Alexa can now trawl Apple Podcasts so you can keep everything synced up

Apple Podcasts might not be perfect, but its ability to play seamlessly across all your HomeKit devices so that you never miss one of the Office Ladies funniest japes is a massive boon. Now, if you’ve got Amazon’s Alexa around the house, you can use it to pick up a podcast from where you were last listening — as long as you live in one of almost 50 countries, that is.

Apple has updated the Podcasts format according to a new support document, allowing for the linking of Alexa and Apple IDs. That’s how you’re able to seamlessly listen to podcasts from your iPad or iPhone to your Alexa devices.

Apple Podcasts on more devices

In its support document, Apple says that the feature is available in a list of 50 countries: “Apple Podcasts for Alexa is only available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Türkiye, United Kingdom, and United States.” The document also has instructions for how to get Alexa up and running — and it all seems easy enough.

It joins Apple Music as an app that you can control with the Amazon smart home standard, rounding out the range of Apple software you can use with Alexa. You can control Apple Podcasts from a Fire TV or Amazon Echo speaker too, so there are more options for listening to your podcasts than ever before.

It’s still Spotify that does this better, however, leaving everything in one app that can be easily controlled with most smart home standards — including HomePod and Siri. Apple Music and Apple Podcasts still have a little way to go before they’re quite as widespread and convenient, but they are getting there.