How to listen to podcasts on Google Home

Google podcasts have been implemented in the Play Music app for Android and have recently released a dedicated Podcast app. But you can also listen to podcasts right in your Google Home quite easily.

There are several ways to do this: using your voice or using casting. We’ll look at both.

How to listen to podcasts at home with your voice

The easiest way to start a podcast on Google Home is to simply ask your Google Assistant to play the podcast you want to listen to.

You can start a podcast by saying «OK Google, play <имя подкаста>«. For example, I religiously listen to the TrainerRoad Ask the Cycling Coach podcast, so I just tell Home to «play the latest episode of the TrainerRoad podcast» and he knows exactly what I’m talking about.

You can also pause, stop and resume voice commands. Just be aware that if you want to resume the podcast, you’ll have to explicitly name it before it will work correctly — so «Hey Google, keep listening to the TrainerRoad podcast» should work. This is the recommended command from Google and I find it works the best.

It would be nice to be able to play certain episodes by number, but this is not yet supported. While most podcasts offer show numbers, Home doesn’t get it right yet. I tested several shows and each time it played the last episode of the podcast in question.

Other Ways to Listen to Podcasts on Google Home

While simply telling Home to play a podcast is convenient, it’s not the most versatile option. Actually, it’s almost too much simply. If you’re looking for a little more flexibility from listening to podcasts but still want to use Google Home, you can do so by using one of Google’s best features: casting.

While most Android apps should have this feature (other than, oddly enough, Google’s own podcast app), it’s harder to find on iOS. Pocket Casts is arguably the most popular app with built-in Cast support if you’re an Apple user.

However, using the Casting feature, you can stream your podcast to Google Home and then easily pick it up in your car or on your headphones if you can’t finish it all in one sitting. This flexibility is great.

To send a podcast to your home, simply click on the Cast icon in any application that supports this feature, then select the speaker you want to cast to. The podcast should start playing immediately.

Now you can play, pause, and stop the podcast from your phone, and take it with you somewhere to finish later if you need to.