How to fix Pocket Casts not showing Podcast Chapters on Android

Podcasts

I love podcasts and listen to a lot of them. I also really like all the "special" features that are supported by various podcast players, like chapters, chapter images, and so on...
As Android user, I can choose from a lot of different podcast player apps. I really like AntennaPod and Pocket Casts. But because of the (in my opinion) better design and user experience and the fact, that it supports all the features I'd like to have supported, I'm currently using Pocket Casts. However, I always had one problem left: for some podcasts, Pocket Casts is not showing chapters, even though I know that they should be there...

The Problem with the Chapters

How Chapters are Defined

There are several approaches for adding chapters to a podcast episode. For example, you can define the chapters in the feed of the podcast (e.g., Podlove Simple Chapters). However, that way the chapters are not directly attached to the audio file you are downloading with your player and your player must read the chapters from the feed. Thus, there is the possibility to embed chapter information directly into the audio file. This differs for different formats, but there are standards, for example, for MP3 and M4A/ AAC (cf. "Enhanced Podcasts").

How Pocket Casts Handles Chapters

Pocket Casts: After several "experiment" and tests I think I know now how Pocket Casts handles chapters: it only extracts chapters from MP3 files. Afterwards, I found out, that they even note that on their support site. In fact, this is only an Android problem, on iOS M4A chapters are supported, too.

This is a simple overview of the chapter support of Pocket Casts (as of January 2022):

The Problem

Some podcasts offer their feed in various variants: e.g., an MP3 feed and an M4A feed. If you search in the Pocket Casts search for such a podcast, you often only get one result: the M4A feed. On iOS, this isn't a deal, as it supports chapters for these files, as well. But Android users will not see them.

The Solution

Find MP3 Feed Version

If you already know the MP3 Feed URL, go to the next section.

First, you have to check whether you are using a podcast with two feed formats and if Pocket Casts is not using the MP3 version. To find out: "Share the Podcast" from Pocket Casts and open it your browser. You will end up on a page like this: https://pca.st/jhoSJJ. If you hover over or click onto the "RSS" button (under "More ways to listen"), you see that this links to an M4A feed. Open/Download the feed and you see, that it links to another "alternative" feed, the MP3 one:

<atom:link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Newz of the World (MP3)" href="https://newz-of-the-world.com/feed/mp3/"/>

However, an additional feed is not necessarily linked in other feeds. So if you don't find a link there (and you know for sure, that chapters are available) you can also search on the podcasts' website (if there exists one) for an MP3 version. Keep in mind, that it also can be the case, that there is only an M4A version available, meaning that you will never (as of now) be able to see chapters.

Add MP3 Feed Version to Pocket Casts

Unfortunately, you cannot add XML Feed directly to Pocket Casts. You have to submit the feed over the Pocket Casts website: https://pocketcasts.com/submit/.
Simply put the MP3 feed URL in there and submit it (you can set on private). This will either generate a new short URL, or give you an already existing one (if someone already submitted that exact feed). For my example podcast from above this URL looks like this: https://pca.st/lyGd. Open it on your phone, it'll open the MP3 feed in Pocket Casts where you can subscribe to it.

That's it, you should now see chapters for your podcast :)