In today’s media-driven world, our hunger for new content is insatiable. You can see this most clearly in the podcast arena, where popularity continues to surge and new features are constantly being added to the various platforms where podcasts are available. Now, there’s a buzz around some new developments from YouTube Music, which recently became Google’s de facto home for podcast content.
Just as the dust began to settle on the news that Google Podcasts is slated for discontinuation in 2024, YouTube Music is stepping up its game by introducing a new auto-download feature for podcasts. As reported by 9to5Google, this comes right after Google’s announcement that YouTube Music will become its primary podcast hub.
Users can now visit a podcast’s show page and tap the settings gear icon to the left of the Add to Library button — if you still see a three-dot overflow menu to the right of this button, you have the old UI. Following this, the Turn on auto-downloads option will pop up, and enabling it will cause YouTube Music to always download the latest episode for offline enjoyment. A notable omission, however, is the absence of an auto-removal setting, which was present in Google Podcasts and allowed users to specify when completed episodes should be removed.