Plex to End Support for Podcasts on Friday

Plex is set to end support for podcasts on Friday, the company behind the media management platform has announced.
plex podcasts

Web Shows on the Plex media server will also close this week, the company said in a post on the Plex forum, although most of the content the section hosted will still be available to users elsewhere on the platform.

As part of our ongoing effort to make sure we're spending our time and energy in ways that best serve our awesome user community, we've made the decision to end support for Podcasts and Web Shows within Plex. We recognize this decision will impact several of you greatly, and we apologize for the inconvenience it will cause. You can continue to access these features within Plex until Friday, April 15th, 2022, at which point they will no longer be available.

Plex didn't say exactly why it had decided to end support for podcasts and close the Web Shows portal of its media management offering, but the wording suggests that neither section was being used enough to make them worth the time and money spent maintaining them.

For those who want to export their podcast subscription list in OPML format for use in other players, the Plex forum post provides instructions on how to go about it before support closes.

As noted by XDA Developers, Plex podcast support has largely stood still since it was introduced in 2018, and there are several complaints from users in the Plex forums about buggy performance and other issues going all the way back to its inception.

Tag: Plex

Popular Stories

iOS 26

6 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.1

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below. Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
ios 26 1 slide to stop

iOS 26.1 Brings Back 2007 Feature in New Way

Friday October 31, 2025 1:40 pm PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a small but helpful change for iPhones, and it could prevent you from running late to something important. Specifically, when an alarm goes off in the Clock app, there is a new "slide to stop" control on the screen for turning off the alarm. On previous iOS 26 versions, there is simply a large "stop" button, which could be accidentally tapped. The new ...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
M5 MacBook Pro

Waiting for New Macs? Apple Just Shared Bad News

Friday October 31, 2025 7:32 am PDT by
Apple has just given a strong indication that it will not be releasing any additional new Macs for the remainder of the year. Apple's CFO Kevan Parekh dropped the hint during the company's earnings call on Thursday:On Mac, keep in mind, we expect to face a very difficult compare against the M4 MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac launches in the year-ago quarter.Parekh essentially gave a heads up ...
iPhone 17 Pro Cosmic Orange

8 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro

Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
ipad mini 7 feature blue

OLED iPad Mini: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out. Processor and Performance Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...
iOS 26

Apple Seeds iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS Tahoe 26.1 Release Candidates

Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas. The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
apple tv hd

Apple Launched Its Big New Vision for TV 10 Years Ago Today

Thursday October 30, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple launched the Apple TV HD, the Siri Remote, tvOS, and their accompanying App Store a decade ago today, marking a major overhaul of the device. The new vision for the Apple TV was unveiled on September 9, 2015 during Apple's "Hey Siri" event in San Francisco, where CEO Tim Cook introduced the device with the statement, "The future of TV is apps." The announcement represented a major...

Top Rated Comments

W2u7Yw4HaD Avatar
47 months ago
Yeah, I didn't think it even supported podcasts until now.. But would never have been my go-to place for podcasts in the first place..
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PeteBurgh Avatar
47 months ago

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?
Well, therein lies the question. A lot of users (including myself) would like it to be the former: a server-client set up that allows me to access my own media. That is how it began. But there seems to be strong economic incentives (and maybe some user demand?) to make it a broader product that is also a gateway to all sorts of streaming content.

It does create a tension between different kinds of users (or current and potential future users?).

going from a sleek piece of Mac specific software to the current bloated Electron garbage
Unless I'm very much mistaken, the neither the player nor server apps use Electron.

I think it's a bit harsh to call it 'garbage'. For me it's somewhere between 'fine' and 'meh' - yeah, it's not very Mac-like (what is these days), but it's reasonably fast, easy to navigate, and doesn't hog loads of system resources. I like Infuse too.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Codestud Avatar
47 months ago
Yet they've spent a ton of time adding this "Discover" content aggregator thing, which I looked at once and immediately turned off. I don't want Plex as a content aggregator for online services. It's for my local media on my server and that's it.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Zorn Avatar
47 months ago
Actually glad about this, Plex is an amazing app for the things it's focused toward. The podcasts support was never very good anyway, and I'm not sure who was looking to Plex for this functionality in the first place. There are many superior dedicated apps. The web shows thing is 100% good riddance, I didn't need more advertising filled junk that was never asked for.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kingtj1971 Avatar
47 months ago

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?
It's just what you suggest, in the same way the game of baseball is "some guys running around a field trying to catch a ball someone whacks with a piece of wood". :)

I mean, it's essentially a product that consists of both a "server" and a "client" piece. The "Plex Media Server" runs on a machine configured for it and lets you store a collection of video and audio content that it indexes/catalogs and can then stream optimally to a Plex "client" -- which can be software running on a Windows PC, a Mac, an iPad/iPhone, Android device, or built into various smart TVs on the market or set-top boxes like Apple TV.

It works on your local network or can stream over the Internet, supporting "user accounts" you create on the server so specific people you know can be granted access to parts of, or to your complete library of content.

As time went on, the Plex authors kept bolting on new features, so it went from focusing on your own personal video, music or photo collections to supporting all these Internet-based streaming options and even broadcast TV if you have the right TV tuner board installed in a Plex server. Podcast support is another one of those things they added to fill out the offerings a Plex client gave people....
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
_Spinn_ Avatar
47 months ago
I never liked the way Plex implemented podcasts. I wish the files were downloaded to my Plex server and served from there that way I could keep an archive of my favorite podcasts with the rest of my digital media.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)