Why is my podcast not updating? Where the delay comes from and what to check
Twenty-four hours is the number both Apple and Spotify stand behind, and almost every panic about a missing episode happens inside it.
Why is my podcast not updating? In most cases the episode is fine and the directory has not polled your feed yet. Apple says on its RSS feed refresh page that it "checks RSS feeds frequently to detect new episodes and any other metadata or artwork changes" and that changes "usually display quickly, often within a few hours." Apple's podcast availability page sets the outer limit, telling hosts to start troubleshooting only if new episodes do not appear "within 24 hours after publishing them on your feed." Spotify's help article on new episodes not appearing on listening platforms uses the same window: most platforms post new episodes shortly after publication, but "in some cases, it can take up to 24 hours." If you published twenty minutes ago, nothing is broken. If you published yesterday morning and Apple still shows the old episode list, something in the feed is being rejected, and the rest of this piece is the order to check it in.
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The polling schedule nobody shows you
Each directory keeps its own copy of your feed and refetches it on its own timer. Buzzsprout, which has to explain this to customers daily, publishes the rough intervals on its directory updating page: Apple Podcasts "typically checks your RSS feed for updates several times throughout the day," while Spotify "typically checks your RSS feed for updates every 2 hours, but it can take up to 24 hours during peak times." Buzzsprout also makes the point that matters when you are refreshing the app on your phone: each directory checks independently, so Apple can show the new episode an hour before Spotify does, and that gap is normal rather than a symptom.
Apple gives you one piece of hard evidence here. Podcasts Connect displays the time and date your show was last refreshed on its show information page. If that timestamp is from before you published, Apple has not looked yet and there is nothing to fix. If it is from after you published and the episode still is not listed, Apple looked and declined to add it, which is a different problem with a short list of causes.
What your host publishes and what a directory accepts
Your hosting company puts a new episode into the feed, your own site and your embedded players within minutes of publication. Buzzsprout says exactly that, and it is why hosts tell you to share the episode page and the direct audio link while you wait. The directory listing is downstream of all of it. The feed is the only thing both sides agree on, so when an episode is live on your site and missing in an app, the question is always what a parser sees in that feed rather than what your dashboard shows you.
This is also the part that catches hosts who publish straight to a platform and let the feed follow. An episode uploaded to Spotify for Creators, say, appears in Spotify first because Spotify is also the host, and the twenty-four hours then applies to everybody else. For hosts who think of Google and YouTube as separate pipes rather than feed consumers, the mechanics are laid out in our piece on putting a podcast on YouTube.
Apple's own list, in Apple's own order
Apple's availability page does not leave the diagnosis open. Past twenty-four hours, it tells you to check four things, in this order.
Check the show's status in Podcasts Connect for warnings or errors. Confirm the missing episodes do not carry an <itunes:block> tag, which tells Apple to withhold them and which some hosts set from a per-episode privacy or draft toggle. Test the feed yourself to confirm it parses at all. And make sure the missing episodes do not carry duplicate GUIDs or duplicate <enclosure> tags, because, in Apple's words, "Apple Podcasts will ignore the duplicates."
That last one is the quiet killer. A duplicate GUID usually appears after a bulk import, a feed migration or a republished old episode, and the new episode is not rejected with an error. It is silently treated as something Apple has already seen. Hosts who have reordered or re-dated an archive are especially exposed, which is one reason our guide to the podcast back catalog treats the GUID as the field you never touch.
Red, yellow and green in Podcasts Connect
Apple's status page explains the colours it puts next to your show, and the meaning is blunt. Red means you have to do something before the show or episode can be available. Yellow means a process is running, either yours or Apple's. Green means it is ready or already live.
Two statuses explain most of the confusion. "Ready for Release" means the show is approved but will not appear until the release date you set, so a date typed in the future keeps an otherwise healthy show invisible. "Processing" on an episode means Apple has it and will publish it at the time you specified, which is the normal state for a scheduled episode and not a stall. "Removed (Issue Found)" is the one to act on, since it means Apple found a problem and pulled the item. If your status instead reads anything other than Published, Apple's own instruction is to go back to your hosting provider and fix the feed there rather than waiting it out.
