How do you organize your podcasts in OS X?

April 11, 2006 4:01 PM

My podcasts are in a horrific state of disarray. What tips and tricks do you use for organizing your podcasts? Do you use special playlists, third-party software, etc? I'm running the latest version of Tiger (10.4.6) and iTunes.

Right now, I'm subscribing to 30 podcasts total, but I don't even listen to all of them because my playlist (the one that has the little podcast icon in the menu on the left side) is so disorganized. Of course, it doesn't help that I can't organize this list by anything other than 'Release Date' (when I try clicking on the name bar, for example, it refuses to switch.) Is it just me, or is this the same for everyone?

Once again, I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.6 with iTunes 6.0.3. Thanks to everyone in advance.

posted by invisible ink to computers & internet (6 answers total)

You could make some smart playlists organizing them by length. I don't listen to podcasts much anymore because I no longer drive half an hour to work, but there would be times where I would have time for a Dawn and Drew but not a PK and J. Try making a smart playlist that is "Type is Podcast", and "Length is between" whatever and whatever.

This is just one way to use the smart playlists. If you Google "iTunes Smart Playlists", there are lots of other tips for using them to organize music (and many of these are applicable to podcasts).
posted by rossination at 4:10 PM on April 11, 2006

Smart Playlists definitely sound like the way to go. Your main concern seems to be that you want a custom sorting method. If you're just clever with the criteria for the Smart Playlist, you can solve that problem (i.e., 'is a playlist' plus whatever else would help -- the title, perhaps?).
posted by danb at 5:14 PM on April 11, 2006

That should read 'is a podcast', not 'is a playlist', of course
posted by danb at 5:14 PM on April 11, 2006

The iPod is fairly weak at this, unfortunately. You can browse by genre, but then you have to scroll down to "Podcast", and several podcasts I listen to change the name of the artist regularly.

The best I've been able to come up with is this Smart Playlist:

- Podcast is True
- Date Added is in last 7 Days
- Playcount is less than 2

I keep it sorted by Date Added. That way, once I listen to it, it disappears. If I don't get to it in a week, it disappears (the stuff I listen to generally updates daily or weekly).
posted by mkultra at 7:05 PM on April 11, 2006

Smart playlist
- Genre is Podcast
- Playcount is zero
- Set up your iPod prefs so that playlists are at the top
- random play

This means if you've listened to it, it no longer shows up in the list. It's like listening to a good radio station.
posted by doctor_negative at 8:45 PM on April 11, 2006

Ah, Smart Playlists is exactly what I was looking for. I've lost track of all these nifty features that get added with each software update, thanks again:-)
posted by invisible ink at 9:20 PM on April 11, 2006