Podcasts not updating on watch

Here is how I work around it, to ensure the podcasts I want stay on the watch ready, regardless of whether I have partially listened or nor not (using Apple podcast by the way, I have no joy with 3rd parties). But Podcast syncing is still a frustrating process on the Apple Watch GPS version (which I bought so I can run without my phone).

1. download podcasts on the phone and mark them as saved. This adds them to your saved library.
2. On the watch app under podcasts, change the settings to custom. Choose stations and select saved.
3. Charge the watch, whilst near the phone and you should see the number of episodes updating to the watch.
4. On the watch, select library, saved items to play those podcasts
5. Points to note… if the watch dies completely or is updated , then all podcasts disappear from the phone so you have to repeat process. However for some reason it won’t sync on that first charge, so you have to take it off charge. Then repeat steps 2 and 3 and then charge. Also bear in mind it can take hours for 2 or 3 podcasts, so do it overnight. dont forget to delete and unsave podcasts you don’t need anymore from the phone app to reduce sync time..

Easy right…equally unsatisfactory process in switching AirPods from to watch quickly. But that’s for another thread..

Okay guys kind of got lucky and stumbled across this and I hope it helps you guys out. So this morning i had the same issue and the thing i posted last night stopped working. I tried deleted apple podcast and reinstalling no success, BUT i accidentally turned off my bluetooth on my phone and my watch was connected to the wifi (did this last night) this will come into play. I closed the watch app on my phone and rebooted my watch. When i restarted my watch I ensured i was connected to the wifi and I swapped the "Add episodes From" from Listen Now to Custom and the podcast began to download. I noticed this because when i looked at the podcast on my watch the circle wasn't blinking it turned solid and started to move. I was able to re-download the 4-40 min podcast within 2 minutes. Once again i got lucky still need to see if it will download my other podcast, but I hope this helps you guys cause i literally bought the watch to listen to podcast and not carry my phone on me so i completely understand the frustration.

I just had this happen to me, it went to pending and it wouldn't get off of it no matter what i did. When i pulled my watch off the charger and put it back on it would say waiting and either stay there or say pending. I just made sure my watch and phone were connected to the same wifi then I ended up leaving the apple watch app open and walked around with my phone as normal in the house. I didn't leave it by my watch which was on the charger because they were on wifi, and about 20 minutes later it swapped to Uploading and my watch downloaded the podcasts I had remaining. I'm still not sure what pending means so this time i left it alone.

I have had this problem too and have tried every solution that I could find, including completely restarting my Apple watch 5 and starting again, but to no avail!

My recommendation would be to ditch the Apple podcast app and use 'outcast' instead, it's brilliant and apple watch native. It recommends downloading the podcasts over your wifi connection direct to the watch and it took me about 10 seconds per podcast to download, no hassle!

I had no better luck with Outcast, TBH, so I deleted it.

Here is what has worked for me this week. It's ridiculous, but I got my podcasts.

1) I disabled the Watch passcode

2) Every morning when I wake up, I unlock my phone, refresh my Podcast app and then open the Watch app.

3) I then toggle on/off for one of the Pods I am trying to update. For whatever reason, this seems to start the process.

4) I go take my shower and by the time I am done, they are there.

I believe that the major problem with the Podcast process is that they will not download if the Watch is not attached to the power cord. How many of us have our Watches plugged in during the day?? Virtually no one, I'd guess. I have stopped even trying to get the Pods that update in the afternoon to download automatically.

This is stupid beyond words.

Unbelievable. A full year of aggravation solved by turning off family sharing. Two days in a row of perfect updates.

im not sure I understand the part about the dummy account but since the only thing I was sharing was location with my 26 yo kid and since we now barely leave the house, I’m not even going to bother to recreate it.

