Podcast Search: Troubleshooting and FAQs

This guide will help you look for your favorite podcasts in Pocket Casts and help you discover new ones.

You can search for particular shows in Pocket Casts by entering the podcast name, podcasting network, podcast author, or RSS feed URL in any of the following places:

Searching a network’s name can also return the network itself as a result, not just its shows, and a Networks filter appears when your term matches one. See Podcast Networks.

• iOS and Android mobile apps:
  • Search bar in the “Podcasts” tab – accessible by tapping the Search icon, which looks like a magnifying glass on the upper-right corner of the “Podcasts” screen
  • Search bar in the “Discover” tab – located at the very top of the “Discover” screen
• Web and desktop apps: Search bar in the upper-right corner of the screen, to the left of the Profile icon

Once you’ve found the show you’d like to follow, tap the + or Follow icon to add it to your podcast collections.

You can also play episodes without following a podcast, so feel free to stream episodes straight from Discover. Then, you can follow when you know you want to keep up with the entire show.

There is no separate “Add RSS Feed” or “Add by URL” menu option in Pocket Casts. To add a podcast using its RSS feed URL (add a custom feed, subscribe to an RSS feed manually), paste the feed URL into the search bar. In the iOS and Android apps, the search bar reads Search podcasts or add RSS URL.

1. Copy the podcast’s full RSS feed URL, including the https:// or http:// at the start. Without it, Pocket Casts treats what you typed as a regular search.
2. Open the Podcasts or Discover tab and tap the search bar.
3. Paste the URL and wait a few seconds while Pocket Casts looks up the feed. The podcast appears as a single result.
4. Tap the podcast to open its page, then tap Follow.

If the podcast isn’t in Pocket Casts yet, this also submits it to our system so we can start parsing it.

Your device doesn’t download the feed itself. Pocket Casts’ servers fetch it, so the feed URL must be reachable over the public internet. A feed that is only available on your home or local network can’t be added, even when your phone is on the same Wi-Fi. That includes localhost addresses and private network addresses such as 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x.

If Pocket Casts can’t reach the feed, the search won’t find the podcast, and you may see Search Failed or No Results. If the feed’s server restricts access by IP address, it needs to allow the addresses listed in About Pocket Casts Feed Parser.

To listen to audio files you already have on your device or computer, add them to Pocket Casts as files instead. See Adding Files.

If searching for a particular podcast doesn’t turn up any results or the results you expect, there are several possibilities:

1. The podcast has not yet been added to Pocket Casts.
2. The podcast is private, so it isn’t showing up in our public search database.
3. Tap “Show All” to view up to 50 Episodes in the search results.

If you can’t see a podcast in Pocket Casts because it has not yet been added to our platform, you can submit it yourself so that our system can begin parsing it.

Entering a podcast’s feed URL into the search bar in the apps will also submit it to our system automatically if it’s not already there.

If a podcast is missing in Pocket Casts because it has been set to private, it’s likely because its RSS feed contains an itunes:block tag set to Yes:

<itunes:block>Yes</itunes:block>

If the podcast is not supposed to be private, please follow these steps:

1. Remove the itunes:block tag from the feed if you have access to it. If you don’t have access to the feed, you can request the tag’s removal from the podcast creator.
2. If the podcast is still not showing up in Pocket Casts search even after the itunes:block tag has been removed from the feed, please get in touch with us.

The Pocket Casts podcast database includes over a million shows.

To find new podcasts, tap the Discover tab and browse by Featured, Trending (Top 100) and Popular, along with our human-curated sections such as exclusive Guest Lists, and Network Highlights.