iTunes 11 and Podcasts: You Cannot Delete Old Podcasts
I posted a first article about how Apple has broken podcasts with iTunes 11, and the more I look at it, the more I see that it’s a mess.
Here’s one problem: you cannot delete old podcasts. If you do – deleting them, and their files – they still show up in the podcast list. Here’s what you’ll see:
These podcasts never go away. They’ll show cloud icons for you to redownload them as long as they’re still available from the iTunes Store. So if you have a podcast with lots of episodes, you’ll have a very long list when you look at it in List view.
Highlight podcasts you want to delete, then press unsubscribe.
Press Unsubscribe where?
And if you do that, then you’ll unsubscribe from the podcast.
Highlight just the ones you want to delete. (It only works on the ones with the iCloud symbol).
The List shows all podcasts, downloaded or not.
My Podcasts only shows the downloaded podcasts.
Quite so, but if you click the Old Podcasts button it, too, will show the old ones and you can’t get rid of them. Grrrrr.
My god, it’s such a mess. Why do they keep tinkering with it? I’ll keep a close eye on your blog so I know when it’s actually safe to upgrade from 10.7!
I don’t know if Apple has modified iTunes with 11.3, but there is a relatively simple way to delete older podcasts: locate the “gear” symbol next to the program title. Click on it,and it opens a dialog box that lets you keep between “most recent” up to “10 most recent” podcasts. Anything beyond that number can be highlighted and simply deleted. This doesn’t allow you to select individual podcasts for deletion, but it will cut down considerably on the list length.