Plex to End Support for Podcasts on Friday

by

Plex is set to end support for podcasts on Friday, the company behind the media management platform has announced.
plex podcasts

Web Shows on the Plex media server will also close this week, the company said in a post on the Plex forum, although most of the content the section hosted will still be available to users elsewhere on the platform.

As part of our ongoing effort to make sure we're spending our time and energy in ways that best serve our awesome user community, we've made the decision to end support for Podcasts and Web Shows within Plex. We recognize this decision will impact several of you greatly, and we apologize for the inconvenience it will cause. You can continue to access these features within Plex until Friday, April 15th, 2022, at which point they will no longer be available.

Plex didn't say exactly why it had decided to end support for podcasts and close the Web Shows portal of its media management offering, but the wording suggests that neither section was being used enough to make them worth the time and money spent maintaining them.

For those who want to export their podcast subscription list in OPML format for use in other players, the Plex forum post provides instructions on how to go about it before support closes.

As noted by XDA Developers, Plex podcast support has largely stood still since it was introduced in 2018, and there are several complaints from users in the Plex forums about buggy performance and other issues going all the way back to its inception.

Tag: Plex

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Air Size Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With Rear Camera Bar Allegedly Shown in Leaked Photo

Tuesday January 21, 2025 12:46 pm PST by
A leaker known as "Majin Bu" today shared an alleged image of a component for the rumored, ultra-thin "iPhone 17 Air" model. The blurry, pixelated image shows a pair of rear iPhone shells with a pill-shaped, raised camera bar along the top. On the left side of the bar, there is a circular cutout that appears to be for a single rear camera. On the right side of the bar, there appears to be an ...
Read Full Article • 149 comments
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Leak Reveals All-New Design

Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app. Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Read Full Article
iOS 18

Here Are Apple's Full Release Notes for iOS 18.3

Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes. The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Read Full Article • 50 comments
iPhone SE Dynamic Island Majin Bu

iPhone SE 4 Leak Shows Dynamic Island, Casts Doubt on Rumored 'iPhone 16E' Name

Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass. In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
Read Full Article • 180 comments
2024 App Store Awards

Apple Explains Why It Removed TikTok From the App Store in the U.S.

Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action. Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
Read Full Article • 258 comments
airtag 4 pack blue

AirTag 2 Launching This Year With These 3 New Features

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory. A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June. The original AirTag was announced...
Read Full Article
truecaller

Truecaller iOS Update Rolls Out Real-Time Caller ID Support

Wednesday January 22, 2025 2:07 am PST by
Popular caller ID app Truecaller is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers. Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely retrieve information about a caller from their servers, hence today's Truecaller update. iPhone users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature by going to Settings ➝ ...
Read Full Article • 61 comments
ipad pro 2024

New iPad Pro Reportedly Launching This Year

Tuesday January 21, 2025 6:40 am PST by
Apple plans to release at least one new iPad Pro model this year, according to a supplier-focused report today from Korean website The Elec. It is likely that the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models would be updated simultaneously. After receiving an OLED display last year, the report said the iPad Pro will receive only "minor" changes this year. Overall, the next iPad Pro is expected to...
Read Full Article • 135 comments
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 14 iPhon...
Read Full Article

Top Rated Comments

W2u7Yw4HaD Avatar
W2u7Yw4HaD
36 months ago
Yeah, I didn't think it even supported podcasts until now.. But would never have been my go-to place for podcasts in the first place..
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PeteBurgh Avatar
PeteBurgh
36 months ago

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?
Well, therein lies the question. A lot of users (including myself) would like it to be the former: a server-client set up that allows me to access my own media. That is how it began. But there seems to be strong economic incentives (and maybe some user demand?) to make it a broader product that is also a gateway to all sorts of streaming content.

It does create a tension between different kinds of users (or current and potential future users?).

going from a sleek piece of Mac specific software to the current bloated Electron garbage
Unless I'm very much mistaken, the neither the player nor server apps use Electron.

I think it's a bit harsh to call it 'garbage'. For me it's somewhere between 'fine' and 'meh' - yeah, it's not very Mac-like (what is these days), but it's reasonably fast, easy to navigate, and doesn't hog loads of system resources. I like Infuse too.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Codestud Avatar
Codestud
36 months ago
Yet they've spent a ton of time adding this "Discover" content aggregator thing, which I looked at once and immediately turned off. I don't want Plex as a content aggregator for online services. It's for my local media on my server and that's it.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Zorn Avatar
Zorn
36 months ago
Actually glad about this, Plex is an amazing app for the things it's focused toward. The podcasts support was never very good anyway, and I'm not sure who was looking to Plex for this functionality in the first place. There are many superior dedicated apps. The web shows thing is 100% good riddance, I didn't need more advertising filled junk that was never asked for.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kingtj1971 Avatar
kingtj1971
36 months ago

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?
It's just what you suggest, in the same way the game of baseball is "some guys running around a field trying to catch a ball someone whacks with a piece of wood". :)

I mean, it's essentially a product that consists of both a "server" and a "client" piece. The "Plex Media Server" runs on a machine configured for it and lets you store a collection of video and audio content that it indexes/catalogs and can then stream optimally to a Plex "client" -- which can be software running on a Windows PC, a Mac, an iPad/iPhone, Android device, or built into various smart TVs on the market or set-top boxes like Apple TV.

It works on your local network or can stream over the Internet, supporting "user accounts" you create on the server so specific people you know can be granted access to parts of, or to your complete library of content.

As time went on, the Plex authors kept bolting on new features, so it went from focusing on your own personal video, music or photo collections to supporting all these Internet-based streaming options and even broadcast TV if you have the right TV tuner board installed in a Plex server. Podcast support is another one of those things they added to fill out the offerings a Plex client gave people....
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
_Spinn_ Avatar
_Spinn_
36 months ago
I never liked the way Plex implemented podcasts. I wish the files were downloaded to my Plex server and served from there that way I could keep an archive of my favorite podcasts with the rest of my digital media.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments