Listen to your favorite podcasts, and discover many more including shows with music.
Unfortunately, Spotify doesn't actually seem very interested in being a good podcast app. It seems very interested, however, in being a good app for Spotify to promote podcasts. Step 1, Open Spotify on your phone or tablet. It'll be in the app drawer on an Android, and on the home screen or in a folder on the iPhone or iPad.Step 2, Tap the magnifying glass icon. It's at the bottom-center part of the app. This opens the Search page.Step 3, Tap the Podcasts tile. It's an orange tile under the 'Browse all' header.
- Get recommended and featured podcasts and shows.
- Save the podcasts and shows you like. New episodes then automatically save.
- Download to listen offline.
- Some episodes feature videos too.
Note: While Spotify doesn’t play ads that interrupt the music listening experience of Premium subscribers, some podcasts may include advertising, host-read endorsements, or sponsorship messages.
Find and play podcasts and shows
- Tap Search .
- Under Browse All, tap Podcasts & Shows.
- Browse featured episodes, or scroll down to browse by category.
- Select a podcast or show to view its page and all available episodes.
Tap to start listening.
Tap to control the play speed.
Tap to skip forward 15 seconds, or tap to rewind 15 seconds.
In the Now Playing view, tap (iOS) (Android) on a podcast or show to:
- Get more information.
- Download episodes for offline listening.
- Share with your friends and to your social channels.
- Add it to your Play Queue.
- Click Browse in the menu on the left.
- Click Podcasts & Shows.
- Browse featured episodes, or scroll down to browse by category.
Hover over the cover art and click the play button to start listening, or click the title to see more episodes.
Click to control the play speed.
Click to skip forward 15 seconds, or tap to rewind 15 seconds.
For: Podcasts only
- Click Search .
- Under Browse All, tap Podcasts.
- Browse featured episodes, or scroll down to browse by category.
Hover over the cover art and click the play button to start listening, or click the title to see more episodes.
Click to skip forward 15 seconds, or click to rewind 15 seconds.
Save podcasts and shows
Podcast or shows
- Select FOLLOW on a page to save it to Your Library under the Podcasts tab.
- Tap FOLLOWING on the page to unfollow it.
Episodes
- Tap on an episode to save it to the Your Episodes playlist in Your Library.
- To remove an episode, tap (iOS) (Android) to the right of an episode title. Then, tap .
- To save an episode to a different playlist, tap . Then select a playlist or create a new one.
- Click FOLLOW on the page to save it to Podcasts in Your Library.
- Click FOLLOWING on the page to unfollow it.
For: Podcasts only
- Click SAVE TO YOUR LIBRARY on the podcast page to save.
- Find podcasts you save in Your Library, in the PODCASTS tab.
- To remove a podcast, click REMOVE FROM YOUR LIBRARY.
Download podcasts and shows
Spotify Podcast Application
Tap on a podcast or show to download.
Note: You need Premium to download shows.
Get a podcast on Spotify
Check out Spotify for Podcasters.
Spotify—one of Apple's main rivals in both the latter's services strategy and in antitrust investigations—has released a new version of its iPhone app that supports home screen widgets, one of the flagship features of iOS 14.
Last month's release of iOS 14 brought home screen widgets—previously only the domain of iPads and Android phones—to iPhones. As we noted in our iOS 14 review, the value of the feature depends entirely on strong adoption and clever uses by third-party app developers.
Releases of widget-supporting apps from developers have been slow. Part of that was because Apple launched iOS 14 with less notice to developers than usual, meaning many were racing to play catch-up. But even now, a month later, the roster of widget-supporting apps has only grown a little.
Spotify is one of the most high-profile apps on the App Store, and it finally made the jump with version 8.5.80 of its iOS app. Unfortunately, the new widget isn't all that powerful or useful. It essentially does the exact same thing the Music widget does: it shows a list of recently played songs or playlists that you can tap into from the home screen.
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Tapping an entry doesn't just take you to the song in the app—it starts playing it right away, saving you an extra tap. Many users will wish they could customize what appears in the list or that they could control playback, as they currently can in the Android widget. As the setup stands now, the widget offers no customization options at all.
Spotify Podcast Video
Some app developers (like Spark) have found creative ways to use the somewhat limited iOS widgets API (WidgetKit) to offer multiple, flexible uses of that precious home screen real estate. But users have said a lot of widgets just aren't that useful at the moment.
Those same users might wonder why we're not seeing essentially fully working slices of apps appearing on the home screen. Apple is likely to expand what developers can do with WidgetKit in future software releases, but there will always be some big limitations because of an emphasis on maintaining battery life.
Lots of interactivity and live data from multiple apps on the home screen could have a negative impact there—that's probably why Apple and many devs have generally been conservative in terms of making widgets ultra-powerful.
By contrast, the Android Spotify widget offers playback control. But Spotify actually removed that comparatively powerful widget in August of last year, only to reintroduce an improved version of it shortly afterward when users complained. The brief removal led to a plethora of user-made widgets to replace the lost functionality.
But at least Spotify is supporting widgets on iPhones at all—that wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Spotify Podcasts Free
Listing image by Samuel Axon