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Podcast Tracker

Keep a list of the podcasts you follow, save the episode you stopped on, and rate the shows worth passing on to a friend.

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Why track podcasts at all

Your podcast app knows what you subscribe to, but it forgets a show the moment you unsubscribe, it has no idea that a true-crime series you loved led you to a documentary and a book, and it cannot tell a friend which three episodes of a 600-episode show are the place to start. Switch apps and the history is usually gone.

OmniTrackr gives podcasts their own shelf with these fields: the host or network, the year the show started, genres, the episode count, your rating, your review and a listened status. The shelf sits next to your films, TV, anime, games, albums, books and manga, so a podcast about a film can live in the same collection as the film.

Start your podcast shelf

  1. Open the Podcasts tab in your dashboard and choose Add Podcast.
  2. Type the show's name and press Search. Results come from the Apple Podcasts directory, which lists most public shows, including ones you hear on Spotify or elsewhere. Picking a result fills in the host, genres, episode count and cover art.
  3. Apple only reports when the newest episode came out, so the year the show started is left for you to fill in. It is optional.
  4. Tick Listened when you have finished a limited series or caught up with an ongoing one.
  5. Choose Update progress on any saved show and enter the episode you reached. Shows that run in seasons can save a season too.

If a search finds nothing, add the show by hand. Only the name is required. Paid feeds, live radio shows and private feeds from a course or a club often have no directory entry.

What "listened" means for a show that never ends

Podcasts come in two shapes. A limited series, such as a six-part investigation, has an ending, and "listened" means the same thing it does for a film. A weekly interview or news show has no ending, and most people never hear every episode.

For ongoing shows, tick Listened when you are caught up, and untick it if you fall behind and want the show back on your list. If you dip in and out and do not care about the back catalogue, rate the show and leave it unticked. Your rating and review still count, and the show still appears on your profile.

Saving your place in a long back catalogue

Starting an established podcast from episode one is a common project, and it can take months. Save the episode number you reached with Update progress, and add a private note if the numbering is odd: bonus episodes, "part 2" episodes that share a number, or a feed that was renumbered after a network change. The note stays private even when your review is public.

The checkpoint is separate from your podcast app's own position, so it keeps working if you change apps, and it shows up in Continue on your dashboard next to the TV shows and books you are partway through.

Keeping the backlog small

Podcasts pile up faster than anything else on a media list because they are free and new episodes arrive on their own. A few habits help. Put the one or two shows you are working through in Next up so they come first. Keep shows you sample on the shelf unticked with a short note on why you stopped, so you do not try them again by accident. And when a show has gone a season without you missing it, delete it or give it a rating and move on.

Writing a podcast review people can use

The most useful thing a podcast review can say is where to start. Name an episode or a season for a newcomer, and say whether the order matters. Then describe the format: one host or a panel, scripted or conversational, twenty minutes or three hours, and how much of each episode is ads or tangents.

Say how much you heard. "I have heard about forty of the 300 episodes" helps a reader weigh your opinion. For narrative series, say whether the ending pays off, and hide spoilers behind a warning on public reviews.

To appear in OmniTrackr's public review feed, a review needs at least 80 characters, and a review with more than 240 characters and 35 words can have its own page. The review guidelines explain what makes a review substantial.

Podcast statistics

The Statistics tab has a podcast section with listened and unlistened counts, your average rating, a rating spread, your most common genres and the episode count across your shelf. Podcasts also count toward yearly goals, your year-end recap, the Podcast Regular badge and your public profile, and they can go into collections with films, shows and books.

Privacy and backups

The podcast shelf follows the same privacy rules as the rest of OmniTrackr. In Settings you can make podcasts private, so friends and public pages never see them, or hide the Podcasts tab if you do not listen to podcasts. Podcasts are included in your JSON backup and restore, and older backups without a podcast section still import exactly as before. The Import Studio also takes a CSV with a podcasts category; download the podcast template there to see the columns.

Read the music tracker guide for albums, the book tracker guide for audiobooks, or the export and import guide to move a list across. For broader workflows, visit the media tracking hub, or browse podcast reviews.