iPhone:
Listening to podcasts
This animated course shows how to listen to podcasts on your iPhone using the free ABC Listen app. It shows how to download the app, find radio programs and podcasts, live-stream or listen to them later, and also how to follow, auto-download and delete episodes you've saved.
Watch our animation by pressing the Play button below, or click on the handy chapters icon in the video playbar (it is the third icon from the right) to go straight to the information you want to see, such as how to:
- download the ABC Listen app from the App Store
- open and explore the ABC Listen app
- explore podcasts in the ABC Listen app
- stream a podcast
- download a podcast
- find and play a downloaded podcast
- set a Sleep Timer
- Follow and Auto Download podcasts
- find podcasts you follow
- automatically delete podcasts after you've listened to them.
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Transcript
Welcome to the "iPhone: Listening to podcasts" course. In this course, you'll learn how to get the ABC Listen app from the Apple App Store, and how to download radio shows or podcasts to listen to in your own time. If your iPhone has a physical Home button, some of the steps might be slightly different, but you can still follow along. A podcast is like a radio show, but instead of listening to it live like normal radio, you can listen to episodes at any time you like. It's like radio on demand. There are lots of different apps that can help you do this, but in this course, we're going to use the free ABC listen app, which you can download from the Apple App Store. You can use the ABC listen app to listen to live radio over the internet, or download podcasts to listen to later. Find the App Store icon on your Home screen. Tap on it. The App Store is where you can browse and download approved apps for your Apple device. Some must be purchased using a credit card, but the ABC Listen app is free. Let's search for it now. Tap the magnifying glass icon on the bottom right of the screen to open the Search page. Then tap the Search bar, which is at the top of this page, to make the keyboard appear. Now use the keyboard to type in ABC Listen. Look for the search key on the keyboard and tap it to search for the app.
The App Store will show some search results. In this demonstration, the ABC Listen app is the second search result displayed. Tap on the get button to install the app. A pop-up box will appear showing the Apple ID account that's logged into the iPhone. This is the account you'll use to download the app. Tap the Install button. You may be asked to enter the password for your Apple ID account. After you've entered your password, tap the sign in button to install the ABC Listen app. Once the ABC listen app has finished installing, an Open button will appear. You could tap this to start using the ABC Listen app, but for this demonstration, we'll open it from the Home screen instead. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to close the App Store and return to the Home screen.
Now, let's find the ABC Listen app icon. Your iPhone can have several pages of Home screens, depending on how many apps you have. If you can't see the ABC Listen app icon on the first Home screen, swipe left to see it on the next one. When you've found the app icon, tap it to open the ABC Listen app. The first time you open this app it will ask you if you want to get notifications, tap Not Now. This is the home screen of the ABC Listen app. At the top of the page are radio stations You can swipe through these to explore the options and tap on one to listen to a live radio broadcast. It's worth exploring the different radio stations at a later time, but for now, we're going to look at podcasts. A podcast is like an episode of a radio show which you can download to your iPhone and listen to at any time. In the ABC Listen app, podcasts are presented on the home screen, organised by category. The first category is called latest and best, and you can scroll through this list to look at the podcasts available. Scroll down to see even more categories. Swipe through the podcasts to find one to listen to. If you find one you like, you can tap on it to play it.
But for now, we're going to look at the Browse option, which is in the bottom right of the screen. Tap the magnifying glass icon to open the Browse screen. The Browse by topic list organises podcasts into categories, and you can tap a topic category, such as News, to see all ABC News podcasts. You can also tap All Programs and Audiobooks for a full list. We're going to use the search bar at the top of the screen to find the Health Report podcast. Tap in the search bar, and the iPhone's keyboard will appear. Type in The Health Report. It will appear as the top search result. Tap on it to open the main Health Report podcast screen. At the top of this page is the cover artwork for the podcast and some information about it. You could tap Play to play the latest episode or scroll down to see other episodes. Each episode is presented with a short description of what it's about. If you find one that you want to listen to, tap Play, and the episode will be downloaded to your phone as it's playing. This is called streaming, and if you're not connected to your home Wi-Fi, it will use some of your mobile data allowance.
