Apple Podcasts is getting an enhanced video expertise this spring
Apple is taking over YouTube and Spotify with a brand new video podcast expertise launching within the spring. Customers will be capable of changing between watching and listening to exhibits within the Apple Podcasts app, which can start utilizing the corporation’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) video know-how. Customers may change to a horizontal model of the podcast and obtain movies to look at offline.
The transfer comes as video podcasting continues to gain a reputation. Edison Analysis lately revealed that 51% of the U.S. inhabitants have consumed a video podcast and that 37% devour video podcasts month-to-month.
The up-to-date video podcast expertise will permit Apple to better compete with the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and even Netflix, all of which have already embraced the format. YouTube announced last year that it has more than 1 billion month-to-month active viewers of podcast content. Spotify stated in final November that it has over 1,000,000 video podcasts, which practically 400 million customers have watched. As for Netflix, the streaming giant has partnered with iHeartMedia and Spotify to carry video podcasts to its platform.
By bringing an enhanced video podcast viewing experience to its app, Apple is aiming to keep customers from turning to rival platforms to look at their favorite exhibits.
“Twenty years in the past, Apple helped take podcasting mainstream by including podcasts in iTunes, and more than a decade in the past, we launched the devoted Apple Podcasts app,” stated Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice chairman of Companies, in a press launch. “Right now marks a defining milestone in that journey. By bringing category-leading video expertise to Apple Podcasts, we’re placing creators in full management of their content material and the way they construct their companies, while making it simpler than ever for audiences to listen to or watch podcasts.”
Whereas the brand-new video expertise will formally launch within the spring, the update is obtainable to test beginning this week as a part of betas for iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, and visionOS 26. 4.
