Apple Podcasts
Ranked 3 of 4 podcast apps by recommenders
Free app that plays podcast episodes reliably and is organized sensibly. Critics mainly cite unreliable downloads and promoted ads.
Free app that plays podcast episodes reliably and is organized sensibly. Critics mainly cite unreliable downloads and promoted ads.
37 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 27
- approval share
- 27%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works well for many listeners
“things like Safari and Apple Podcasts work really well”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android” “Works great for me. No subscription required.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” “It's absolutely fine, from what I can tell”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” Downloads and plays files reliably
“It's meh, but it plays podcast episodes reliably.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Auto-download in Apple Podcasts is so unreliable it's basically useless” “Apple Podcasts downloads the files fine.”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Use your OpenAI subscription to create audiobooks” Fast, sensible library organization
“Apple Podcasts is organized like I'd expect a podcast app to be.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” “very fast for me now after library migration”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Downloaded episodes often missing
“The iOS Podcast app doesn't allow me to delete certain podcasts from the downloads section.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “iOS 27 'Rave' Update to Clean Up Code, Could Boost Battery Life” “it turns out it was the Podcasts app's cache, while the app itself reported no downloads”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with M5” “90% of the time the downloaded episode is not there even if you just downloaded it.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Bugs Apple Loves” Ads and promoted shows in suggestions
“real human podcast listeners might suffer with spammy fake shows even on Apple Podcasts and Spotify”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “A website that lists websites to submit your website to” “It infuriates me that Apple Podcast slips in ads for podcasts I have no interest in as suggestions.”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “New Apple TV 4K” “You can blame apple podcasts for showing ads featuring random podcasts that apple is promoting.”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “New Apple TV 4K” Auto-downloads gigabytes of audio
“There's no reason to default to downloading gigabytes of audio files if they could be streamed with no issue whatsoever.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” “decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” Janky navigation and Up Next
“in Podcasts you can tap between Home and Library to see the selection jank around the middle New tab.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max” “Podcast app's "Up Next" is a magical mystery list that can't be disabled or guided.”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android”
Other podcast apps people recommend
The three most recommended other podcast apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AntennaPod | 18 | 0 | 100% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Overcast podcast app | 17 | 3 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Apple PodcastsThis page | 10 | 27 | 27% | 5 | — | — |
| Pocket Casts | 9 | 2 | 82% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
37 of the 41 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“as far as I'm concerned, they are ads”
“You can blame apple podcasts for showing ads featuring random podcasts that apple is promoting.”
“The ads are becoming a real problem.”
“It infuriates me that Apple Podcast slips in ads for podcasts I have no interest in as suggestions.”
“Apple Podcasts downloads the files fine.”
“very fast for me now after library migration”
“takes less than 30 seconds to load the Latest Episodes list”
“in Podcasts you can tap between Home and Library to see the selection jank around the middle New tab.”
“The most broken (so it needs to be restarted sometimes) is Podcasts”
“they never actually supported it meaningfully”
“Apple Podcasts stopped supporting Atom (sadly) a few years ago”
“the execrable user interface of the iphone podcast app”
“the apple podcast player is truly horrendous to use”
“real human podcast listeners might suffer with spammy fake shows even on Apple Podcasts and Spotify”
“The Podcasts app now... THAT is a complaint I can get behind.”
“it didn't differentiate between speakers.”
“the UI is just terrible for the way I listen to podcasts”
“it turns out it was the Podcasts app's cache, while the app itself reported no downloads”
“That's one way to drive sales for higher priced SSDs in Apple products”
“There's no reason to default to downloading gigabytes of audio files if they could be streamed with no issue whatsoever.”
“Apple Podcasts is organized like I'd expect a podcast app to be.”
“Works great for me. No subscription required.”
“the native Podcast app for iPhone is the only way to make PC-phone podcast file syncing work”
“It's absolutely fine, from what I can tell”
“decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them”
“The iOS Podcast app doesn't allow me to delete certain podcasts from the downloads section.”
“the company that also lets you support your favorite podcasts via a subscription decided their competitor should pay 30% more just to do the same thing?”
“only one of those has a 30% chunk taken out”
“things like Safari and Apple Podcasts work really well”
“Podcast app's "Up Next" is a magical mystery list that can't be disabled or guided.”
“90% of the time the downloaded episode is not there even if you just downloaded it.”
“It's meh, but it plays podcast episodes reliably.”
“falls right in line with the lack of logic on the podcast downloads”
“The Apple podcast app has sucked since it was released in 2011”
“I could literally not read their labels because they were now black on black.”
“it's loading unencrypted MP3s directly from the authors S3 bucket”
“Apple Music, Podcasts, Apple TV, Apple Maps — would all be better as web sites.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.