iOS 26: What’s new for Apple Podcasts

With iOS 26, Apple Podcasts gives listeners more playback controls with your episodes, an updated Browse tab now called New that showcases what’s new and popular in podcasting, and faster ways to find your podcast categories in Search. Plus, new downloadable subscription reports in Apple Podcasts Connect for you. 

Enhance dialogue

Enhance Dialogue makes it easier to hear voices in your shows more clearly. Using real-time audio processing and machine learning, Enhance Dialogue reduces background noise to make speech clearer without altering your original audio. Listeners can also save this setting per show, in Show Settings under Speed & Audio Adjustments.

Enhance Dialogue is available on iOS and iPadOS and accessible from the speed menu in the player.

New playback speeds

Listeners now can choose a wider range of playback speeds while listening to episodes, from 0.5x to 3x. To access these more granular speeds, tap the playback speed indicator within the player. Swiping across the presets will reveal the granular dial for speeds ranging from 0.5 to 3x.

Listeners can also save these preferred listening settings per show, found in Show Settings under Speed & Audio Adjustments.

Browse becomes New

We’ve renamed the Browse tab on Apple Podcasts to New to better convey what the page is all about: new shows, seasons, and your best episodes. New is designed to help listeners discover what to listen to next, highlighting the latest podcasts through editorial curation and Top Charts. New also showcases special collections, creators shaping culture, and essential shows across categories that are consistently great listens.

Categories in Search

Now listeners searching for popular topics such as True Crime, News, or Sports can tap on the category page in Search results to explore our curated collections of your podcasts.

New downloadable listening reports

This summer, we announced enhancements to our Listening Reports. For those of you who are offering a subscription, we now provide four reports: Episode, Show, Channel, and Provider Listening reports. All are available to download daily, weekly, and monthly.

These reports provide more granular, timely, and actionable insights into content performance and audience engagement, empowering you to understand the impact of marketing campaigns, and free and paid listener counts.

Learn more about the latest enhancements.