Have you ever wondered how your favorite shows get updated in Pocket Casts?
It all starts with podcast creators distributing and updating their podcasts through RSS feeds created with XML code. These feeds then go through a process called “parsing,” where our system reads the feed contents and translates them into a format that’s easy for you to enjoy in our apps.
Feed changes are not picked up by our parsers immediately. On average, it can take up to 20 minutes. However, it can be longer depending on different factors like the following:
- Follow count
- Upload frequency
- Feed error count
For example, if a feed repeatedly produces errors, our servers will check it less and less often to reduce server load.
Pocket Casts supports WebSub and Podping, which are methods for discovering when a podcast has new episodes. Instead of polling a feed regularly looking for new episodes, we are now notified straight away.
WebSub is an open protocol for distributed publish and subscribe communication. Podcasters add extra tags to their feed XML to indicate which WebSub hub they use. You can subscribe to a podcast at this hub, and when a new episode is released, it lets you know by calling your web server. The most popular WebHub hub used is Google’s PubSubHubbub hub.
Podping uses the Hive blockchain to publish new podcast changes. Podcasters add new episode updates, and you can use their watcher script to monitor for these changes.
There are many podcast hosting providers that support WebSub or Podping, such as BuzzSprout, Simplecast, Captivate, RSS.com, Transistor, Podigee, and Audioboom.
From time to time, you might stop getting a podcast’s new episodes in Pocket Casts. Here are some common reasons external to Pocket Casts:
- The podcast feed contains an error
- The podcast feed is not accessible to check for new episodes
- The podcast feed has been changed, but not redirected (more info here)
- The podcast has been retired, and no new episodes will be published
You can refer to the following guides: Troubleshooting: Missing Episodes and Refreshing a Podcast’s Episode List.
Pocket Casts uses specific IP addresses to access and parse RSS feeds. If the RSS feed restricts access by IP address, the following IP addresses and domains must be whitelisted:
crawler1.pocketcasts.com 35.169.190.168
crawler2.pocketcasts.com 3.219.254.95