Finally, YouTube Music Allows Podcasts to be Marked As Played

Today, YouTube Music announced AI-generated talk radio and sound search in addition to introducing "Mark as played" for podcasts.

You can choose to "Mark as played" or "Mark as unplayed" when you access a podcast episode's overflow menu. "Episode marked as played" is a toast notification that verifies the action. With the exception of the Now Playing UI, which is handy if you decide you're finished with an episode, it shows everywhere.

In December 2023, Google initially hinted to the availability of this function, stating that it would be available "in the coming months." After seven months, it is finally here.

This basic feature, which aids in managing your library/queue, is a fundamental component of podcasting clients. It's crazy that this wasn't included in the original feature list when YTM started offering podcasts. The only workaround available before was to launch a podcast and manually drag the scrubber all the way to the finish.

Watching Mark as it appears in YouTube Music on the web, iOS, and Android devices (which seems to have lost its continuous miniplayer in the last few days).

Notifications of new episodes should come next.