I recently updated my watch and ever since, the Now Playing app no longer seems to work for any of my music apps on my iphone 11. I’ve tried resetting my watch, and when I tested it out by playing Spotify on my phone, it seemed to work at first. But hours later Now Playing has stopped popping up - I’ve tried with Apple Music and Spotify. Help!
Similar to others, my Series 3 (iOS 7.6.1) watch is failing (intermittently) to control audio from my iPhone (iOS 14.7.1). Yesterday I unpaired and paired the watch, and it worked for a short time, but when I tried this morning it no longer worked. (Symptom: the Now Playing app didn’t “see” the iPhone, though other apps like Activity did.)
Today I restarted (not re-paired) both iPhone and Watch, it took 3-4 minutes for the Watch to find the phone but now seems to be controlling both the Apple Music App and Pandora on the iPhone as expected.
Will try again in a few hours. 🙄
I have the same problem, and after I unpaired and paired again the Apple Watch and my iPhone 12, it worked the first time I tried. The next day it stopped working again, so it clearly is not a Settings problem, and it should be resolved with a software update.
Before, when it worked, it was very useful to control volume, and manage times, specially for podcasts. I got used to it when listening while driving or biking, now is useless.
The first (and simplest) thing to try if something isn’t working right is to restart your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone. If necessary (device not responding), try a forced restart. Both methods can be found here:
How to restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support
Restart your iPhone - Apple Support
If that doesn't help, the next steps would be to unpair and pair your watch again and restore from the backup just created. This should result in no loss of data. It deletes all temp and corrupted files and re-indexes the file system.
Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support
Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support
Heya. iPhone XR (64GB) and Apple Watch SE (44mm) user here. I have the same issue as you.
When I’m listening to a tune on Musica, or any app, really, it works normally.
That’s until my phone and watch decide to be fools and say “Not playing”, with the Now Playing widget on my phone’s lock screen vanishing when I switch from Loop to Shuffle, or to typical Single.
If there’s a fix for that, there should be a fix for you.
Also, it happens when I switch between Loop, Single and Shuffle. Super annoying!
Edit: Just noticed you can edit. Oof.
Now Playing on my Apple Watch no longer works
