Formatting your podcast's show notes for different apps

As a podcaster, you’ve probably noticed that your episode show notes don’t always look the same across various podcast apps. This can be frustrating, especially when you’ve put effort into formatting your notes with headings, hyperlinks, and block quotes. In this post, I'll explore why this happens and what you can do about it.

Testing show notes formatting in every podcast app

When you publish a podcast episode, your show notes are saved as HTML in your podcast’s RSS feed. The issue arises because each podcast app renders HTML differently. To understand this better, I created an RSS feed with various HTML formatting elements and tested it across several popular podcast apps.

HTML Elements Tested

Here are the HTML elements I included in the test:

• Headings (H1, H2, H3)

• Paragraphs

• Hyperlinks

• Italic, bold, and monospace text

• Itemized and nested lists

• Block quotes

• Horizontal lines

• HTML tables

• Embedded images

Let’s look at how different podcast apps handle these elements.

Apple Podcasts episode description formatting

In the Apple Podcasts app, most HTML formatting doesn’t render as expected:

• Headings (H1, H2, H3) don’t display correctly; they render as plain text.

• Paragraphs and hyperlinks render well.

• Italic, bold, and monospace text don’t work.

• Itemized lists display but with spacing issues.

• Block quotes and horizontal lines don’t render.

• HTML tables and embedded images don’t display, although the alt text for images does.

Spotify episode description formatting

Spotify's formatting on their mobile app is a little bit cleaner than Apple's, but still has limited support for these HTML elements:

• Headings are bolded but not differentiated by size.

• Paragraphs and hyperlinks render correctly.

• Italic, bold, and monospace text don’t work.

• Itemized lists display properly.

• Block quotes and nested lists don’t render correctly.

• HTML tables and embedded images don’t display.

However, for some reason, Spotify's desktop web version renders a double space between every paragraph.

YouTube Music episode description formatting

Many podcasters are choosing to distribute their show on YouTube for discoverability, but you'll see that YouTube is not rendering show notes very well.

• Only paragraphs render, but with double spacing, creating large gaps.

• Hyperlinks are rendered as plain-text URLs

• Headings and most other formatting elements don’t work

• Itemized and nested lists display with large gaps.

• No support for images or additional HTML elements.

Castbox episode description formatting

Castbox's rendering of HTML was a pleasant surprise:

• Headings are bolded and slightly differentiated.

• Paragraphs and hyperlinks render correctly.

• Italic, bold, and monospace text work.

• Itemized lists, block quotes, and nested lists display properly.

• HTML tables and embedded images render correctly.V

Pocket Casts episode description formatting

Pocket Casts performs fairly well when it comes to rendering HTML:

• No differentiation in heading sizes.

• Paragraphs and hyperlinks render correctly.

• Italic, bold, and monospace text work.

• Itemized lists and block quotes render properly.

• Nested lists display correctly.

• HTML tables and embedded images work.

Also, for some reason their desktop web version has different spacing underneath headlines than their app.

Overcast episode description formatting

Overcast offers the best support for HTML:

• Headings are properly differentiated by size.

• Paragraphs and hyperlinks render correctly.

• Italic, bold, and monospace text work.

• Itemized lists and block quotes render correctly.

• Nested lists display properly, though spacing could improve.

• Horizontal lines, HTML tables, and images render well.

Advice: keep your show notes simple

Different podcast apps support HTML to varying degrees, which can lead to inconsistencies in how your show notes appear.

If you want your podcast's show notes to display properly in all apps, stick to using:

• Simple paragraphs

• Hyperlinks

• Bulleted lists

Generally, it seems like <p> tags are better supported than using <div> or <br> tags for line breaks.

Other HTML elements (bold, italics), blockquotes, nested lists, tables, and embedded images won't work in most popular apps (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube).