Try Uploading the Podcast to Google Weird Podcast Player
Unless you’re a fan of using Google Play Music to manage and listen to podcasts – and we don’t blame you for that – you can still get your podcasts on Android without installing a third-party app. Just do a quick Google search for what you want to listen to, place a shortcut to the show on your home screen and tap it whenever you want to enrich your life with hours and hours of commentary.
This crude implementation makes you feel like you have a podcast manager built right into Android. Now, some of you may even be able to use these “homebases,” as Google calls them, to download episodes for later listening. Here’s how:
Downloading podcasts from the Android home base
To take advantage of the new Google podcast settings, you must have at least version 8.1 of the Google app installed. If you don’t already have it on your device, you can download it from APKMirror and download it from your phone or tablet – just like any other third-party Android app that you want to manually install. (Make sure you have installed the correct version of the app for your device.)
Even so, there is no guarantee that you will automatically receive any new features for the game. I am using version 8.1.7 of the google app and unfortunately have not seen an option to download podcasts. When 9to5Google recently announced the launch of this feature, they said it was available to “the majority of users,” so it is entirely possible that Google is either testing or rolling out this feature (and I just had no luck).
However, once you have the version of the app you want on your device, make sure you set a podcast shortcut to your homepage by doing a Google search on any available podcast, clicking “More episodes” and either following Google prompts or clicking the podcast icon in the upper left corner by clicking on the three-dot sub-menu and choosing “Add to Home Screen.”
If you’re lucky enough to have new features, clicking on any episode of the podcast to open its description will also provide a Download episode link at the bottom. You’ll have to do this manually for any podcast you want to listen to later, but Android is at least smart enough to automatically delete old podcasts on your behalf.
To adjust this setting, return to the main podcast screen, tap the three-dot overflow menu, and tap the new Settings option. This is where you can configure when Google should delete downloads of unfinished episodes (after 30 days, after 90 days, or never) and completed episodes (after 24 hours, after seven days, or never).
Slowly but surely, Google’s curious implementation of a standalone podcast “app” is taking on features that other podcast apps have had since the inception of podcasts. Hopefully, in the next major iteration of the app, Google will add an “auto-upload” feature to make the process easier.
Built-in podcast player in Google app adds offline download and listening capability | 9to5Google