How do I autoplay I’m chronological order instead of reverse?
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Mike, if the recently released “Playlists” feature was the one in development that might address this request, it does not.
if you could create a Smart List with a rule to add by “release date” and the option was for “oldest” (or, for some people, “newest”) it might work. But with the current options, the functionality we’re asking for still doesn’t exist.
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Hi, @conklin94122! It looks like Mike was indeed referring to Playlists.
if you could create a Smart List with a rule to add by “release date” and the option was for “oldest” (or, for some people, “newest”) it might work. But with the current options, the functionality we’re asking for still doesn’t exist.
What do you think of a Smart Playlist that has the sort order set from “Oldest to Newest”? You can set that as follows:
- On the Playlist’s page, tap the three-dot icon on the upper-right corner
- Next to “Sort by”, select “Oldest to newest”
Whenever new episodes are added to the podcast, the playlist should retain your sort order. And whenever you play the playlist, it should play from the oldest episode to the newest one. Can you see if that works for you?
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Just want to “+1” the request to play podcasts chronologically.
The advice to reverse the sort is suboptimal, as the podcast I most listen to publishes four or five times per day (currently there are 1908 extant episodes). I don’t need to listen to them all, but I would like to listen to the most recent four or six of them, oldest to newest. Reversing the sort to enable an oldest-to-newest play requires scrolling down nearly 2000 episodes before I can get started.
Thanks for any attention the devs can give to this issue. -
@bflaminio thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I can understand why our current solution isn’t great in all situations. I’ll forward this comment along to our development team for their consideration.
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We are almost 2.5 years from the OP and this hasn’t been changed/fixed?
This is an incredibly common request and should be a simple programming/engineering fix.
I just switched to Pocketcasts a few months ago but will be looking for another app now, this is crazy.
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How is this not an option? It should be incredibly simple to have a setting to play the next episode chronologically (as in the next newest episode) instead of the next oldest episode. Many podcasts operate along a multi episode arc where you want to start with the first episode of the arc and continue through it.
Neither playlists nor sort order is satisfactory. I don’t want to have to choose what I want to listen to in advance of my trip. And I also don’t want the sort order to go back to the beginning of the podcast’s existence just to play in the proper order.
Simply add an option to settings to play next in ascending rather than descending order.
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@mikerockwell it’s been years now and people continue to request to be able to sort so that our podcasts play in chronological order. I looked back and I made a comment here in 2024 and the issue still remains. So when will this be taken care of? What’s the status update here? We’ve waited long enough.
Like I said back in 2024, I’m currently trying to get caught up to current episodes with a certain podcast by starting with previous episodes. I want it to play the next newest episode when the previous one ends, but it’s playing the next oldest one, which is very frustrating. I’ve also had other instances with other podcasts where after playing an episode, it jumps up and plays the newest one, which is also not what I want. There absolutely needs to be a new sort option for chronological order of the next episode that plays.
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Oh wow, yeah I started this thread going on 3 years ago now. The slow train of progress, eh?
It’s such a straightforward function that’s its conspicuous absence feels intentional (but why, in this case, I have no clue). Maybe something like how adobe won’t let me sort Lightroom files by size, so I can’t delete large ones and free up cloud space, making it more likely I’ll eventually have to buy more from them. I just can’t see the upside for the devs one way or the other so I’m at a loss.
I hate to be so cynical, but it’s either craven capitalism or incompetence, so pick your pejorative.
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Hi there, thanks for the feedback on this! We do have this logged as a feature request.
Here are a couple of workarounds that might help depending on your platform:
If you’re on iOS: There’s a sort option called “Serial” that’s designed exactly for this. Go to the podcast’s page, tap the three-dot menu at the top of the episode list, tap “Sort Episodes,” and select Serial. This sorts episodes by season and episode number, so they play in the intended order.
If you’re on Android: You can change the episode sort order to “Oldest to Newest” from the same three-dot menu on the podcast’s page. Autoplay follows the sort order of the screen you start playing from, so it should continue forward through episodes chronologically.
For either workaround, keep in mind:
- Your Up Next queue needs to be empty, since Autoplay only kicks in when there’s nothing queued
- Make sure Autoplay is enabled in Profile > Settings (gear icon) > General
Let me know if you need help with anything else.
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