Podcasts not updating on watch

Make sure its on Custom, but what helped me there when it says "pending" was to take the watch off of the charger and when the watch app said waiting put it back on the charger and it will take a minute, but will start eventually downloading. If it didn't i would swap to Listen now then back to Custom. I have noticed that it won't download the old podcasts i have, but downloaded the new ones that came out today no problem. It does keep to what it says and only downloads 3 podcast of 1 show at a time. If it doesn't show up in your Library on your watch it wont download. It has to sync to there and I usually have bluetooth on to get those transfered onto there then take it off of bluetooth to actually download it. When i listen to these i have two left to download i will make another post if they don't download. (Don't make fun of my podcast selection lol)

I finally gave up the Native Apple podcast app for the Apple Watch some time back. This issue, and the setting up a new password issue in safari, has gone unheard to Apple. Outcast is 100x better. You can download straight to watch. Put your phone in airplane mode, and it takes about a minute for a hour podcast to download (watch on WiFi). Additionally, if you have cellular, you can stream without download.

Well you've tried just about everything now,I did read on one forum that a person deleted the podcast app off the phone and then reinstalled it,this also removes the podcast app off the watch then reinstalls it there too.

The only other thing I can think of is to unpair and re-pair and "setup as new",unless of course you've already tried that.

Sadly not Simon. I ended up going through technical support online. Sent a bunch of screenshots, did a pile of troubleshooting. Promised a resolution. That was on the 14th April - heard nothing since then.

The way to fix this would be to upgrade to a cellular watch - but my SP in the UK doesn’t support it - and I don’t want to switch or spend another $500 on a new version of the same watch. It’s really frustrating.

good luck

I have the same issue. I've been on a thread with calling apple engineers for over 3 months over this issue. I've sent logs, I've factory reset watch and phone. NOTHING works consistently. Like you, sometimes I will randomly get the one episode that loaded to the watch. But I can never count on it...

I have been begging apple to help...

so far, nothing.

I’m also having this issue! It’s really frustrating! Wondering what iPhone you guys are using? I am using an iPhone 6s and it’s the lowest level that’s capable of syncing so I was wondering if that’s where some of the glitch is occurring.

Same problem. Same efforts to fix that. Restarted my phone, unpaired watch. Called Apple Support like 10 times because every time the call just breaks somehow and then i need to wait for the senior adviser again for about 30min on the call.

I also have the same issue with my music. Why then i need this watch? Why apple does nothing about that?

I also am experiencing the same issue with my Series 5 GPS only & iPhone SE 2020.

I bought 2 brand new apple products expecting them to work. I am appalled at the lack of help here for all of us experiencing this issue, some of us have worked extremely hard and don't have much but we spend a lot on what we think will be useful items that will help us exercise etc and help us be healthier but it feels like we have all been lied to.

We do not need GPS plus cellular, this should be working with GPS only also. Especially considering Series 5 is the latest version of the watch, and the SE 2020 just came out, and they both support Bluetooth 5.0, so why am I experiencing this issue?

I have completed EVERY SINGLE ONE of the troubleshooting tips suggested in this thread and NOTHING has worked. This is disgusting and needs to be addressed immediately by Apple I am extremely upset.

Brand new S5 GPS+Cell

Similar issue so I am thinking it is NOT the watch or the presence or lack of cellular.

I have a charger for my phone and watch on my nightstand and they both charge overnight. There is a podcast that releases at 4am daily (not sure if it is CA time or DC time but it does not matter) and another one at 6am DC time.

If I go out for a walk or run at 7am SOMETIMES I can see the current episode, but it is not consistent.

If I do see the episode, it appears to be in the cloud (cloud icon). With cellular, it should stream or download. But it does not. Often I will get an error after a minute saying it is not available. Less frequently it will play for a minute or two and then pause indefinitely (buffer I assume). So now if I want to listen to a podcast, I need to check before I go out that it is there in the watch and that there is not a cloud icon.

The issue has to be in their synching and I am praying that the iOS14, Big Sur, and WatchiOS 7 plus the revamp of the podcast app fixes the issue. TBH, kinda ****** that it looks like I spent all this money for a frikken Fitbit.

I also tried two other apps (dont think the Apple Podcast app is very intuitive) before switching to Apple and had similar issues. I assumed it was an incompatibility with the 3rd party app and switched to Apple App but now I see it is likely the Apple system and NOT the app. I was using Downcast and had recently switched to Pocket Casts

And so we wait!

I’ve been struggling with this same problem for a couple of weeks with my iPhone 8. I typically let my watch and phone charge overnight but was not seeing podcasts downloaded to my watch so had to revert to listening to my downloaded music instead.

I tried your recommendation and sadly it did take a real loooong time to work. I had to have my watch in the charger for close to an entire day overall. One thing I did notice was my watch has a lot of old podcasts were no longer on my phone so maybe that is why it took so long to sync properly. Either way, syncing should never have to take this long. Please get this addressed Apple.

Well, my podcasts always show me the same message as yours for like a sec and then immediately switch to ‘updating’ or ‘waiting’. Nevertheless after the night i found all or sometimes almost all podcasts in my apple watch.

When i talked to Apple adviser he said that bluetooth is still really slow and it wasn’t adapted (?, if it is the right word) to transfer such a large amount of data. But idk why then i can’t just download them via WiFi.

Actually it would be nice to draw attention to this issue.

Also it interesting that no-one of apple advisers i talked to (both in my local stores and online support) have even heard about that.