I’ve been listening to and watching podcasts for years now. In fact I started back when I needed to contrive a system of stars to help me manage what I’d already listened to. The problem then was that iTunes had only one set of options that applied to all podcasts uniformly.
Podcasts in iTunes.
And when you’ve been using software for years you don’t always realise that some of the more hidden features have changed.
That’s why it was only recently I discovered a much easier way to manage my podcasts.
Star system
I used to assign 3 stars or more to music I really enjoyed, 2 stars to podcast episodes I wanted to keep, 1 star to items I’d heard and needed to delete. Then periodically I’d locate all the 1-star items and remove them.
At some point though iTunes added the ability to set per-podcast options, and it passed me right by.
Set options for each podcast
iTunes per-podcast settings.
To set options for a particular podcast first select it in the list of podcasts. In my screenshot I’ve selected the Quirks & Quarks show.
Next click the Settings… button at the bottom of the window. Choose how often to check for new episodes, which podcasts to apply the settings to, and then how to handle new episodes by using the drop-down menus.
I find I want all new episodes of some podcasts and to manually select episodes from others.
Finally choose which episodes to keep: all, unplayed, or some number. I’ve now set most of my podcasts to keep only unplayed episodes.
What I’ve found is that now episodes I’ve listened to hang around for a Refresh or so and then just disappear. That may be because I’ve tried mainly manual refreshes since changing the settings. I suspect episodes are deleted after a scheduled refresh.
It’s an old habit to mark episodes I’ve listened to with a single star, now I can stop doing that. Whew.
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