How to Move Podcasts Between Apps
I’ve been a fan of the Castro podcast app for a long time, mainly because Ipaid $ 5 back when the app was on version 2, which unlocked a subset of features that today’s Castro 3 users can’t get without a subscription. (Ha!) However, Pocket Casts – Shark to Castro Plane – now support playback on Amazon Echo devices with a useful little skill I want to use in my home to start clearing a 100+ episode turn.
In other words, it’s time to switch, but the last thing I want to do is manually re-subscribe to all the podcasts that are currently filling my queue to the limit. Luckily, I don’t need to – neither do you, if you ever want to switch from one podcast app to another.
… with one caveat, of course. If you’ve used the built-in Podcasts app on iOS or Google’s fancy new Podcasts app on Android, you’ll have to manually subscribe to podcasts in whichever new player you choose. None of the apps allow podcast subscriptions to be exported as an OPML file , and this is the method I’ll be using to move from Castro ( iOS / Android ) to Pocket Casts ( iOS / Android ).
OPML makes it easy to switch between podcast apps (if they support OPML import / export, which is what most good third-party apps do). And double cheers to Pocket Casts – one of Lifehacker’s favorites – for providing a great guide that shows you how to jump from a range of other popular podcasting apps if you need a little help.
How I went from Castro to Pocket Casts
Even though I’m using Castro – so my quick example is app-specific – you’ll use the same general process to navigate between podcast apps. In my case, I pulled out the Castro, touched the gear icon in the upper left corner to load its settings, and scrolled down a bit to touch the User Data section.
I found a handy little import and export options for Castro’s OPML files here:
One quick click on Export Subscriptions and I was able to export my podcasts directly to my Dropbox folder. Light.
Then I opened Pocket Casts, tapped the Profile icon in the bottom right corner and clicked Import / Export OPML. Unfortunately that didn’t work as the app reminded me that the only way to actually import the OPML file is to email it to myself and then open the attachment in Pocket Casts via the iOS Share Sheet. Sigh.
Once in Gmail, I successfully sent myself an OPML file saved in Dropbox. I clicked on it to open the raw code, clicked the Share button on iOS, and scrolled to the right until I could click on the Copy to Pocket Casts option.
This brought me back to the Pocket Cast settings page and my podcasts started importing without issue:
The only problem with this approach – which will be the same regardless of the app you’re exporting (or importing) from – is that you’re only migrating your subscriptions , not your downloaded podcasts. While re-downloading episodes you haven’t listened to is annoying most of the time, there are some podcasts (cough, this American life coughs) that prevent you from downloading older episodes. You will need to download the episode every week, so switching to a new podcast app will confuse you a little until you can restore your queue.