When streaming a podcast or radio station using your mobile data allowance, remember to stop playback when you finish listening. Apps like ABC Listen can keep working in the background and use up your data without you realising. For this demonstration, we're going to download the podcast using our home Wi-Fi to listen to later. Look for the cloud icon with a downward arrow to the bottom right of the episode description. Downloading a podcast will save it to your iPhone so you can listen to it later, or when you're out and about, without using your mobile data allowance. Tap the download podcast icon, and it will start downloading to your phone. Once it's downloaded, a small tick will appear inside the cloud, The ABC Listen app stores all your downloaded podcasts in one place. Let's look at this now. Look for the Favourites icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap it to open the Favourite screen. Look for Downloads, which is the second option in this list, tap it to open the Downloads screen. Here is a list of the podcast episodes that have been downloaded to our iPhone. For this demonstration, there's just one in the list. Tap on it, and the podcast will start playing automatically. [Podcast speaker] "People with type one diabetes spend a lot of time monitoring chemicals in their bodies. They can't make insulin, which the body needs to balance out glucose in the blood."
[Narrator] A banner will appear at the bottom of the screen with the cover artwork of the podcast you're listening to, plus the name of the podcast and episode. There's also some playback controls. Tap on the name of the podcast to see this information presented full screen. To stop playback, tap the large pause button, which is near the bottom of the screen. It will change to a play button, which you can tap to resume playback. Either side of the large play pause button are two icons that look like the number 15 inside an arrow. Tap the one on the left side to back by 15 seconds, and tap the one on the right to ahead by 15 seconds. Let's look at the sleep timer feature, which is one of the icons at the top right of the screen that looks like a clock. Tap it to see the Sleep Timer options. Here you can set a time for the podcast to stop playing. For this demonstration, we'd like the podcast to stop playing at the end of the episode, rather than auto playing another episode, so tap End of the current episode. Now tap Done at the top right to return to the podcast. If you want to regularly listen to a podcast, you can follow it to automatically receive new episodes as they are released. Let's see how to do this now. Tap the name of the podcast to see more details about this episode, including the show notes. Tap the icon that looks like three horizontal dots near the right side of the screen. Some options will pop up. Tap View program to go to the main screen for the podcast. Now tap the follow icon, which can be found under the podcast description, and looks like an outline of a heart. You may be asked if you want to save to an account, tap Not Now. The next screen will ask if you want to listen to new episodes offline. If you tap Enable Auto Download, episodes of this podcast will be automatically downloaded when you're connected to Wi-Fi, so you can listen to them when you're out of Wi-Fi range without using your mobile data, or even when you're not connected to the internet. This is a handy feature, so tap Enable Auto Download to return to the main podcast screen. The heart icon is now full, which means you're following this podcast. If you change your mind, tap it again to unfollow it. Since we chose to auto download episodes of this podcast, the switch next to Auto download new episodes is pink, which means that this setting is on.
If we want to change this setting, we could tap this switch to turn auto download off. The ABC Listen app stores all the podcasts that you're following in the one place. Let's look at this now. Tap the Back arrow twice, then tap the Down arrow to go back to the Downloads screen. Tap the Back arrow once more to go to the Favourites screen. The Health Report now appears here in the Favourite programs list. Tap this to go to the main podcast page and listen to it.
To finish this course, let's look at how to automatically delete podcasts after you've listened to them to make room on your iPhone for new episodes. From the Favourites screen, tap the personalised settings icon, which is in the top left of the screen, and looks like a person, to go to the Settings screen. Look for the Downloads option, which is under Listen Later and tap it to open the Downloads Settings screen. Right at the top is the Delete 24 hours after listening setting. For this demonstration, this switch is already turned on, but if it's not tap it, so that the switch moves to the right and changes colour. To finish up, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to close the ABC Listen app and return to the Home screen. You've learned how to use the ABC Listen app to find your favourite radio programs, download podcasts to listen to later, and follow a program to get new podcasts automatically. If you're unsure about any steps, you can rewind the video or click the chapter headings to jump to the start of a chapter. If you're ready to move on, there are many other courses to explore on Be Connected.