I get my podcasts through Apple Podcasts (previously itunes) and while it's not great, it's fine, I can usually make it work. Don't really want to change since a lot of them are patreons, and if I have to move them, I don't necessarily remember all my passwords to manage them all so it would be a big stupid job.

I download them on my desktop computer and from there transfer them to my ipod.

The problem is not mainly with the podcasts I want to listen to, but with ones that I don't. I'll listen to one episode, decide it's not for me, but from then on, for years and years, every episode will show up on my unplayed list. I don't download them, so they're not messing up my actual playing and listening experience, but every time I want to do a little managing of the podcasts I actually listen to, I have to scroll past literally dozens of episodes of some show I listened to one of, three years ago.

Every place that gives me a choice to uncheck these shows, I've unchecked them. They just won't go away.

And meanwhile, every now and then, itunes just decides not to show things I actually want on my unplayed list, so I have to go over to the store and ask for them again. So I have right now three shows I like, that I have to go and manually get every week, while twice a week a show that I only listened to once just because someone I know was guesting on it, shows up faithfully on my unplayed list.

Is there a way to fix this that doesn't have me just leaving apple podcasts entirely?

The app is annoying! I think what you should do is click on Library then click on the name of the Podcast you don't like (I have an iPhone without the home button and I held it down when clicking) and I got an option to "Unfollow."

Hmm, it doesn't give me "unfollow" as an option. I have "download" "mark as played" "mark as unplayed" "get info" "love" "dislike" "rating" "uncheck selection" "save episodes" "refresh podcast" "subscribe podcast" "copy" "paste" "copy podcast url" and "delete from library".

I've tried "uncheck selection" which doesn't do anything that I can detect. I've tried "delete from library" and that deletes any episodes I may have downloaded, but that's all.

I wonder if I update it, it will give me the "unfollow" option, which is definitely what I want.