Submitted by Marshall Walker on
Apple's stock Podcasts app is a great way to follow and support your favorite podcasters, but it can also be a drain on your storage. Subscribing to a podcast through Apple's app automatically downloads new episodes to your device. While this is a great feature to keep you updated with all the latest episodes, it is also a strain on your device's storage capacity. You can navigate to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see just how much space your Podcasts app occupies on your device.
You can free up storage space by individually deleting episodes, but it is probably better to unsubscribe to podcasts that you no longer listen to. This will stop some of the automatic downloads and save you time from having to delete episodes one-by-one. Another space saving technique is to unsubscribe to popular podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, Serial or Barstool Sports. These podcasts always tend to be on the Top Charts and are easy to locate in the Browse section. They also don't need as much support as other smaller shows.
The best solution to freeing up some storage space is to unsubscribe to all podcasts through the Apple app. You can always find shows you deleted by using the search option, and you obviously don't need to be subscribed to listen to an episode.
You may notice that podcasts are not automatically removed from your Library once you unsubscribe. This would be great if new episodes were added to your library for you to download, but they're not. You can easily clean up your podcasts graveyard by following these steps:
- Open your Podcasts app
- Tap Library
- Tap the unsubscribed podcast you want to remove
- Tap the 3 dots in the purple circle
- Tap Delete from Library
This will remove the podcast listing from your Library and make your Podcasts app all clean and spiffy.