Sounds so easy. The problem is you will waste 2 hours with this and then it will work for a week and then your back doing this again and again. I downloaded Outkast for my podcasts and it works great. You select the podcasts you want then turn you phone onto airplane mode to kill the Bluetooth. Go to the app on your watch and download the episodes to your watch. Once done switch off airplane mode and your ready to go. It's fast because it is using WIFI rather than Bluetooth. Something Apple should look into. My other suggestion to to any apple developer on this is get the guy who figured out apple music. That works great. Slow but it works. Plus the guy that developed the App for Podcasts, get him a watch and have him try is own work. Or fire him and hire somebody else! It's a shame that so many people are having this issue and no fix from Apple. Maybe we have to pay $2000 for a phone to get it right?

I had the same issue and tried everything - re-syncing my watch, restarting my phone and watch, deleting the podcast app and re-downloading it, etc. Nothing worked so I decided I was done with the Podcast App and decided to switch to Overcast.

While in the process, I started deleting all my downloaded podcasts in the Podcast App, as well as old podcasts that had been on my phone for the past year.

I have no idea why, but after deleting all those old podcasts, I noticed that my watch started to sync up to podcasts in the Podcast app the way that it was supposed to.

I have no solid explanation for this, but it worked and solved my issue. Now it syncs up fine and I can listen to podcasts in my Podcast library on my watch when I go for runs without my phone on me.

@owl2hoot, In my world, outcast works great as you've described as long as the watch and the phone are on the identical Wi-Fi network, ie both my phone and watch need to be on the 2.4G band. Which blows because I generally run on phone of the 5G band for better performance.

I've had the same problem, and I ended up making it work by taking of bluetooth from my phone, connecting it to the same wifi as my watch, and then the i choose in 'custom' through my phone, magically started downloading to my watch.

How much space is available on your Watch? Nothing sync'd until I had over 1Gb

Mine now works like a dream. Hate the lack of control over what and when it updates but at least it’s working

two years of Apple support and finally a solution.

delete family sharing.

I was experiencing the same issue. What I didn’t realize was all of my curated music playlists would update first. So I just removed the music.

I turned off bluetooth on my phone and it started to sync up!

4.3.2021

seems like Apple is discriminating against us runners or at the very least has a software manager that “sleeps in

“ on this one. (Pun intended)

so this is what I do now to get the podcasts to synchronize before my runs (it worked this morning)

Setup

-make the podcast app keep 1 episode (less apps means shorter downloading times)

i have 16 shows in my app all set to keep most recent

daily

wake up

leave watch on charger

pick up phone, open watch app

stare at the podcast synchronization symbol (spinners) (the harder you stare the faster the spinners go!)

go to the bathroom- keep watch app open

do my business, keep the watch app open

check spinners, some should go away after completing download. They take a long time.(I tried turning off Bluetooth but was then forced by the app to turn it back on doh!)

finish up in bathroom go back to watch.

Put on watch, say a little prayer to Steve Jobs and Woz.

Open podcast app and check for cloud icons on the watch show images, if no cloud icons it was a success!

if not, go back to top and start over ****** off damming Apple coders iPhones to turn into Newton’s.

today I only had one show that updated because it’s saturday so it worked.

i have partially or unplayed podcasts from Friday or before

11 downloaded but I think some were downloaded while on WiFi by streaming to watch partially and then later the watch downloaded while in the charging station

I think the problem is several things:

1. Podcasts are long and take a long time to down load
2. they download only when watch is on charger and the watch app is open (I could be wrong about the app having to be open but it is satisfying to see progress spinners disappear)
3. New podcasts download to phone in the morning right before I want them on my watch which means the watch being on the charger for a full minute is not enough

by allowing a 5-15 minute period between podcast download to phone and over to watch enabled success for 1 show

therefore going forward watch will need more time on charger as more new apps are available for download.

so I have purchased another watch charger that I can place in my tv room so I can charge the watch the evening before.

my guess is it will need to be connected to remove played podcasts thus decreasing the chances of a bottleneck in the short period of time I have in the morning.

Apple could do better by improving the display of downloading progress. Since we want it to happen fast the usual status shenanigans is not sufficient