Explicit content on Apple Podcasts
It’s easy for listeners to find great shows that are engaging and age appropriate. Content restrictions give listeners the power to control the playback of shows with explicit content.
Content restrictions on Apple Podcasts
With Content & Privacy Restrictions in Screen Time, listeners can prevent the playback of explicit content in Podcasts.
Listeners with Content Restrictions turned on can follow and play shows, and read transcripts for episodes that are not marked explicit.
See Availability of Apple Podcasts features for the list of countries and regions where Content Restrictions must be enabled by the user before playing explicit podcasts. Depending on the country or region, users might not be able to follow, play, or subscribe to explicit content.
How to mark your show or episode as explicit
You can mark your show, an individual episode, or both as explicit. These settings determine how your show and episode pages are displayed to listeners.
If you mark your show as explicit, all episodes will display the explicit label unless they’re specifically marked as not explicit. If you don’t mark your show as explicit, but mark one or more episodes as explicit, the explicit label is also be displayed on the show page.
If explicit content is discovered in an episode that is not marked explicit, Apple Podcasts may mark the episode as explicit. Learn more about our content guidelines and reach out to your hosting provider for assistance adding these tags to your show.
To mark a show or episode as explicit in Apple Podcasts Connect:
- Select a show, or click the Episodes tab from your show page to select an episode.
- Select the Explicit Content value which best reflects the content of your show or episode.
- Click Save.
To mark a show or episode as explicit in your RSS feed:
Refer to the <itunes:explicit> tag across both show data (contained within the <channel> tag) or episode data (contained within an <item> tag).
For explicit shows and/or episodes:
<itunes:explicit>true</itunes:explicit>
For clean shows and/or episodes:
<itunes:explicit>false</itunes:explicit>
Explicit metadata
Explicit words in show and episode metadata are automatically filtered on Apple Podcasts. Avoid using special characters or misspellings of explicit words as they may impact your shows ability to be found in search results.