Sick of getting podcast notifications, emails, alerts, and seeing them all over the front page? We love podcasts, but we understand that having a medium forced on you is aggravating—it should be something you seek out, not something that’s forced on you.
Spotify has been investing in podcasts since 2018 and won’t stop pushing them, so what can you do about it?
Let’s talk about some solutions if, like us, you want to listen to music on Spotify without being shown a product that you’re not interested in at that time. It’s time to find out how to hide a podcast on Spotify, and spoiler alert: it’s not a simple fix.
Why Hide a Podcast on Spotify?
Because we didn’t ask for podcasts to be on Spotify. It began as a music streaming service, and years later, it became a place to also host podcasts. We don’t have a problem with it being a hybrid audio service.
What we have a problem with is it being injected without the option of opting out. You would want to hide a podcast so that you could specifically listen to music, and see music suggestions to discover new artists and genres.
Podcasts get in the way of the initial Spotify experience that made them one of the biggest streaming platforms for music.
Process of Hiding a Podcast on Spotify
Spotify is selling its podcasts by forcing users to at least see the recommendations, which normally have nothing to do with the user experience. We don’t like that.
Apparently, neither do the developers behind a tool that’s specifically made to remove podcast recommendations. As far as we can tell, it’s desktop use only, but it works a treat.
Spicetify is an extension that helps hide podcasts and podcast suggestions from your Spotify experience altogether.
Many users have no problem with Spotify including podcasts, but not being able to opt out and choose to not see those results (especially when you’re just looking for music) is particularly annoying.
It seems as though Spotify has foregone the entire user experience when they invested in podcasts, especially since it’s been years of this issue persisting with no communication from Spotify staff about a solution, or even acknowledgment of it being a problem.
Now, let’s talk about Spicetify, what it does, and how to install it to hide those podcast suggestions. Spicetify does the following:
- Hide Podcast Carousels: The carousel images/covers for podcasts on the homepage are completely hidden.
- Library Alteration: The tab for podcasts on your library option is completely hidden.
- No More Episodes: There’s a section called “Your Episodes” that Spicetify hides completely.
- Alters Search: Podcasts will be hidden from search through the search page, and podcast suggestions will be removed from the search bar as well.
The great thing is that Spicetify is available for macOS users, Windows users, and even Linux. If that doesn’t show a vehement dislike of the podcast carousel system, we don’t know what does.
This is something you need to install for it to work properly. It runs off of Padster, so basically you have a Github page and download for Padster right here, and then Spicetify that allows you to interact with and change the Padster framework.
There are instructions on the Padster page that explain how to install it properly. These can change at any point depending on what version they’re at (at the time of writing, the last version was 2.2.0 on December 29th, 2021).
We would list instructions here, but since they’ll be able to update their own installation instructions as time goes on, we thought it better to simply link them here.
Is Padster going to become illegal, though? That’s the question everyone is asking. A similar, popular solution arose when YouTube removed the ability to see dislikes on a video.
This caused a company named YouTube Vanced to make a modification so that you can still see the dislike button. Unfortunately, and although the details are shrouded in a bit of mystery, they had to shut down operations in accordance with a legal issue.
This tidbit of information is important because it could be how Spotify approaches the whole situation. They’ve clearly invested a ton of money in podcasts and it doesn’t look like they’re going to turn down the intensity anytime soon.
For now, Spicetify is our best solution. Hopefully it doesn’t get shut down at any point soon. Since it’s not allowing access to paid content or anything from Spotify Premium, we don’t anticipate that they’ll run into any legal issues though, so we can rejoice in the meantime.
How to Undo a Hidden Podcast
Now, if you’re able to hide a podcast (which can happen sometimes, although you can’t hide the entire section on your home screen), you can undo it. It’s easy enough to do, but Spotify has been known to bury this option on certain devices and platforms.
Go into your library tab and find the podcast in question by scrolling down the page to find “Hidden Content” This is where your hidden podcasts will be if you’re able to hide them.
Again, it’s rare to be able to hide a podcast and it’s usually a bug, because of the way Spotify is pushing podcasts on their site and apps. It’s mostly Android users who have been able to hide podcasts in the past.
Creating Your Own Corner of Spotify
Thanks to Spicetify, we can hide podcasts again. The thing is, mobile applications are essentially stuck without the option, so that’s a bit of an annoyance.
Spotify used to be about music, and while we love podcasts on this site, it’s important to actually have access to the medium that you want at that time. We support Spicetify and allow users to have the option of what’s displayed to them on their homepage.
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