Thirty shows. One feed. Sorted before breakfast.
Spotify drops every podcast you follow into one long pile. Podcast Manager splits it into playlists you design, like the day’s news for the commute or the next chapter of a serial, and rebuilds them for you every day.
Played episodes drop out. Serial gives the next episode you haven’t heard, not its newest.
Set it up once, then just press play
You make the playlists and choose which shows go in them. The app does the rest in your own Spotify account, so you listen in the Spotify app on your phone, car or speaker, the way you already do.
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Make a playlist
Give it a name like Morning or Long walks, and choose how it’s laid out: shows in the order you pick, or everything by release date.
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Add your shows
Choose which podcasts go in, and how many episodes each one gives: the latest only, a few, or everything you haven’t heard.
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Listen in Spotify
A matching playlist shows up in Spotify and is rebuilt each morning, or up to three times a day if you like. Episodes you finish disappear from it through the day.
What a Morning playlist looks like
This playlist takes the latest episode of each show, in the order you set. Four news shows give you the day’s four episodes, and yesterday’s news never piles up.
Serial tells one story across many episodes, so it’s marked as a serial. Instead of its newest episode, it gives the next one you haven’t heard. Finish one on the train and the next is waiting tomorrow.
The same show can follow different rules in different playlists.
This is the playlist’s page in the app. Each row shows the rule it will follow on the next rebuild. For Serial, “oldest” means the earliest episode you haven’t heard.
Small rules that save a lot of scrolling
Everything below happens on its own once your playlists are set up.
Serials stay in order
Mark a story podcast as a serial and it always gives you the next episode you haven’t heard, even in a playlist sorted newest first.
Shuffle, without spoiling the story
Set a playlist to shuffle and your shows are mixed in a new order every morning, but each show’s own episodes still play in order.
Finished episodes clear themselves
Every half hour, episodes you’ve played to the end are taken out of your playlists, so the top of the list is always something new.
Fresh every morning
Each day, at a time you choose, the app checks which shows you follow and rebuilds every playlist from what you haven’t heard yet.
One show, many playlists
A show can sit in several playlists with a different rule in each: just the latest in one, the whole back catalogue in another.
Unfollowing is handled gently
Stop following a show in Spotify and it stops appearing in your playlists straight away. It’s only removed for good after a week, so if you follow it again, it goes back where it was.
Tidy up without unfollowing
Archive a show you still follow but don’t want to see in the app. You can also turn a playlist off, and it won’t be touched until you turn it back on.
Use playlists you already have
Point the app at a Spotify playlist you already own instead of making a new one. It will only let you choose playlists that belong to you.
An iPhone app too
A companion iPhone app lets you check your playlists, add or remove shows, mark serials and start a rebuild. Creating and fine-tuning playlists happens in the web app. It isn’t on the App Store, so it needs building with Xcode.
What you need
Podcast Manager isn’t an app you download from a store. You run your own copy, and it looks after one Spotify account. Here’s what that involves.
- Spotify PremiumSpotify only lets personal projects like this connect to Premium accounts. Use the one you already listen with.
- A computer that stays onA home server, a NAS, a Raspberry Pi-class machine or a small cloud server that can run Docker.
- Your own Spotify developer appIt’s free and takes a few minutes on Spotify’s developer site. It’s how the app gets permission to manage your playlists.
- A web address with HTTPSSpotify only lets you sign in through a secure address, so the app needs one.