Podcasts don't resume

[elvis99]

When I pause a podcast and then try and come back to it later, it always starts playing the latest episode of the podcast from the beginning. I had this problem last year, then it got fixed, and now it's broken again.

Wtf, google? You're a giant company, you think you could handle resuming a podcast. Please fix it.

[JillG]

Hi @elvis99 

I just get so annoyed when I've had that happen with podcasts. Impossible to find where you last listened and totally frustrating! 😠

I don't see any known issue posts surrounding this (yet) so try clearing the Google Home app, Podcasts (if you have it) and reboot your device. That may help.

Jill

[elvis99]

How do you clear the podcasts? All I see is an option button to use Google podcasts or no default provider.

[JillG]

I have the Google Podcasts app on my phone so I clear that app's cache, if you don't have it installed don't worry about it.  Just clear the Google Home app and even the Google app is worth a try.Not even sure this all will help but that's what I'd try along with a reboot of the Home device.

Do keep us updated, I can let the support team know if you are still experiencing this issue after the cache clears and reboot.

[elvis99]

I have the Google podcasts app on my phone, but I don't know how to clear the cache for it. How do I do that? How do I clear the Google Home app? Do you mean delete it and reinstall it? I rebooted the device, but this occurs on all three of my Nest home devices, so I didn't expect that to help and in fact it did not.

[JillG]

https://www.androidpolice.com/clear-app-cache-data-android/ 

That will be for app cache clearing on an android phone. If you have an iphone you will need to reinstall the whole app.

It may not help but this will be a troubleshooting step support may have you try.

[elvis99]

I deleted the Google Podcast and Home apps and reinstalled, made no difference. Face it, this is an issue with Google's backend software. It's the second time it happened, they fixed it and then broke it again. I wish they would fix it again, as it goes from an enjoyable listening experience to pretty useless, as it always starts on the latest podcast episode at the beginning. I'll test the podcast app to see if it remembers where I was in a podcast, as that might be broken for me as well.

[LovelyM]

Hello everyone, 

I appreciate you trying to help out, @JillG. 

Thanks for flagging, @elvis99. I'll let our team know about the problem that you're experiencing when playing the Google Podcast. Please share with me the Cast firmware version of your Google Home device so we can take a closer look at this.

Best, 
Lovely

[elvis99]

There's a couple of other things I've noticed. Even though I set the podcast provider to Google podcasts, the google podcast app doesn't sync to the google home device. I can play a podcast on the home device, then later bring up the app and it has no idea what I listened to on the home device. I think they used to be in sync.

The second thing is that the google home device only knows about the very latest episode of a podcast. If I stream Fresh Air, for example, and say "previous episode", it shows no previous episode. On the screen the back button is disabled. That's also weird. This happens for every single podcast.

Seems like it's just generally broken for podcasts. I wish it wasn't. I'm going to guy an Alexa device to try out, as all I use this thing for is listening to podcasts, which makes it mostly worthless to me.

The system firmware on the 10-inch display device is 10.20221207.2.109. The cast firmware is 1.68.353511.

[Muddi]

Hey elvis99,

We appreciate your efforts. We'd be happy to take a look into this for you. Please fill out this form with all the needed information then let me know once done.
 

Cheers,

Muddi

[elvis99]

I filled it out, but I'm not holding my breath. I read where most of the Google home team was reassigned to work on the Bard AI project. Amazon isn't doing any better, their Alexa division is losing $10 billion a year and they're cutting that team down. I looked at using the open-source alternative Mycroft, but it's a long ways off from Google Home. They're calling it "retro" but really it's just a semi-functional project with ugly hardware at this point. So, I think I'm going to try using the Google Podcast app and casting to the Nest device, see if that works.

[Muddi]

Hi elvis99,

We got your form — we'd suggest keeping track of your inbox as our team will be emailing you soon for more details. Also, please be advised that this thread will be locked after 24 hours.
 

Cheers,

Muddi