Player Experience Team
·The team developing improvements and features for Yoto Players

Why some podcasts have stopped working on Yoto players

Hello Yoto Community,

We’re currently seeing an issue where some third-party podcasts no longer play reliably on Yoto players.

Thank you to everyone who has reported this, we know these shows are an important part of your family’s listening.

What’s going on?

Many podcast providers now deliver episodes using more complex online links so they can handle things like analytics and dynamically inserted adverts. This is now affecting some of the popular podcasts played through Yoto players.

Phones and modern podcast apps are designed to cope with these delivery methods, but Yoto players are different: they’re dedicated, embedded audio devices, not general-purpose smartphones. They have stricter limits on how complicated a web link can be. 

When a podcast now uses a delivery method that exceeds those limits, playback may fail.

For example, you might see the episode cards rapidly switching between chapters.

What we’re doing about it

  • Investigating longer-term updates to our software so our players can cope better with modern podcast delivery, and

  • Reaching out to podcast providers where possible to see if they can offer versions that are more compatible with embedded devices like Yoto.

These changes involve substantial coordination, so they won’t be immediate, but we are working on it.

How you can help

If a specific podcast your family loves no longer works, and especially if it still works on the Yoto App, please contact our Customer Happiness Team.

We really appreciate your patience while we work through this, and we’re sorry for the disruption.

Podcasts that have been restored

These podcasts should now work as normal again:

  • Activity Quest

  • Armchair Adventures

  • Bullfrogs and Lizards – A Kids’ Storytelling Podcast

  • Bust or Trust

  • Culture Kids Podcast

  • Everything Under the Sun

  • Fun Kids Science Weekly

  • Koala Moon: Kids Bedtime Stories & Sleep Stories

  • My First Podcast

  • Noodle Loaf - Music Education Podcast for Kids

  • Sleep Tight Science - A Bedtime Science Show

  • Smash Boom Best

  • Story Quest

  • Story Shed

  • The Way the World Works: A Tuttle Twins Podcast

  • The Week Junior Show

  • Who Smarted? - Educational Podcast for Kids

Current list of incompatible podcasts

These podcasts may still work in your Yoto App, but not on your player:

  • CBeebies Podcasts (fix in progress)

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74 replies
Best reply by David @ Yoto

If you've noticed that a podcast your family loves no longer works on your player, and especially if it still works on the Yoto App, please report it to our Customer Happiness Team through the chat function.

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