Apple Podcasts recorded its highest listener count, play count and subscriber count in 2025, according to Apple’s own services recap, and more than 125 million episodes now carry transcripts in 13 languages. Apple has not published the underlying listener, play or subscriber totals behind those records.
The figures sit inside Apple’s wider look back at its services business, separate from the September 9 event, and they land the same year Apple redesigned the Podcasts app for tvOS and added video playback on macOS.
What Apple says about Podcasts in 2025
| Key facts | Detail |
|---|---|
| Listeners | Record, per Apple; no figure published |
| Plays | Record, per Apple; no figure published |
| Subscribers | Record, per Apple; no figure published |
| Transcribed episodes | 125+ million |
| Transcript languages | 13 |
The transcript figure carries more weight than the surrounding superlatives, since it is the one number in Apple’s recap with an actual count attached. Transcripts make episodes searchable and more accessible to listeners who are deaf or hard of hearing, and covering 13 languages across more than 125 million episodes is a meaningfully large claim on its own, even without a listener total to sit alongside it. Apple does not name which 13 languages are included, so the list itself is another detail this recap leaves for a support page rather than the headline figures.
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The one figure with a number attached
Of everything Apple says about Podcasts’ 2025, the transcript count is the only claim with a real figure behind it, and even that figure does not say how many total episodes exist on the service, only how many carry a transcript in one of the 13 supported languages. “Record listeners,” “record plays” and “record subscribers” all appear without any comparable number, which leaves the transcript count as the sole piece of this recap a reader can actually hold onto. Apple’s Music side of the same 2025 recap follows an identical pattern, naming a record year and a 10th anniversary without a figure attached to either, which suggests this is simply how Apple chooses to talk about its services business rather than something specific to Podcasts.
A redesign arrived the same year as the records
| Change | Where |
|---|---|
| Interface redesign | tvOS, with video playback and sidebar navigation |
| Video podcasts with Picture-in-Picture | macOS |
| Search within show | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro and web |
| Search within show on Apple TV or HomePod | Not listed by Apple |
Apple announced these changes on June 9, 2026, the same broad services update that named Podcasts’ record year elsewhere in Apple’s own material. The tvOS redesign and the macOS video addition are real interface changes, not just marketing language, and Search within show is a genuine new tool for a listener trying to find one moment inside a long episode. That said, Apple’s own platform list for Search within show stops at five destinations and does not include Apple TV or HomePod, even though both already play podcasts today.
What’s missing from Apple’s own count
Apple’s recap gives no year-over-year percentage for listeners, plays or subscribers, no breakdown by country or platform, and no total episode count to measure the 125 million transcribed episodes against. A listener streaming through an iPhone 18 Pro or a set of AirPods 5 is contributing to a record Apple has named but not sized, and that gap runs through every figure in this recap except the transcript count. Apple also does not say whether the 125 million transcribed episodes are concentrated in a handful of languages or spread evenly across all 13, a detail that would change how useful the feature actually is outside English-language podcasts.
What Apple has not said
- Any numeric total behind “record listeners,” “record plays” or “record subscribers.”
- A year-over-year comparison for any of the three.
- Whether Search within show is coming to Apple TV or HomePod.
Today is Saturday, September 12, 2026. macOS 27 and tvOS 27 both ship free on Monday, September 14, alongside iOS 27, bringing the redesigned Podcasts app to the platforms Apple named, and that date is the next point to check whether Apple adds any numbers to the records it has claimed.
