Ever since the introduction of Podcasts, the Podcasts section of the iOS app has never worked for me. For months now, all it has displayed is “Podcasts is unavailable”. The large retry button appears to do nothing, the message persists.
From the Home tab of the app, I can see the three podcasts I’ve subscribed to as “On Deck”, and some recommended podcasts… but that’s the only way I can get to podcasts. Any help would be much appreciated… I’d love to take further advantage of this great feature, especially since I can now listen to podcasts through my Sonos system too.
@virgiliomi Would you mind providing your device version and going into “Settings --> Help & Support --> Debugging --> Share Debugging Data” to get the logs and post them in there? I am using an iPad mini 4 running on OS 11.4.1 myself and I am unable to reproduce your issue. If you can provide additional information, it will greatly help us debug the issue. Thank you.
Could one of you upload a screenshot of the podcasts unavailable screen you’re seeing please? Then could you go to https://plex.tv/users/edit click on Online Media Source in the left side bar and verify Podcasts says enabled?
Thanks for the extra information, I’m trying to track this down but we haven’t been able to reproduce it internally yet.
This might sound like a weird thing to check but it’s the quickest way I can think of to make sure something internal is working correctly. Could you go to the Photos type either by tapping it on the bottom tab bar or in the More… tab screen, tap on the source picker in the upper left and pick the “Camera Roll ([device name])” option in the list.
Do you have that option and are you able to browse photos from your devices camera roll? If you don’t have the option can you open the user menu by tapping the avatar in the upper right of the screen, toggle the offline browsing switch, and check again?
I have the option for Camera Roll and can browse pictures on my phone when in offline mode… when online, it tells me to add a library (I don’t have a photo library on my Plex server).
BTW, totally unrelated to podcasts, but there may be a bug with offline mode. If you force-quit the app when in offline mode then relaunch, it shows as being in offline mode (the red bar appears), but things function as though it’s online. All server content shows, not just the content that has been synced.
THOUGH… now that I’ve done that and I’m in “limbo” I’ll call it (half online, half offline?)… going to More… > Photos says I’m offline, but doesn’t give me the option to browse my camera roll… even though everything else - movies, shows, and music - all function as if they’re online. If I toggle offline mode off then back on, I can now browse my camera roll, and all other content functions as if offline.
Go to https://app.plex.tv/desktop, click the server picker in the upper left and go to podcasts, go to My Podcasts, hover over the image for the Glass Case… podcast, tap the … in the lower right corner of it and remove from my podcasts in that menu. Then restart the iOS app and try going to podcasts.
Nope, didn’t fix the issue. I also removed another of the podcasts I had subscribed to, since it showed a negative number of unplayed episodes, to make sure that wasn’t an issue… but no joy there either.
There’s still some data from the podcast that is causing problem hanging around. Sorry for the trouble, we’re looking into solving the underlying problem but for now there’s more steps that should get you out of the state (I was in the same state after reproducing this and it just worked for me).
To fix it you’ll need to re add the podcast. Go to Plex web, podcasts, tap add podcast in the upper right corner, paste in https://www.nascar.com/feed/podcast/glass-case-podcast, Then reload the page and go back to podcasts, scroll down to the Recently Added hub and for each episode of that podcast in the hub hit the context menu button and then mark as unplayed. After that remove the podcast again.
Ok… so that worked, though I didn’t see a “Recently Added” hub on the Podcasts page… instead, I went to My Podcasts and just marked the whole podcast as unplayed, then removed it… and now the Podcasts page loads in the app.
Is it something about that podcast in particular causing the issue? I’m guessing if you were able to re-create the issue (likely using the same podcast), I probably need to wait for the fix before trying to re-add it.
FWIW, I’m having the same issue on Android 8.1 with Google Pixel. Podcasts came up the other day just fine but isn’t now and refreshing doesn’t work. Also, I’ve use to actually subscribe to any podcasts (given that I cannot get my opml file to load).
Any thoughts? I’m happy to start a new thread (not trying to hijack the thread but rather just trying to keep the issue in a single location). Thanks in advance!
Hi there,
I’m having the exact same issue. Podcasts used to work for me (back when it was in beta) but now, no luck. I can access podcasts through the web using Safari on the Mac, but on iOS (both iPhone and iPad), I get the same screen that was uploaded by Virgiliomi.
Podcasts is enabled in Online Media Sources.
I’m using version 5.3 of the app on iOS, and the server is on Version 1.13.6.5339.
Just wanted to say that I also am experiencing this issue - podcasts are unavailable on iOS app as well as the iOS Beta app but accessible via the web client. Through the web client, I saw a number of podcasts displaying a negative count. I marked all of them as played and once I cleared the queue of unplayed items, access was restored to my iOS client.
I know that this feature is just out of Beta, but this isn’t an ideal situation and one I hope gets fixed soon.
I’m also having this issue and none of the above fixes have worked. Marked all my podcasts as unplayed and removed them all. Still getting the “Podcasts Is Unavailable” message…
This is extremely frustrating considering this is a feature that is supposedly out of beta.
I’m having the same problem on Android. Running client 7.6.2.7169 on Android 8.0.0 against server 1.13.9.5439. A lot of the time the Podcasts menu item isn’t even available (missing entirely from the list), but when it is, it consistently returns the same error as above. Works fine in the web interface.
I only started using the Podcasts feature recently, but I’ve added a number of them, and manually synced played/unplayed status (since my previous client didn’t support OPLM export), so I’d rather not remove them all, or bulk reset played status, especially since I don’t know which of them is causing the issue. I can provide debug logs, but don’t wanna post them in a public forum.
Other issues I’ve noticed:
Only shows I’ve added manually (with RSS URL) show up on deck. Shows I’ve added by searching (specifically Serial and S-Town) appear to be considered part of My Podcasts when I view their details, but are missing from the show list.
Trying to manually add The TV History Podcast ( https://www.tvhistorypod.com/?feed=podcast ) consistently results in the error “Something went wrong. Make sure the URL is correct and try again.”.
Could you force quit the app, restart, go to podcasts, then upload logs again?