How to Manage Your Podcasts on iTunes

There are thousands of podcasts to browse through in the iTunes store. Once you find the ones that you are loyal to, there are many ways to keep the podcasts organized, so that you're getting the ones you want, when you want them. Here are some tips for an efficient podcast fan.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• computer
• iTunes
• internet connection
• podcasts that you love and/or listen to

1. Open up iTunes, click on the Podcasts link on the left hand side to bring up all your subscribed podcasts.
2. The first thing you can do is to customize your lists. Go to Edit/Preferences on the toolbar and click on the Podcast tab. There, you'll have the option of choosing how often you want iTunes to check for new episodes (hourly, daily, weekly, or manually), whether you want new episodes to be automatically downloaded or not, and how many you can keep at a time.
3. Another way to manage your podcast is to create smart playlists. After you listen to one episode in a podcast, a smart playlist will allow iTunes to automatically continue it onto the next episode to create a continuous stream. To do this, go to File/New Smart Playlist, and select Podcast from the drop-down menu. There you can customize the rules and add filters if desired.
4. Most podcasts have an auto-remove feature, but you also have the option of saving all your podcasts until you manually delete it. It's actually very easy. Just select the podcast (either the entire thing or a specific episode), right-click and select "Do Not Auto-Delete."
5. Let's say you're tired of a specific podcast. There's an Unsubscribe button on the lower left hand corner of the screen that makes it easy for you to get rid of it, so that you're list isn't cluttered. If you'd like to delete all files related to the podcast as well, you can press the Delete key after selecting the podcast.

Tips & Warnings

• If there's a podcast that you've found outside of the iTunes store, it's easy to subscribe to it anyway. Just drag the URL into the podcast playlist, or you can go to the Advanced menu, click on Subscribe to Podcast, and type the URL into the box.
• After your podcast is downloaded, there is a blue dot that appears next to the podcast, showing that it has not been played yet. After you listen to it, the blue dot disappears, and the episode will be automatically removed from your iPod the next time you sync it up with your computer. If you don't want the episode to be deleted, make sure you right click after you finish listening to it and select "Mark as Unread."