How do I keep iTunes from deleting old podcasts?

June 24, 2009 5:47 AM

How do I keep iTunes from deleting old podcasts?

So I'm subscribed to a podcast that's updated weekly with previous week's podcast no longer stored on the server (from where it is downloaded to my machine.)

For some reason, I find when I sync, it tends to also remove the previous weeks podcast from my iTunes.

This only happens with this particular podcast, so I know it's not something in my settings.

Help?

posted by canine epigram to Technology (8 answers total)

Best answer: When I go to the particular podcast in iTunes -- as in, double clicking on it, not just looking at it in the general podcast window -- there's a "Settings" button at the bottom specifically for that podcast. In there you can select "Episodes to keep" -- it sounds like you want "All episodes". Is that what it currently says?
posted by olinerd at 5:52 AM on June 24, 2009

Go to the podcasts page, at the bottom of the screen there's a button that says "Settings". Click on it and change the "Espisodes to keep" drop-down to "All episodes".

An alternative which might work (but I'm not sure as I've never used it myself), is to select the podcast which you want to keep episodes of, right click (or the mac alternative) and choose "Do Not Auto Delete".
posted by bjrn at 5:53 AM on June 24, 2009

Yep olinerd and bjrn are right. I've used the right-click "do not auto-delete" before and iTunes will reset that option every time a new podcast is downloaded (for example all the old episode will be not auto-delete, but each time a new one is downloaded it will be auto-deleted unless you right click again.) I lost a bunch of my favorite podcast before figuring this out.
posted by sararah at 7:47 AM on June 24, 2009

Right click on the podcast episode in question and select "Mark as New". It's a bit kludgy, but it seems to work.
posted by trox at 7:56 AM on June 24, 2009

My strategy has always been to select each episode as it's downloaded and choose "convert track to MP3" -- this gives me a new file outside the podcast area (if you like, you can set it to show up under "audiobooks" instead.) Then delete the podcast file.

Yeah, it's kind of stupid, and involves unnecessarily re-compressing the file, but I don't trust the "don't autodelete" option.
posted by ook at 9:10 AM on June 24, 2009

Just to be clear, the first option (changing the settings to keep all episodes) is what I use and it's been working just as intended. No issues with settings getting reset or anything like that.
posted by bjrn at 11:21 AM on June 24, 2009

Best answer: The 'do not delete' right click means don't delete that episode.

The preferred method is:select the podcast, press the settings button at the bottom of the list, uncheck Use Default settings, choose download 'all' new podcast, and last select "Episodes to keep" to All.
posted by filmgeek at 3:39 PM on June 24, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks! I hadn't realized my default had somehow become 'keep only unplayed.' We'll see what happens next week!
posted by canine epigram at 7:00 PM on June 24, 2009