Troubleshooting: Missing Episodes

This support article will help you troubleshoot issues with missing episodes, which can manifest as the following:

• You’re having trouble finding certain episodes in Pocket Casts, even when the episodes exist in other podcasting platforms.
• You’re following a podcast, but it isn’t updating with new episodes or the newest episode available is incorrect or outdated.

To help determine whether missing episodes are due to common parsing issues or it’s a Pocket Casts issue, you can follow these steps:

1. For new episodes that are missing, refer to the expected parsing time frames. Are you perhaps checking episodes on Pocket Casts as soon as they are released by the author?
2. Check how the podcast’s episodes are grouped and sorted. These settings are saved per podcast, so check them on the specific show: on the podcast’s page, select the three-dot (More) icon, then review both Group Episodes and Sort Episodes. To see every episode in one straightforward list, set Group Episodes to None and Sort Episodes to Newest to Oldest.
   • Watch for this when Group Episodes is set to Seasons: if a show stops or changes its season labeling, newer episodes without a season label are placed in a separate “No Season” group below the numbered seasons, which can make it look like the podcast has no new episodes after a certain date. Setting Group Episodes to None brings every episode back into a single list.
3. Check if the episode might be archived and hidden from your view:
   • On the mobile apps: on a podcast’s page, toggle “Show Archived” and “Hide Archived” so that archived episodes are visible.
   • On the web and desktop apps: on a podcast’s page, click on the three-dot icon

     

     and enable “Show Archived.”
4. Especially for older episodes, check if it still exists, in case the podcast creator already deleted the episode. There are a couple of ways you can do this:
   • If you have the RSS feed URL, you can visit it directly in a browser or submit it to this RSS Feed Viewer, which will show you the feed contents in a more human-readable format.
   • Check the podcast’s listing on other platforms like Apple Podcasts.
5. After you’ve confirmed that episodes are only missing in Pocket Casts, please reach out to us with as much of the following information as possible:
   • Podcast’s share link
   • Full RSS feed URL
   • Link to podcast’s listing on another platform

Usually, if it’s a new episode that’s missing in Pocket Casts, you only need to give it some time before our system automatically picks it up. You can also check our Basic Troubleshooting for Missing Episodes.

There are different possible causes for a podcast missing episodes. Please refer to our Basic Troubleshooting for Missing Episodes, paying special attention to steps 2 and 3.

You can request that the podcast feed be refreshed from within the Pocket Casts mobile app. You can find the steps to do so in our Private, Paid, or Members-Only Feeds article.

Episodes can appear to be missing when Group Episodes is set to Seasons and the podcast stopped labeling its newer episodes with a season. Those newer episodes are moved into a separate “No Season” group below the numbered seasons. On the podcast’s page, select the three-dot (More) icon and set Group Episodes to None to see all episodes together. See Basic Troubleshooting for Missing Episodes for more.