YouTube Music podcasts keep me going back to Pocket Casts

I like listening to podcasts when I’m doing household chores. So I recently opened YouTube Music with the intention of continuing a podcast I’d been enjoying the evening before, but instead of resuming where I left off, I found myself squinting at the screen, scrolling through a wall of music suggestions, videos, and algorithmic clutter. The podcast was nowhere in sight. YouTube Music had let me down, again.

My dream is to have as few apps as possible, and that’s why I genuinely enjoy Spotify’s take on merging podcasts with music. But a good podcast app should let me resume where I left off without making me hunt for the podcast. Spotify manages to do this, mostly. YouTube Music should be able to, after all, it’s backed by Google’s formidable infrastructure and teams of some of the brightest minds in the industry. It already handles music playlists like a dream. But podcasts? They’re still a mess.

A good podcast app should give me clear access to the shows I follow. It should let me easily queue up a few episodes for the commute or walk without having to switch mental gears. Most importantly, the app should feel like it is built for podcasts. I want thoughtful organization and intuitive playback controls. You know, a UI that respects the episodic nature of podcasts.

Pocket Casts is arguably one of the best podcast apps out there. Everything about it is designed for ease of use and I can quickly find what I’m looking for thanks to visual cues and a logical menu. Spotify is decent in how it handles podcasts, although there’s room for improvement. I find the app buries the next episode of the podcast I’m listening to behind algorithm slop, just like YouTube Music.

I live deep in the Android ecosystem, and it would be really nice if it all synced effortlessly. But the YouTube Music podcast experience falls short.

YouTube Music reminds me of trying to listen to a podcast in a nightclub. The app prioritizes music and videos at every turn. It buries podcast features behind menus and little inconsistent navigation tabs. Even finding the show I want can be a chore, as search results can be quite bad. Sometimes I’ll type the exact name of the podcast I’m subscribed to, and have listened to on this account, and it will take three scrolls to find it.

There’s also no unified podcast dashboard. Subscriptions are hidden in the Library tab and it takes several taps to get to them. I can’t easily organize them, and there’s no “continue listening” section for podcasts I may have stopped halfway through. Every session begins with a hunt to find the last thing I listened to.

Don’t even get me started on the prevalence of videos. I get that a lot of people have switched to watching podcast videos for reasons I’ll never understand (you really want to sit and watch two dudes chatting?). But isn’t there already YouTube? After all, anything on YouTube Music is on YouTube. Videos are the default setting for podcasts, as well, and I need to switch over to “Audio” to preserve my data and simply listen.

Yet here I am, giving YouTube Music another shot. I like the app as a music streaming service. It has introduced me to some fantastic music in the past, and my entire MP3 library from the Google Play Music days is still in there. And on some level, I want to believe it will get better.

I like the idea of having one app to handle everything. I don’t clutter, physical or digital. YouTube Music is well-positioned to be one of my key apps, and for shorter daily podcasts, the kind I don’t mind skipping now and again, it kind of works. That means I can see the promise, even if it hasn’t been fully delivered yet.

Google’s got some work to do if it really wants YouTube Music to be a serious podcast app. It should start with a dedicated podcast tab at the bottom, something as clear as the Home or Samples tab. Then, build a real user-friendly user experience inside that tab. Remember playback positions, open on the last podcast played, and let us queue episodes. It’s not rocket science.

Also, if Google is reading, improve the search engine. I mean, that is your thing. It’s embarrassing how often I can’t find a show I already follow, or even worse, was halfway through listening to.

But until Google takes podcasts seriously, as a whole experience in its own right, I’ll keep bouncing back to Pocket Casts. Sometimes the best app is the one that just works.