• by Ray Schultz , June 8, 2023

Apple will offer several new features this fall as it updates its Podcasts app as part of its iOS 17 launch.  

For example, “Apple News+ subscribers will have the ability to listen to professionally narrated audio stories from the world’s leading magazines and newspapers in Apple Podcasts,” Apple writes.

In addition, subscribers will be “able to listen to the entire catalog of award-winning, commercial-free Apple Music radio shows in Apple Podcasts, where they can follow individual shows to automatically download and be notified of new episodes as soon as they’re released,” Apple states.

MacRumors adds that the biggest change in the package is “a slick new design for the Now Playing screen, which allows the podcast's full show page art – or any episode chapter images – to take over the entire screen.”

It adds, “The playback controls on the bottom half of the screen have also been rejigged. The play speed button has been moved from the bottom left corner of the screen and now sits next to the rewind button.

In another change, Apple will introduce “ a new feature that will allow users to connect a content subscription they use in an App Store app to Apple Podcasts in order to access a range of additional benefits,” TechCrunch reports. 

For instance, it adds, “if a subscription-based news publisher also offered exclusive podcasts to subscribers, it could choose to make those subscriber-only episodes available through Apple Podcasts via this new feature. Previously, if a content publisher wanted to paywall podcasts, it would have had to launch a separate Apple Podcasts subscription.”