Delete Podcast Downloads on Mac (Stop Auto-Downloads)

Apple's Podcasts app downloads new episodes of every show you follow by default. Follow a dozen shows and you're quietly storing gigabytes of audio you may never play. Here's how to clear what's already on disk — and stop the app from hoarding more.

Turn off automatic downloads

This is the setting that causes the problem, so fix it first:

1. Open Podcasts, then choose Podcasts → Settings from the menu bar (or press Cmd+,).
2. Click the General tab.
3. Turn off Automatically Download.

From now on, episodes stream when you press play instead of piling up on disk. Streaming an episode uses the same data as downloading it once — you lose nothing except the clutter. If there's one show you genuinely want offline (for flights, say), you can leave the global setting off and download just that show's episodes manually with the download arrow next to each episode.

Delete the episodes already on your Mac

Turning off auto-downloads doesn't remove anything already stored. To clear the backlog:

1. In the Podcasts sidebar, click Downloaded (under Library). This lists every episode taking up space, grouped by show.
2. Right-click an episode and choose Remove Download. The episode stays in your library and can be streamed or re-downloaded any time — only the local file is deleted.
3. Work through the list by show. Old daily news episodes and back-catalog seasons are usually the bulk of it.

There's no single "delete everything" button on the Mac, but the Downloaded view makes the sweep quick because the biggest offenders cluster together. A rough sense of scale helps you prioritize: a typical hour-long episode runs 50–100 MB, so a daily show you stopped listening to a year ago can easily be sitting on 20 GB of audio.

Two things to know before you sweep:

• Your library syncs; your downloads don't. If you use the same Apple ID on an iPhone, your shows, subscriptions, and play positions sync across devices — but downloaded files are per-device. Removing a download on the Mac doesn't touch the copy on your phone, and vice versa.
• Per-show overrides exist. Open a show's page and click the … button to reach its individual settings — useful if you want one favorite show downloaded automatically while everything else streams.

Let Podcasts clean up after itself

One more setting keeps the folder from growing back:

1. Go back to Podcasts → Settings → General.
2. Turn on Remove Played Downloads.

With this enabled, any episode you finish is deleted from disk automatically shortly after you play it. Combined with auto-downloads off, the app stabilizes at close to zero storage: it only ever holds episodes you've deliberately saved and haven't finished yet. This works the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Verify the space actually came back

Podcasts stores its downloads in a hidden app container, not in your Downloads folder. To see how much it's using before and after your cleanup, run this in Terminal:

# total size of the Podcasts app's local storage
du -sh ~/Library/Group\ Containers/243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Cache

This command only reads sizes — it changes nothing, so there's nothing to undo. Resist the urge to delete files inside that folder by hand: the app tracks downloads in its own database, and removing files behind its back leaves ghost entries that still show as "downloaded." Always remove episodes through the app so the two stay in sync.

One more storage hog to check

Podcasts isn't the only Apple app that downloads media on its own. If you've ever rented or downloaded anything in the TV app, those files can be far larger than any podcast backlog — a single 4K movie is several gigabytes. See our guide to deleting TV app downloads on your Mac for the same treatment there.