I need to download-Spotify podcasts to MP3 on my Win 11

I’ve been down this road too – long episodes + spotty connection is a pain 😅
Short version: there’s no “official” button to download podcasts from Spotify to MP3, and a lot of the tools you see on Google are either ToS-grey or straight-up sketchy.

What’s worked reasonably for me in practice:

1. Check if the podcast is available somewhere else as an MP3
   A surprising number of Spotify shows are just mirroring a normal podcast feed.
   • Google the show name + “podcast RSS” or check the creator’s website.
   • Many hosts (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, etc.) let you download episodes as plain MP3 directly from the browser.
     I ended up subscribing via a normal podcast app on Windows that supports download, and only using Spotify for streaming.
2. Last-resort: record system audio in real time (for personal use only)
   On my Win 11 PC I’ve tried the “play it and record it” route:
   • Set the recording device to “what you hear” / system output.
   • Start a simple audio recorder, hit play on the episode in Spotify, let it run, then stop and save as MP3.
     It’s not elegant (real-time, no auto-chapters, you have to trim files yourself), but it avoids shady “one-click” downloaders and malware bait.

Personally, after a bit of testing I now only do this for rare episodes that aren’t available as normal podcast downloads, and otherwise stick to sources that give MP3s directly instead of trying to force everything through Spotify.