Podcasts not updating on watch

@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 really never downloaded the podcast, my watch has cellular so I would stream them. However, I could not even get the episodes that way. I switched to outcast because the podcast are always available. I started downloading them to save a little battery life. Simultaneously streaming and gps seems to eat the battery up (especially on my Apple Watch 5) I returned the 5 for a 6 and have had no battery issues.

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.

Strangely. I had to reinstall iOS 14.2 and all apps for another issue I was having. After the reinstallation I can listen to podcasts on my Apple Watch. I found rebuilding my I phone software stack was more painful than the benefit of listening to my podcasts from my watch.

I have had no battery issues with the 6, actually it’s is incredible! I could not make it through the day with the 5. I was in the 14 day return period. But even with new watch, I can’t get the podcast !!

same problem not being able to download most recent episode onto my watch. Then I turned both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on (on my iPhone) during charging and it starts to download. I will try in the next few days when there’s new feeds and report. Hope it can work for someone at least

I have a cellular apple watch with a data plan but I still have the same issues. The podcasts are uploaded randomly and sporadically. When I sync the new episodes it takes ages to download and even if the watch app says that all new episodes have been uploaded on the watch they are not there.

After many painful efforts, here is a workaround that works for me...

(1) Buy "Outcast for Watch" app (well worth $0.99 to solve this issue).

(2) When I want to add a specific podcast episode, I put my phone in Airplane mode + turn off Bluetooth. This forces the watch to download via my home wifi network (make sure watch is connected to wifi).

(3) Search and download a specific pod episode (Outcast is great for manually downloading/deleting specific episodes).

(4) It typically downloads super quick (< 1 minute).

This is my routine to get podcasts on my watch, so I can play them on runs without my iPhone.

Hope it helps!

I'd like to add one note to this: I have two flavors of the same WiFi network in my house: 2.4G and 5G bands. I run my phone on the 5G band by default because it's got better bandwidth and range. Unfortunately, my Series 5 watch is only 2.4G. The only way I can get Outcast to download directly to the watch via WiFi is to first switch my phone to the 2.4G band and then sync Outcast and the watch. If this is also true for you then beware: if your phone is set to autoselect to your 5G band, it will disconnect an Outcast sync as soon as it autoselects back to 5G (example, phone goes into lock/password protect mode). FWIW.

Good to know. I will try turning off the option to “Automatically Add” recent music in the Apple Watch app. Hopefully it improves the syncing of podcasts overnight. I’ve found that often some but not all of the selected podcasts will synch, which is really puzzling.

I’ve also noticed that the handoff between my Apple Watch, iPhone, and Airbuds can be somewhat shaky. Maybe we’re hitting the limitations of Bluetooth integration amongst multiple Apple products.

neither podcasts or music appear on my iphone apple watch app under the my watch tab. i was able to open it once and select podcast episodes to sync from my phone to my watch but the podcast app is not appearing for me to select and open on my iphone watch app anymore

I finally decided to cancel my cellular service on this useless watch. I've donated over $100 to Verizon in monthly payments in exchange for nothing because apparently "Apple Watch S5 with Cellular" means you can stream 10 seconds of a song/podcast at a time before it stops streaming. Very useful service!

The most frustrating part of this entire experience was how the people at Apple were completely useless. I also pay for Apple Care for some reason beyond my understanding. I had two "Senior Advisors" (Mike and Chris) who both pretended to try to help me over the course of 6 months. Both assured me that they would not rest until my issue was solved. Unfortunately I think both must have passed away because each abruptly and inexplicably cut off all communication with me and no other Apple employees ever responded to my several follow-ups.

RIP Mike and Chris.

Alright, well everybody here has suggested all good and useful tips but I think the real issue is what I just learned from an Apple Support technician: While the Apple Watch may have 32gb of storage (mine does, but yours may have more or less) only 8gb of storage is allocated for media... Meaning if the media in your Podcasts, Apple Music, and Audio Books app reaches 8GB (or whatever fraction of the total space) is reached, everything stops syncing.

This isn't really a solution, but more an acknowledgment of a glaring problem: I'm only able to utilize 1/4 of the total storage space on my Apple Watch for mobile media consumption...

Aside from this, the Overcast app has been my solution in the meantime.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251269050?answerId=252902833022#252902833022

Doesn’t that help ?

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/outcast-for-watch/id1326693810

Just in case you’re interested. It recommends turning off Bluetooth and turning on airplane mode to download faster.