Podcast syncing between iTunes and iPhone doesn't work I'm running iTunes 11.1, iOS 7.1, and Podcasts 2.0.2 for iOS, the latest versions of each. I'm signed into the same iCloud account on both my Mac and iPhone. Podcast syncing is enabled in iTunes, and the "Sync Subscriptions" setting is turned on in the settings for the Podcasts app on my iPhone.

Why, then, does podcast syncing simply not work?

Some examples:


If I've played through a podcast episode on my iPhone, the same episode in iTunes won't be marked as played (and vice versa)
If I'm partway through an episode, the playback position doesn't sync between my iPhone and iTunes
iTunes will download podcast episodes that I've already marked as played on my iPhone (and vice versa), even though I've set both to download only unplayed episodes
If I subscribe to a new podcast on my iPhone, it won't appear in iTunes (and vice versa)
Etc., etc.


I feel like I must be doing something wrong or am missing a setting somewhere, because if not, I can't believe that podcast syncing is this unreliable. It quite literally does not work in any way whatsoever.

I've tried turning syncing on and off, signing in and out of iCloud, etc. Podcast syncing simply has never worked for as long as I've been using the Podcasts app (going back to iOS 6).
Apple's entire podcast ecosystem is known to be buggy and has been for a long time. (See, for example, this bug of utter disconnect between iTunes and iOS prior to the arrival of the Podcasts app. It seems the point of moving podcasts to a dedicated iOS app was simply to banish the irredeemably buggy podcast code from the otherwise well functioning Music app code. I still have the exact same problems with iOS 7.1 and the Podcasts app.) You're not doing anything wrong, the stuff just doesn't work.

You will have better luck with Instacast. There are other third-party podcast players for iOS, but AFAIK Instacast is the only popular one that also plays on Macs and syncs between iOS and Macs. As of this writing (April 2014), Pocket Casts is arguably better than Instacast with respect to syncing among mobile devices, as it even syncs between iOS and Android, but it does not have a Mac application to allow you to play podcasts on your Mac.