Podcasts not updating on watch

gdog1961, RONAN1978

Please stop mis-naming the app.

Out[k]ast was an American hip hop duo formed in 1992 in East Point, Georgia, consisting of Atlanta-based rappers André "3000" Benjamin (formerly known as Dré) and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton.

Out[c]ast — a standalone podcast player for Apple Watch

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. I have an AW6 and when I first set it up, it was downloading and syncing podcasts correctly but then got bogged down and just stopped syncing. I reset the watch back to factory settings and it was syncing happily for a few days and then just stopped. Don't really want to go to a third party solution as Apple should make this just work.

Oh well, looks like I'm listening to music on my walks instead...

Believe me, I Have tried everything. Thought I had it fixed a few time’s. The most previous fix lasted almost a week. Unfortunately, I was not able to get Saturday’s and today’s podcast. I spoke to a senior advisor with Apple and she could not resolve. I told the advisor about this discussion thread and her response was “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet” 😡

I ended up installing outcast, and it works perfect. My issue is, apple’s podcast should work perfect too !!

I have been dealing with this, and the setting up a password issue, for a couple weeks.... just about done !!

So the one thing I could find to help me was just turn off both your phone and watch. Let it power off for about 5 mins. Turn it all on and the. It should automatically sync your new podcast. Hope that works for you

OK. I have a partial fix.

When you charge your Watch at night and want to download some podcasts. Put your iPhone into Airplane Mode - and also switch off Bluetooth.

This then forces the watch to connect to the WiFi - and when I tried it first time last night - I successfully downloaded 5 podcasts to my watch - the most yet.

There are still two other shows which have not downloaded - but this is a definite improvement!

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.

Hi all. I was in the same boat as many of you and tried everything what people suggest on here to no avail for months.

But I did come across a post and followed those steps and included a few of my own too.

Open podcast app on phone. Unsubscribe to all podcasts. Then delete all podcasts. Then delete podcast app.

Shut down both phone and watch and restart them.

Download the podcast app and subscribe to you podcasts.

in the Iwatch app in podcasts, I selected custom but only picked three podcasts to upload instead of my usual 15-20...

Put both phone and watch on chargers and in the morning I had 4 new podcast downloaded on my watch.

And that’s where I’m up-to now. Hopefully they keep uploading automatically now.

Good luck all.

I have Apple Watch 6 with watchOS 7.3.3 and iPhone 11 Pro Max with iOS 14.4.2 I tried to remove all podcasts and re-downloaded them, reboot devices, manually sync podcasts. This ways don’t help me. Apple, please fix this bug with next releases.

I don’t know how or why, but suddenly my podcasts seem to be updating the way they should. The only thing I have done differently (after trying all the other suggestions which mostly didn’t work) is to have my phone next to my watch at night.

That's perfect. It's amazing to me why nobody at apple even reads these posts. even more amazing is the guy or gal who developed this never used the app they developed. If they did they would of quoted Kramer on Seinfeld. "Well that didn't work"

I switched to Outkast. it's a little clunky but you can manually download so you know your podcasts our on your watch. Plus if you use WIFI instead of Bluetooth by switching your phone to airplane it is super fast.

Solid upvote for Outcast for all the reasons others have stated. Apple's podcast to watch workflow completely sucks. So many people have complained about it and it still sucks - there must be a reason for it other than ineptitude.

I bought an Apple Watch 6 last month and am having the exact same problem. The most annoying thing is that it worked okay the first couple times but now it isn’t syncing properly. Even when my watch and phone are sitting charging next to each other for 8 hours.

I kinda wish Apple would focus more on getting the basic functionality right before adding bells and whistles that look cool in an ad but 99% of people don’t care about. The old Apple aphorism was that “It just works”, but I’m seeing many examples of that no longer being the case.

Here's something else: I can't find it documented and it might not be applicable to everyone with a syncing problem but I have wifi at home transmitting on 5G and 2.4. I usually leave my phone hooked to the 5G for better performance but my watch only supports 2.4 so it's hooked to the 2.4 signal.

With bluetooth on the phone off, the watch WILL NOT SYNC, in fact, it completely drops offline, unless I switch my phone over to the 2.4 signal beforehand.

So, for example, if you're using outcast as the podcast app on your watch, before you try downloading content on the watch via Outcast, make sure your watch and phone are set to the same 2.4 band on your wifi.

I have found that if you use outcast, putting the phone in airplane mode (Bluetooth and WiFi off), and turn on WiFi on the Apple watch, a hour long podcast downloads in seconds. I’ve given up on the Apple’s native podcast app. Even when it worked, it would not download as fast.

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.