Pocketcast won’t play
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I have had pocket cast on android for years.
all of a sudden it won’t play any episodes and won’t download any episodes.
I have reinstalled
I have updated my phone operating system
I have cleared cashe
nothing seems to work
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Hi there, @nickharrigan
Are you getting any error messages? Also, can you also please check on the following?
- Do you perhaps have a firewall, VPN, or ad-blocker active on your device that could interrupt your network connection?
- Please also check your primary WiFi connection. In particular, please see if it has any sort of ad-blocking or filtering installed on it. One example would be this: https://pi-hole.net/
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No error messages
No VPN, firewall, or blocker
Problem occurs both on wifi and mobile data.
Weirdly it seems to have fixed itself after not working for about 7 days. I have no idea why it would be so dysfunctional and then randomly fix itself.
This happened to me two months ago as well (i posted about it on these forums). The problem makes pocketcast completely unusable.
I am honestly very tempted to move to Spotify, as nothing like these problems have happened to me with Spotify or any other app except Pocketcasts.
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This is what i wrote on Google Play store: “Just doesn’t work any more. Play does nothing. Can’t download episodes. Can’t even play mp3 files i uploaded. I’ve reinstalled. I’ve deleted cashe. I’ve updated andoird operating system. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled three times. I am now deleting all my data and trying again. It shouldn’t be so hard to just listen to my podcasts.”
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Can we know what device and OS version are you using?
Would you happen to have other devices that you can test with to check if the issue happens? Well, if the problem happens again it sounds like it has been solved after 7 days.
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Hi @jennarosen
To investigate further, could you share more details about this issue, please?
- Does the problem occurs both on WiFi and on cellular data?
- Would you happen to have other devices that you can test with to check if the issue persists?
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Hi thanks so much for the quick reply! It was having on both wifi/cellular and also on the web all day yesterday but when I just checked this morning somehow everything is back to normal and working fine! Not sure what happened but hopefully just a quick little glitch – thanks again!
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Hello! I just saw this post and I have the same problem. On my two Android devices: my pixel phone and my samsung tablet.
I tried on my phone and the problem seem to happen when I’m on WiFi, not when I’m on my mobile data.
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@odemers2 since you have this issue only on WiFi, can you please check the following:
- Do you perhaps have a firewall, VPN, or ad-blocker active on your device or your network device (such as your router) that could interrupt your network connection?
- Please also check your primary WiFi connection. In particular, please see if it has any sort of ad-blocking or filtering installed on it. One example would be this: https://pi-hole.net/
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Hi @wildlyinstant – thank you for the report.
Have you tried a different wifi network (e.g., a coffee shop)? We’ve seen a similar report where trying different wifi network worked, and later found out that there was a firewall/security/filtering at the network-level. Adjusting the network/router settings fixed the issue.
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Very much appreciate a response. Not easy for me to go out so not a priority to troubleshoot elsewhere as no other app I use has a similar problem. When I was also in hospital recently, pocketcasts had the same problem when connected to Wifi. Also, I asked my ISP if they use any of the foregoing you mentioned on their modem/router I use and they said no. FYU, this problem only started after one of your recent upgrades. When I opened the app today the podcasts populated very very slowly but the app would not respond at all otherwise and had to closed down.
Looking forward to a solution as soon as possible. -
@wildlyinstant I’ll be emailing you so we can collect logs to help with further troubleshooting. Please keep an eye out for my message!
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Same problem here. Unable to play or download new podcasts. Previously started episodes and previously downloaded episodes play. I’m on iOS 18.5. Error message on a number of different podcasts I tried to download was “Download failed, error code service unavailable. Contact the podcast author.” I attempted to download from at least 3 different podcast feeds, so I’m guessing the problem isn’t with all the individual podcasts.
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Also adding that I tried both on mobile/cellular data and from my home wifi network. I’ve been using this app for many years and never had this issue… and nothing has changed recently with my home network.
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One last update – I did some more “testing” and found of the podcasts that would not play/download… two of them were Wondery podcasts. I tried a couple completely unrelated podcasts and was able to play/download, so it seems to be related to a couple specific podcast networks.
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Thanks for letting us know, @nathanielkip — I’ll be reaching out to you via email shortly so we can collect some logs and dig deeper into the issue. Please keep an eye on your inbox!
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