https://9to5google.com/2023/09/30/youtube-music-podcasts-auto-download/
Following the news that Google Podcasts is shutting down next year, YouTube Music now has the ability to auto-download podcasts...
TIL
Just searched for it and it's there if you look for it.
Was not at all on my feed after scrolling all the way to the bottom though - only after looking for it.
There seem to be a total of 13 podcasts on there :D
Well, welcome to the club, I guess? Hard to understand how a corporation as big as Google (or Alphabet) has such a hard time catching up to other music/podcast services. I am subscribed to Youtube premium, so I try Youtube music every once in a while and it's just not as good as Spotify! The playlists Spotify generates are lightyears ahead of anything Yt music has. And the main page of YouTube music is just random stuff that has nothing to do with anything even remotely similar to stuff I listened to. Also, so many artist pages still have no additional information about the artist/band.
Anyway, for podcasts I prefer Pocketcasts. The free version is more than enough for the amount of podcasts I actively listen to.
Thanks Google /s
Now that podcasts have migrated to YouTube music , which isn't available in my location, I've lost access to podcasts via Google.
In fairness I don't use Google podcasts anyway because it was a really poor podcast app but the swap will suck for people who do use it and don't have access to YTM.
Why would you use a Google app for listening to podcasts? Just use AntennaPod. It's completely free and open source (GPLv3), unlike Google apps, it's not filled with spyware and it has way more features. It's also available on F-Droid.