How to Listen to Podcasts
The app is already installed, the shows are free, and the only real skill is picking one you will not abandon.
You listen to podcasts in an app you almost certainly already have. On an iPhone that is Apple Podcasts; on Android it is usually YouTube Music or Spotify. Open it, search the show's name, press play.
Nothing has to be bought and nothing has to be installed. Podcasts are distributed as open files that any app can read, which is why there are so many apps and why none of them charge you to listen.
The only two decisions that matter are which app you keep and which shows you follow. Everything else is a setting.
It is worth understanding why podcasts are free, because it explains almost everything about how the listening apps behave.
A podcast is not hosted by the app you use. The show publishes one file listing its episodes, and every app reads that same file. No app has exclusive rights to anything, so no app can charge you for access to a show, because you would simply open a different one.
What the apps compete on instead is the listening experience: speed controls, sleep timers, silence trimming, how well the queue works. That is why a free app from a small developer can be better than one from a company worth a trillion dollars.
And it explains the ads. The show is paid for by the sponsor read aloud in the middle of the episode, not by you. When a show offers an ad-free version for a monthly fee, that is a separate private feed, delivered to your app through the same open mechanism.
The practical upshot: switching apps costs you nothing but the list of shows you follow, and most apps can import that list from the one you are leaving.
Starting with the app already on your phone
On an iPhone or iPad, Apple Podcasts is preinstalled. If it was deleted, it is free to reinstall. Search for a show by name, open it, and press play on any episode.
On Android there is no single default. Spotify carries podcasts alongside music, YouTube Music carries them now too, and both work without a paid plan. Pocket Casts and AntennaPod are the common independent choices.
On a computer, every one of these has a web player. You do not need a phone at all.
The only thing worth checking on day one is whether the app you picked carries the specific shows you want. Spotify and YouTube have both signed exclusive deals at various points, so a handful of shows exist in one place and nowhere else.
Following a show against saving one episode
These are different actions and confusing them is why people's apps fill with things they never listen to.
Following a show, sometimes called subscribing, tells the app to check for new episodes and put them somewhere you will see them. It costs nothing and implies no payment, which is why most apps renamed it from subscribe — too many people assumed a bill was coming.
Saving or queuing an episode is a one-off. You are telling the app you intend to listen to this specific thing, without committing to the show.
The habit that keeps a podcast app usable is to follow very few shows and queue aggressively from everything else. A followed show that publishes daily will bury a weekly show you actually love within a fortnight.
Downloading episodes for a flight or a tunnel
Every app can store episodes on the device so they play with no connection at all.
In most apps the control is a download arrow on the individual episode, and a setting at the show level that downloads new episodes automatically as they appear. The automatic version is what you want before travel and what you want to turn off afterwards, because it will quietly consume storage for a show you stopped listening to.
Streaming uses roughly thirty to sixty megabytes an hour depending on the show's audio quality, which is far less than video but is not nothing on a limited plan.
One detail that surprises people: an episode downloaded automatically overnight and never played still registers in the show's numbers. It is one of the reasons raw download figures run ahead of real listening.
Playback speed, and why so many people use it
Every serious podcast app has a speed control, usually from half speed to three times.
Conversation recorded naturally contains a lot of pauses, and at one and a quarter or one and a half times speed most people stop noticing the acceleration within a minute while finishing the episode a third faster. Interview shows survive this better than narrative ones; something heavily produced with music and sound design falls apart above about one and a quarter.
Several apps also offer silence trimming, which cuts the gaps rather than speeding the voices. On a two-person conversation that can remove ten minutes from an hour without altering how anyone sounds.
If an episode feels like a slog, the speed control is usually the fix, and abandoning the show is usually not.
Finding a show you will actually finish
Charts are a poor guide, because they rank by recent subscriptions rather than by whether anyone stayed.
Two better approaches. The first is to search for a specific subject rather than browsing a category: a narrow show about something you already care about will hold you longer than a popular show about something general.
The second is to start with an episode rather than a show. Most podcasts have one episode that people recommend, and listening to that one tells you more about the host's company over an hour than any description will.
And give up early. A podcast is a voice you are choosing to spend hours with, and twenty minutes is enough to know. The listener who finishes things is not more disciplined — they are pickier at the start.
When listening turns into making one
A surprising share of people who listen heavily end up publishing something, and the step is smaller than it looks.
The mechanics are the same in reverse: you publish a file listing your episodes, the directories read it, and the apps you already use pick it up without you dealing with any of them individually.
What is genuinely hard is not the recording or the hosting. It is the opening weeks, when nothing has enough early plays for a directory to put it in front of anyone, and the show is effectively invisible to the apps you found every other podcast through.
That gap between publishing and being discoverable is the part worth planning for, because it is where almost every abandoned show stopped.
Questions people ask about listening to podcasts
Do you have to pay to listen to podcasts?
No. Almost all podcasts are free and funded by the ads read inside the episode. Some shows sell an ad-free or bonus feed separately, but the main feed stays open.
What is the best app for podcasts?
The one already on your phone is fine to start with. Pocket Casts and Overcast are the usual upgrades, mostly for better queue handling and silence trimming rather than for access to different shows.
Can I listen to podcasts without internet?
Yes, if you download the episodes first. Every app has a download control on the episode and an option to fetch new ones automatically over wifi.
How much data do podcasts use?
Roughly thirty to sixty megabytes an hour when streaming. Downloading over wifi beforehand removes the cost entirely.
What does following a podcast do?
It tells your app to fetch new episodes as they are published. It is free, it is not a payment, and it can be undone at any time.
Can I listen to podcasts on a computer?
Yes. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and the independent apps all have web players, and your followed shows sync across devices when you are signed in.
Keep reading
- plays for a new episode — A show nobody has pressed play on is a show the directories will not surface, and plays for a new episode covers the window where that gets decided.
- the one file every app reads — The reason any app can play any show is the one file every app reads, which is also the thing a publisher has to own.
- what the ad in the middle is worth — The spot you skip is what funds the show, and what the ad in the middle is worth puts a number on it.