Now playing on Apple Watch not working after update

I found that turning my watch off and then back on seems to fix the issue. I was having to do this weekly, but the past month has been better, not sure why. Anyhow, give that a shot folks, hopefully it will get your Now Playing to start working again.

Noticed the same on my Series 8 after updating to 9.4 recently. It seems to work again for a short period of time after rebooting the watch before it goes back to this strange behaviour. According to people on reddit a full re-pairing process also doesn't fix this for good. Seems to be a bug with watchOS 9.4. Hopefully Apple will fix this annoying bug with the next update (9.4.1 or 9.5)

I had same issue. I unpaired watch (ultra) and repaired and audio apps are now automatically launching on Watch

Nope. My watch is Series 9 and has the same problem

It seems like a lot of 2s are having this issue now. Up until this, my only complaint was that I can no longer get through the day on a charge. Maybe I will have to retire this old beauty and upgrade😢😢

Seems like my watch can't find the watch to play it in Now Playing. the only thing showing up is the AirPod and it does not control them. I done everything mention and tired to resetting and having to rebuild wallet, etc...this is a royal pain in the ***...

From time to time, I still have this issue. Restarting the watch solves it for me, but only temporarily. I have found a better and faster solution: opening the recent apps on the watch (double crown click) and then closing the "Now Playing" app by swiping it to the left. After that, if I reopen the app, it works for some time, and a watch restart is not needed.

Same issue over here 👋🏽 At this point I’d be happy with being able to see what’s playing, even if I can’t to control the music from my watch. I thought it had something to do with the fact I’ve got a first generation Apple Watch but as so many others have reported issues it can’t be that.

One day about a month ago “Now Playing” just stopped. I upgraded my iPhone to a newer model and there were no issues. Then after a couple of weeks “Now Playing” stopped working as intended. It doesn’t auto launch anymore either.

I’ve tried all the troubleshooting suggestions, including resetting my Apple Watch and reassigning it to my iPhone but to no joy.

Any support would be greatly appreciated.

As I am having the same problem, I am keen to try what you suggest. Unfortunately I don't understand what you write:

What do you mean by "unpair watch from the app?". Which app? Do you mean remove it from the watch?

I don't understand what you mean by "restore from backup". I confess to knowing nothing about watch backups.

It is r/applewatch. I‘ve seen people talking about the same thing over there the other day

I tried to re-pair it twice and restart it, but the problem happens again after a few days.

It looks like it happened since the 9.4 update, before that everything worked fine.

Resetting my watch and phone helped me