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The new Podcasts app is pretty swell. I'm particularly fond of the 'Unplayed Episodes' button that generates a playlist of all my unplayed podcast episodes, on which I can just hit 'Play' and let a half a dozen episodes of different podcasts just run in order, without having to actually edit or manage a playlist.
But there's one problem: They play newest first. Is there any way to change this playback order so that I can hear my oldest unplayed podcasts first?
Unfortunately, no.
The combined Unplayed Episodes playlist has no settings and defaults to newest first.
As of version 1.01, you can only sort individual subscriptions by oldest first.
Even if you go through the trouble of changing each individual subscription preference to oldest first, Podcasts app will still keep the Unplayed Episodes playlist sorted to newest first.
This post is the first result when I google this exact problem, so hopefully this will help you if you've also reached this page after screaming "why does it insist on playing episode 331 after episode 4? Just play episode 5!" There is hope (I have iOS 11.2.6 and Podcasts 3.4):
Step 1: Click on the square of the podcast title that you want to play chronologically, then select the "..." of the episode that appears at the top of the screen:
Step 2: Choose "Settings" in the menu that appears:
Step 3: Select "play in sequential order":
The podcast will now play the series as desired.
Caution! If you click the "..." of the playing episode, rather than the episode at the top of the podcast title's screen, you will not see the playback settings:
