What you need to know
- Google today released the migration tool for the porting of Google Podcasts to YouTube Music.
- The company also shared a feature that will mark imported podcasts as listened to in YouTube Music, but it won't be available yet.
- Google provided a more specific date for the migration deadline, now citing April 2, 2024 as the last call.
Google has been trying to consolidate its media consumption apps over the last few months, and a casualty of that effort is Google Podcasts. The service will lose support in April of next year, and today, Google launched the tool that will let users export their podcasts to another app.
Google explained the migration tool in a support document first spotted by 9to5Google. There will be a popup and banner in the Google Podcasts app explaining the planned shutdown, with an Export subscriptions button available.
Users can choose to export straight to YouTube Music or to another app via downloading data in the OPML file format. However, since YouTube Music does not support OPML files, there is a separate process for exporting to the app.
After tapping the Export subscriptions button, users can choose the Export button under the Export to YouTube Music section. This will open the YouTube Music app or prompt a download if it isn't already installed. Then, tapping Transfer and Continue will start the export process. The whole export should only take a few minutes, Google says.
To export to another podcast app, tap the Download button after pressing the Export subscriptions button. This will download the OPML file, which can then be uploaded to another service. However, the steps for that will depend on which app you want to switch to.
In addition to the exporting steps, Google also gave its most concrete date yet for the closing of Google Podcasts, stating that April 2, 2024, will be the end of the app's support. The company originally guaranteed access to Google Podcasts through March and set a July 2024 deadline for migrating podcasts. That means users will have a while longer before they have to migrate to another app, but they'll want to do it sooner rather than later.
However, key features designed to ease the transition are still not available. Google said a feature allowing users to mark podcasts as listened to in YouTube Music will be released in "the coming months." Right now, the app doesn't even support notifications for new podcast episodes.
YouTube Music has a long way to go before it will be a true replacement for Google Podcasts, and Google only has a few months left to realize that vision.
