Issues Syncing Across Devices
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The Android install was a brand new install on a brand new Pixel 7, my first Android found in over 20 years, and signed into exactly the same account as my iPhone I spent over two days migrating back from overcast to pocket casts on my iPhone before I ever installed the app on android. It was very slow and cumbersome to manually archive all of the episodes for 100 podcasts on iPhone given that I am completely blind. I uninstalled the app on Android and when I reinstalled it and signed in it still had thousands and thousands of episodes that I already listened to on iPhone and a bunch of podcasts I had already unsubscribed from on iPhone. There has to be an easier way to get both devices in sync than manually making the same modifications on Android while not changing the state on iPhone for the next couple of days. Given that I was signed into the same account on both devices right from the start, I don’t have any confidence that manually syncing the changes on Android will fix the problem. There is no explanation as to how Android got so out of sync when I have never previously installed pocket casts on Android until this problem came up. Even though I unsubscribed from a couple of podcasts on iPhone, forcing a refresh did not remove those podcasts from Android so why would manually changing the sync status on Android when it appears that subscribed podcasts are not even being synced correctly? Doing a refresh on iPhone subscribes me to the podcasts that I previously unsubscribed from followed by a refresh.
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There doesn’t seem to be any indication as to which device is being considered the master during a refresh. Clean up one podcast on android by archiving all of the previously listened to episodes and then refresh. Go back to iPhone and refresh and the podcasts I unsubscribed from are resurrected. The state of the podcast that I cleaned up on android remains the same on iPhone. Now go back and refresh on android and every episode in that podcast going back to the beginning of time reappears as unplayed and unarchived. To me, this seems like the android version is severely broken in terms of syncing with an iPhone device.
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If you’re running into sync issues, we recommend you follow these initial troubleshooting steps:
- Check whether the information you are expecting to sync is included in Pocket Casts sync.
- Go to each app’s “Profile” screen:
- Web and desktop apps – click the “Profile” icon on the upper-right corner of the screen
- Android and iOS mobile apps – tap the “Profile” tab
- Check if you’re logged in to the same account across all your devices.
- Check the “Profile” screen for any errors.
- On the Android and iOS mobile apps, tap “Refresh Now” to force a sync.
Let us know if that doesn’t help. We’re here to assist.
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they suggestions I’ve already followed based on previous feedback. Everything is set up the way it should be for a successful sync. I even stated this in my comment above yours. If nobody has any other suggestions all I can suggest is somebody needs to investigate this on your side because I’m not going to continue to be looped around to the same suggestions over and over and over and over and over again from every staff member that works there.
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if any other staff member has suggestions please do me a favor and read this entire thread before sending me suggestions that I have already followed.
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Hi @kg6sxy,
I understand how this can be frustrating. Let me try to take a step back and try to provide more context here.
Syncing will securely store all of your podcast subscriptions in the cloud. As you play episodes, Pocket Casts will automatically sync your playback position to the cloud and any other device that you’re logged into Pocket Casts on. If you change something about an episode (archive it, star it, mark it as played, etc) we’ll sync that too. We’ll also keep track of your Up Next list, stats and Listening History.
If sync was up-to-date, when you get a new phone, all you have to do is simply sign back in and all of the above should be restored to your new device.
The Android install was a brand new install on a brand new Pixel 7, my first Android found in over 20 years, and signed into exactly the same account as my iPhone I spent over two days migrating back from overcast to pocket casts on my iPhone before I ever installed the app on android.
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I uninstalled the app on Android and when I reinstalled it and signed in it still had thousands and thousands of episodes that I already listened to on iPhone and a bunch of podcasts I had already unsubscribed from on iPhone.
It sounds like the changes you made on Android wasn’t synced properly, which would explain why you saw older state from iPhone reappearing on Android. It’s possible that the changes stayed on-device only without being uploaded due to network issues, account issues, sync issues, or a bug.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication as to which device is being considered the master during a refresh. Clean up one podcast on android by archiving all of the previously listened to episodes and then refresh. Go back to iPhone and refresh and the podcasts I unsubscribed from are resurrected.
When we say “your phone syncs with our servers,” we refer to multiple sync tasks. It’s not just one process. It’s these:
- Refresh: looks for new episodes that have been released since the app last checked—this is the only one that runs whether a user has an account or not
- Up Next sync: syncs the Now Playing episode and Up Next queue to and from the server
- Sync: sends all the changes the user has made to podcasts, episodes, and filters to the server; gets changes made on other devices back
- History sync: syncs listening history to the server and back
- Stats sync: syncs listening stats (how many hours, time saved, etc.) to and from the server
… and so on.
Some of these tasks are run in order. Others are run all at once. What you see on your end is a result of all the above tasks.
When you log in, podcasts are synced first, followed by filters. Then, on the next periodic sync, other information like subscription status is synced.
The sync is not instantaneous. The app only automatically requests a refresh around once an hour or whenever it is opened. The OS can also ignore the request and perform the refresh when it chooses.
If necessary, however, the sync can be hurried up by tapping “Refresh now” in the app’s Profile tab.
they suggestions I’ve already followed based on previous feedback. Everything is set up the way it should be for a successful sync. I even stated this in my comment above yours.
Thanks for confirming — that’s the first steps to rule out any account-related issues. Since these look good, the discrepancy in information across devices is likely from at least one app having been logged out at some point.
For example, any changes made to starred, archived, and played statuses while logged out will not get uploaded to our servers. That information would be device-only.
To remedy this, would you mark problem episodes as starred/archived/played while logged in to your account? You may find using Multi-Select particularly helpful here, as it would allow them to manage episodes in bulk. The user-facing documentation for Multi-Select is here: Android Multi-Select, iOS Multi-Select.
I hope that helps!
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Given that I marked one of the podcasts episodes as archived to match the iPhone followed by triggering a refresh, shouldn’t that eventually leave that podcast in the right state on Android? How long would you expect it to take because it did not inherit the same state after several hours? On the next manual refresh the old status is shown before I archived all of the episodes. Both phones are on T-Mobile with 5G. Before and after I modified the archive status of a lot of episodes, I verified that I was still signed in to the same account on both devices. After that test, I modified the archive status for a second podcast with the same end result. I don’t want to spend a significant amount of time doing this for 100+ podcasts which will likely exhibit the same problem. I added a new podcast to test out the sync and archived episodes on iPhone did not sync with Android, however, Android did pick up the new podcast. Then I unsubscribed on iPhone and Android did not unsubscribe. I gave Android several hours to hopefully sync up correctly but it did not.
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