Podcasts not updating on watch

Going on a month now with it working. S5 Watch with cellular. Most current iOS and Watch OS. Blew out all the other podcast apps and went with the Apple one.

I have been putting my phone on airplane overnight when it is charging and the watch also charges overnight.

I am synching 9 podcasts (I reduced the number thinking it might help)

It seems to synch fine, BUT I cannot figure out WHEN it synchs. When I wake up at 6am, sometimes a daily one that releases at 4am is there. Other times not. The Daily that releases at 6am is never there.

About 10 after 6, I will go into th watch app to check. I pull down and rlease to refresh and I find the ones I am expecting with a rotating circle next to them and a message at the top saying waiting. Eventually one of the rotating circles will stop rotating and start to download. WHen it completes, another totating circle will start to download and the message at top shows synching podcasts and the progress bar advances.

Usually by 630am, they are all there and I can get out for a walk or run.

Hope this helps. But man did Apple drop the ball on this

I tried this and it worked in just a second. I very carefully changed the settings per the helpful screen shots here. I separated the phone from the watch to break the bluetooth (without turning it off). By the time I walked from one room to the next, it had updated with my custom 3 episodes. Make sure the watch is charging and on wifi.

One weird thing though is that the update turned off the watch. It was a little warm when I removed it from the charger, so I thought maybe it overheated in the podcast update.

Between this revelation and Spotify cellular streaming now available, this was a good week!

Solution: buy the Outcast app.. well worth 99 cents.

I've been frustrated with this forever and I recently saw someone recommend Outcast. It's works perfect - it seems like the app is designed specifically for this problem.

You have direct control over what episodes to download to the watch and the downloads actually work. They tell you to put your phone on airplane mode + turn off bluetooth. This will force Apple Watch onto wifi where pods download super quick.

Went on a run without my phone.. finally!

I'm having the exact same issue. Apple Watch S5 with Cellular. But I'm paying for cellular for no reason, because the watch is incapable of streaming any music or podcasts if I don't have my phone with me. Which completely defeats the purpose of paying for cellular, because the only reason I bought the watch was to go running without my phone. A song or podcast will load for a long time and eventually start to play, but then after a few seconds it starts buffering and won't play for minutes at a time. I've talked to 2 separate senior advisors at Apple and neither have been able to help. I've talked to Verizon, and the problem is not on their end. Apple sent me a replacement watch but that didn't help at all. This is clearly a software issue.

So I've had to resort to downloading podcasts as a workaround, but even that isn't a reliable alternative. The watch is charging with my phone sitting 2 inches away and it says "Waiting..." seemingly forever. Eventually it will start to download one podcast, but after it accomplishes this simple feat, it again says "Waiting..." Waiting for what??? The watch is charging, the phone is touching the watch, and both are connected to WiFi and Bluetooth. What else could it possibly be waiting for?

If I constantly turn the phone on Airplane Mode and turn off WiFi and Bluetooth, it will occasionally wake up and start to download one podcast, but there is no predicting if this will work (or which podcast it will choose to start downloading). And half the time, it doesn't even download the newest podcast episode - it downloads the 4th-oldest available episode and doesn't seem capable of recognizing that a new episode has been released.

I'm jumping through hoops every day to try a workaround for Apple's unacceptable software issues. I keep hoping each new software update will fix the problem, but obviously this is not the case. In fact, despite 9 pages of comments on this discussion page, every Apple employee I've talked to seems baffled to learn of my situation. As if I'm the only Apple customer on Earth who's experienced this. I've been dealing with this since August, and there is no end in sight.

If you're interested in purchasing a $500+ pedometer plus an additional $10/month to send text messages with no streaming capabilities, I can't recommend the Cellular Apple Watch S5 enough.

This shouldn't be so difficult.

Apple, make a podcast app that works on the watch. Why can't you do this? What is so complicated about this?

I've tried everything here in this thread short of downloading and buying some other third party app. I may do just that, but I shouldn't have to. I am stuck on the "updating" screen in the Watch app on my phone.

Seriously, it's just a matter of getting a file to download onto a device. How can that be at all complicated?

I'm going to try Outcast because this is quite frustrating. I find I want the latest episode of a podcast so I select Custom and just that podcast and it downloads the 3 latest episodes except for the very latest one and I can't get it to download the latest. Not sure what on the phone is preventing it from seeing the very latest. I'm trying the Up Next option, which is not really what I want but I'll give it a go.

happy that turning off family sharing seems to have helped some people, but I don’t have family sharing turned on and still had

issues. I used the directions from an earlier post where you refresh the podcast app, open the watch app and toggle on/off the podcasts that aren’t loading right, and then put your watch on the charger. Seems to be working for the most part for me, but annoying I have to do that most nights.

It’s kind of fickle. Delete all downloaded podcast on iPhone. Then unsubscribe from all podcast and close app. Go to settings, general, iPhone storage. Find podcast and delete. Make sure all data and documents are deleted. Closed podcast app on your watch. Restart both devices. When iPhone is on, download the podcast app. Subscribe to the podcast you want. Go to watch app on phone and go to podcast. Under “add podcast”, check custom, and turn on the podcast you want. Put watch on charger and it should start a sync.

I hope this helps and they fix this soon !!

Maybe this is dumb luck, but mine seem to sync despite itself. Twice in a row, with fingers crossed....

my iPhone tells me the downloads have completed, but no new episodes appear on my watch.

Then I turn watch completely off...power it back on, and there they are.

It's super weird because Apple's got some super bright developers. I kind of think there's something VERY complicated going on with the OS that's screwing everything up. Like the other day, I suddenly couldn't download anything to Outcast (my preferred podcast app for watch) through wifi. It just quit working. Then I saw that although the Watch wi-fi was on and it saw my network, it totally refused to join the network it - although it had been connected to it for months. Power cycled everything - router, modem, watch, phone, my temper - then re-entered the wifi password, still dead. Then, for whatever reason I switch on the Radio app on the watch and the **** thing instantly connects back to wifi. BAM, everything back to "normal". Gremlins in there running amok, I'm telling ya.

Playing around with the Watch app on my iPhone, I found that if I changed the podcast settings then changed them back, the Watch finally started downloading the pending podcasts (while plugged in). There is clearly some software issue that is causing the podcast syncing to get hung up between the phone and watch.

Just a thought have you checked these settings on the phone?

And good luck.

100%

I bought my watch with cellular for exactly the same reason. I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known that this seemingly simple thing would end up consuming hours and hours and hours of my time.