Interrupted Episode does not move to Up Next Queue if queue is empty
-
Hi there,
My question is about the latest iOS version, 7.55.0.3. I have recently switched from Castro to Pocket Casts and am not entirely sure if I’m experiencing a bug or intended behavior.
To reproduce:
- Make sure your Up Next Queue is empty
- Start playing an episode (“Episode A”) by using its ▶️ button
- Pick any another episode (“Episode B”) and start playback using its ▶️ button
Expected behavior: Episode B starts playing and Episode A moves into the Up Next Queue, so I can continue listening to it where I left off after Episode B is over.
Actual behavior: Episode B starts playing, but Episode A completely disappears and does not move into the Up Next Queue. The Queue remains empty. I have to manually search for Episode A to continue listening to it when Episode B is over.
Remark: If there is any other Episode in the Up Next Queue already before playing Episode B, Pocket Casts actually behaves as expected and puts Episode A into the Up Next Queue. The unexpected behavior only occurs if the Queue is empty.
Thanks a lot for looking into this!
-
Hi, @joshuajung! This is actually intended behavior, but we appreciate you writing in to clarify.
Specifically, this is what should happen in our app when you press “Play” on an episode:
- If your Up Next queue is empty, the previously playing episode will be removed from the player and replaced by the new one. It won’t be added to the Up Next queue, because there is technically no Up Next queue yet.
- If you have any number of episodes in your Up Next queue, the previously playing episode will be pushed down to the top of your Up Next queue, and the new episode will be put into the player.
This has been the behaviour in the app for a few years already.
If you want the second scenario above to always happen, please just make sure that you have at least one episode in your Up Next queue at all times. One way you can ensure that is by enabling some Auto Add to Up Next settings under Profile > Settings (gear icon).
-
Hi Cara,
Thanks a lot for your reply! I understand now that this is intended behavior (and will be able to work around it in some way), but if I may, I would like to offer some feedback on why this is a bit disruptive to my personal habits, just in case this comes up again in the future:
I have a rather small number of podcasts that I regularly listen to. The time-sensitive ones are auto-added to the queue, as you suggest. So my queue is often filled, but sometimes it indeed runs dry, and I only have a single episode left that I’m currently listening to.
At the same time, I often have to jump into random other episodes for research purposes. I just play them using the ▶️ button, bypassing the queue, listen in for a few minutes and then discard them again. When I do so, I am usually unaware if there are any items in my Up Next queue (or as you would put it, if there is an Up Next queue at all). Therefore, the behavior of Pocket Casts is not deterministic for me at this point in time. I’m basically gambling on whether my currently playing episode is “lost”, or if it conveniently ends up in the queue.
It’s not something that breaks Pocket Casts for me to be honest, but still a little nagging uneasy feeling with an app that is otherwise really great UX-wise.
I would be curious to hear if it is an issue for other users as well, or how you are working around it. Thanks again for your time!
-
@joshuajung, I personally haven’t encountered other users having the same issue, but I appreciate the level of detail you shared so I can better understand where you’re coming from.
We have a report where we log improvement requests for the Up Next queue, and I’ve made sure to add your comments to that. Thanks again for the additional context!
-
Funny, this is something I just ran into myself which I thought must be a bug. I have been a pocketcasts user since 2015 and have only ran into this now. Perhaps it is because I only recently removed extremely old episodes from my up next which were originally queued for long car rides but which I didn’t care enough about to go back to.
I understand that you are saying that this is the intended behavior, however this seems like an odd decision which makes pocketcasts much more difficult to use. If I am listening to a longer format podcast which often takes several days for me to fully get through but want to switch to hearing my daily news podcasts on my commute, it would be nice for pocketcasts to return to the long-format one afterwards. Instead I am now losing the longer one, sometimes even having difficulty finding it again to resume listening. Perhaps it is just me but I think this is what the majority of users would expect to occur and which would be the most user-friendly.
-
@jesseduncan71 I have added your suggestion to our feature requests.
Thanks for contacting us with a well-written and thoughtful suggestion.
-
+1 for adding this as a feature request, even as a togglable option. I can see the argument both ways, but whenever it happens to me (2-3 times in my 2+ years of using the app) it catches me off guard. Thankfully it’s easy to find the dropped episode in Listening History or in an “In Progress” filter, but the behaviour is surprising nonetheless.
-
I was bitten by this today, and it wasn’t clear to me what happened and took me a while to figure out. It seems weird to have different behaviour based on the idea that there’s no play queue, since the app doesn’t do anything to tell you that you’re in a ‘no queue’ state – visually, the queue is still there, but just empty at the moment. It means the play button’s behaviour is essentially modal, and the modality is actually hidden from the user. At the very least, I’d expect a confirmation before Pocket Casts discards the current episode.
-
I am new to Pocket Casts. I encountered this today.
Why should an episode I am still listening to disappear?
The default behavior does not make much sense.
-
Hi @aritafari, welcome to Pocket Casts!
It sounds like you encountered the behavior where an episode you’re listening to is replaced. This happens when your “Up Next” queue is empty. In that case, the new episode takes over, as there’s technically no queue to place the previous one into.
However, if you have any episodes in your “Up Next” queue, the previously playing episode will be added to the top of it, and the new episode will play.
To always have the second scenario happen, make sure you have at least one episode in your “Up Next” queue at all times. You can automate this by enabling “Auto Add to Up Next” settings in Profile > Settings (gear icon).
For more details, check out this help article: https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/autoplay/
Pocket Casts Forum 