also check if Data saver's off there.

It's also worth testing this out on a different device - a PC or you can log in your account on a friend or relative's phone. You can also ask someone to log in their account on your phone to see if they experience the same thing. This will help us check if it might be device- or account-related. 

Keep us posted.

[Cmasst1]

Hi,

Thanks for your response and suggestions.

I’ve now tested the following:

Music downloads work fine; only podcasts are affected.
Auto-download for podcasts does not work either.
The issue occurs on multiple iOS devices on my home Wi-Fi.
If I switch to cellular data, podcast downloads work immediately.
If I connect to a different Wi-Fi network (not my home), podcast downloads also work.
Other users online are reporting similar issues, and it appears to be related to Eero routers with ad blocking or advanced security enabled. Disabling ad blocking on my Eero router allows podcast downloads to work again.

It seems that Eero’s ad blocking is now blocking the domains Spotify uses for podcast downloads, even though streaming podcasts still works. This started recently, and I did not change any settings on my router.

Can you please escalate this to your technical team and consider reaching out to Eero about this? It would be helpful if Spotify could publish a list of domains used for podcast downloads so users can whitelist them, or work with Eero to prevent these false positives.

Thank you for your help!

[Ivelina]

Thanks for the cooperation and shared information @Cmasst1.

We appreciate that you've included the steps you've tried, as well as mentioning that the issue seems to be related to Eero routers and Spotify works as expected when you've disabled the ad blocking. If any other users come across your post, it would be helpful for them.

We're unable to provide an ETA for a fix at this time, but rest assured that we've forwarded it to the right team.

In the meantime, here's a thread posted by another user, where they've shared some domains that you could whitelist.

Don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything else we can help you with 🙂

[maxmontes]

I am also having this issue. Podcast downloads and adding to my episodes is glitchy and impossible. I’m on hotel wifi and cellular is also not working.

EDIT - Marking the episodes as not started then downloading worked over cellular. 

[Dnuttzz]

I am also having this issue on ios. The option to "download to this device" only saves podcasts to "my episodes." And worse, it has cleared out all of my downloaded podcasts (100+) as well as all of my downloaded music playlists. I have plenty of space on my phone, was not over the download limit, and have tried all the troubleshooting mentioned in this thread. Very upset as now I can't listen while traveling.