While I love Spotify for bringing me all of my audio in one place, there are certain aspects of its podcast functionality that I think could be improved. Here are the podcast-related bones I have to pick with Spotify as well as the best existing solutions I’ve found.

1Sorting In-Progress Podcast Episodes

Some episodic podcasts have hundreds of standalone episodes, and you may not listen to these episodes linearly. When you have to pause in the middle of listening, it can be convoluted to find that episode again. Searching on a podcast’s show page, Spotify has filters to view All Episodes, Downloaded, or Unplayed, and an option to sort by Newest or Oldest. Personally, I’d love to see anIn Progressfilter on the show’s page. However, this feature is only accessible when you save episodes.

Here’s how to save episodes and access theIn progressfilter:

The Spotify app on an iPhone, where a user has added a podcast episode to Your Episodes

If sorting in-progress episodes is a priority for you, and you’re an iPhone user, you might also considerOvercast, which has an automated In Progress playlist on its home page.

2Curbing Podcast Recommendations

Spotify will push podcasts you’ve interacted with, even if those interactions are not necessarily positive. If you try a new show and decide to bail after one episode, Spotify doesn’t read that as disinterest or offer an option likeNetflix’s Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings. While you can rate a title publicly on Spotify, this feels like overkill when you’re only trying to affect your own algorithm.

In lieu of a personal rating system, here is how to stop Spotify from recommending a podcast you’re not interested in:

The Spotify app on an iPhone, where a user is reviewing their saved episodes.

Now, clickDone, and you’re good to go.

3Automatic EQ Settings

Spotify has impressive equalizer settingsthat can improve your audio depending on what you’re listening to. For example, I use the Spoken Word equalizer when listening to podcasts, particularly in the car, where street noise and wind drown out voices.

The dreamer in me would love to be able to automate those EQ settings, such as with a preference to apply a specific equalizer any time I play a podcast episode. Until that day, you can apply an EQ manually, even if it is deep in your playback settings:

The Spotify app on an iPhone, where a user is has applied an “in-progress” filter to easily find specific saved episodes.

These three perceived flaws aside, there is stillplenty to love about using Spotify to listen to podcasts. As picky as I might be as a podcast producer and super-consumer, I’ll gladly put up with a few points of irksome UI for the rewards of having a comprehensive listening app and features like being able to listen to episodes offline. Ultimately, everyone will have their own unique preferences, and luckily, there are manyfree apps for podcaststo choose from.

The Spotify app on an iPhone, where a user is managing their settings for a podcast series.

The Spotify app on an iPhone, where a user is marking all episodes of a podcast as finished.