iOS 27.2 Splits Apple Podcasts' Up Next Queue Into Two Sections
iOS 27.2 breaks Apple Podcasts' Up Next queue into New Episodes and Continue Playing, a change 9to5Mac says fixes years of complaints about losing track of episodes.
Under the new layout, New Episodes sits at the top of the app and looks and largely behaves like the former Up Next queue, with one difference: it only ever shows the latest episodes from each show a listener follows. Directly beneath it, Continue Playing acts as a central hub for every episode a user has started but not yet finished. Together the two sections replace a single list that 9to5Mac had repeatedly criticized for being difficult to scan and easy to lose track of.
The report cited two specific problems with the previous queue: it did a poor job letting users see which podcasts had episodes available, and episodes could easily get lost even when a listener was midway through them. Because anything already started now appears under Continue Playing, unfinished episodes no longer drop out of view, and newly published episodes are visible at a glance, the outlet said.
The assessment came from a reviewer who said Apple Podcasts remains their podcast app of choice, pointing to transcripts and automatically generated chapters as features that keep them on the app and noting recent video-related upgrades. Even so, the outlet said the Up Next queue had regularly tempted them to switch to a competing app.
9to5Mac said the split resolves its biggest issues with Up Next, while adding that some smaller quibbles remain; it did not specify what those are. The report included no comment from Apple and gave no timeline beyond the arrival of iOS 27.2. The outlet concluded that listeners who have not tried Apple Podcasts in a while may find this release a good moment to revisit the app.