Changed art and swapped audio behave differently
Metadata and episodes are easy cases. A replaced file is not, because the directory has already cached the old one. Apple's refresh page tells you that for artwork changes you must "ensure the new image has a different filename," and Spotify gives the same advice in slightly broader terms, suggesting you save the new image or audio file under a slightly different URL "so listening platforms recognize the change in your RSS feed and download the new file."
A re-upload under the identical filename is therefore the most common reason new cover art never shows up, and no amount of waiting will clear it. Rename the file, republish, and the feed now points somewhere the directory has never fetched. The specification side of cover art, including the sizes Apple enforces, sits in our cover art guide.
The manual refresh, and the three steps Apple wants first
Podcasts Connect has a Refresh Feed control, and Apple is deliberate about when to use it. Its instruction is to confirm your changes are saved and published at your host, check the show's status, and verify the artwork filename and requirements, and only then to select Refresh Feed. If the changes still are not processed after that, Apple asks you to contact them directly.
Pressing Refresh Feed before fixing a feed error accomplishes nothing, since Apple will refetch the same broken document. Spotify, Amazon and the rest offer no equivalent button for externally hosted shows, so for those the only lever is correcting the feed and waiting out the next poll.
When the feed address itself has moved
A show that stopped updating on one specific platform while working everywhere else usually has a redirect problem rather than a content problem. Apps that read Apple's directory copy follow Apple's record of your feed address, and apps that keep their own copy follow theirs, so an incomplete migration leaves half your audience on a feed that no longer receives episodes. Everything that has to happen in what order, including the 301 at the old host and the <itunes:new-feed-url> tag, is in our walkthrough on switching podcast hosts. If the symptom is Spotify specifically, the narrower diagnosis lives in why a podcast is not showing up on Spotify.
The same question from a listener's phone
Some of the people typing this question are not hosts. They are listeners whose app has stopped pulling new episodes, and the fix is on their device: follow the show rather than downloading single episodes, allow background refresh, and pull to refresh the library manually. That matters to you for one reason. A listener who assumes you stopped publishing will not write to tell you, so a show that goes quiet in one app can lose followers who never learn the episodes kept coming. Publishing on a predictable schedule and keeping an episode page on the open web, as we argue in the case for a show presence that search engines can read, gives those listeners somewhere to land when an app lets them down.
Questions hosts ask next
Why is my Apple podcast not updating when Spotify already has the episode? Each directory polls on its own timer. Buzzsprout puts Apple at several checks a day and Spotify at roughly every two hours, so a few hours of disagreement between them is expected. Past twenty-four hours, check your last refreshed timestamp in Podcasts Connect.
Why are my podcasts not updating on Spotify? Spotify allows itself up to twenty-four hours during peak times. If the window has passed, the likely causes are a feed error, a blocked episode or a changed file served from the same URL as the old one.
How long should I actually wait before touching anything? Twenty-four hours from publication, which is the number both Apple and Spotify publish. Before that, troubleshooting mostly produces duplicate uploads.
Does the twenty-four hour window cover show notes and titles too? Yes. Buzzsprout states it applies to new cover art, new audio files and any changes to show notes, titles, descriptions or categories.
My episode never appeared at all and the status says Published. Look for a duplicate GUID or duplicate <enclosure> tag on that episode. Apple ignores duplicates without raising an error, so the episode is in your feed and absent from the listing.
Fixing the feed is the part only you can do. Getting the episode found once it is live is the part we work on: PodAnswer turns transcript excerpts into pages that answer the questions people search, each one linking back to the show. The plans are at https://podanswer.com/for-podcasters and https://podanswer.com/pricing, with Growth covering four articles a month and Network twelve.