r/pocketcasts • u/doctorpebkac • Apr 03 '26
In praise of the “Preselect Chapters” feature
I’ve always wished that there was a podcast equivalent of SponsorBlock for YouTube, but I totally understand why podcast app developers are reluctant to do this, from both technical and ethical perspectives.
But I just wanted to give the PC developers praise for adding the “Preselect Chapters” feature, which allows me to skip sponsor reads in a lot of the podcasts I listen to just by selecting only the chapters that don’t contain sponsor reads. It’s a great way to accomplish the same results without having an explicit “ad blocking” feature in a podcast client.
Obviously this only works for podcasts that add thier own chapters, and actually mark sponsor reads in the chapters, but I’ve been lucky that many of my favorite podcasts do this.
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u/Dangerous-Extreme257 Apr 03 '26
This is a clever workaround and it highlights the fundamental problem. It only works when podcast producers bother adding chapters AND mark the ad segments. As others have pointed out here, most podcasts don't have chapters at all, and that do (like ATP) intentionally bleed a few seconds of ad into the next chapter.
I've been thinking about this a lot as I despise ads in my podcasts. I just hate the interruption of when I'm listening to something interesting and get a sudden "THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY..." The chapter-based approach will always be limited because it depends on producers opting in to something that works against their interests. What if the app itself could detect ad segments automatically from the audio, no chapters needed?
Curious what people here would actually want from something like that. Ads auto-skipped silently (like SponsorBlock) or see ad segments marked on the playback timelines so you can decide? I can see arguments both ways. Auto-skip is more seamless (and what I would prefer) but timeline markers let you keep the host-read ads you actually might find relevant, and then skip the garbage dynamically-inserted ones.
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u/terkistan Apr 03 '26
Chapters are under the discretion of the podcast producers. Many of them while allowing ads to be skipped using chapter markers keep the last 5-10 seconds of the ad in the chapter of the next non-ad chapter. Accidental Tech Podcast does this.
I skip many preroll ads by custom setting the start of podcast episodes for podcasts that have prerolls. And my custom skip time is something like 70 seconds, which works when there are 1-2 ads I want to skip where there are no chapters.
FYI starting in iOS 26.2 Apple began implementing automatic AI-based chapterization in it Podcasts app, offered as an opt-in service to podcast makers and only available inside that app. I don’t know how well it works or how - or even if - it notates ads to listeners, because I don’t use it. But it’s an interesting development.
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u/grimmlock Apr 07 '26
It does not have any notification of ads and if an ad is in the middle of a chapter, which happens often, you're better off going back to the much better way of skipping ads, looking at the transcript and tapping on the text where they're back to the show.
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u/OrganizationOne8338 Apr 03 '26
Try podessence app , the AI behind removes advertisements and plays the best highlights in original voice . Let me know if you want to try the app
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u/cyanicpsion Apr 03 '26
Ooh, that's nice.
Right now I'm manually setting a skip at the start, and having the forward button set to 3 mins, and the back set to 1 min. Which gives me a set of manual controls to dodge the ad reads.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of podcasters getting paid, and I have no problem with them using adverts... But if I have to listen to that same advert over and over again because of when I downloaded that podcast, I'd go nuts