WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

Hello again,

Since I was running out of solutions I have contacted apple to see if they were aware of this problem. Seems unknown for them. But… unlinking and reconnecting my Apple Watch with my phone seems to solve te problem. I Have tried quickly and now I can use pause again without resending play to the iPhone speaker! I’ll test it out in depth but it seems te solution. 

Realy sorry to complain directly about product and brand protection…!! 

Stays a problem: Now Playing can’t be added as a compilation. But ok, no dealbreaker.

Jan

To add a little more to what happens with me:

I put my Jabras in my ears, they say "Connected", I open Music on my Ultra2 and select a playlist to listen to. A RANDOM song starts playing on my IPhone 15 Pro Max, not even the same playlist. I Power OFF my phone, then select music again on the watch, select the playlist I want and now it plays the expected song.

The watch always reverts to controlling music on the phone rather than simply playing through my earbuds (which always stay connected by the way). I have Auto Launch turned off on my watch and my phone.

This is a very annoying software problem with WatchOS. Playing music on watch is not at all intuitive.

Not sure how to let Apple know but hopefully someone will read these discussions.

You’re not alone and I understand everything you’re typing. I usually turn my phone all the way off. Start the music on my watch. Turn the phone back on, which usually hijakcks the AirPods. Then I have to tell the watch to use the AirPods (again), restart the song, and it works

Yes i think moving over to using Spotify using App on the Apple Watch is the quickest fix for this issue….. and avoiding minutes of frustration before a run trying to get the Apple Music App to work on your wireless headphones.

Apple usability bugs drive customers over to Spotify App…. sounds like an urgent fix is needed.

This has frustrated me ever since WatchOS 10. And has not yet been resolved the latest WatchOS version (10.1.1). I use an Apple Watch Ultra with Apple AirPods Pro 2 on my runs. And I always play Music from a playlist downloaded to my watch.

Typically, I disable Bluetooth on my iPhone (15 Pro, always latest iOS version) before I start my run (I had a bad experience with an incoming phone call a couple of months ago in WatchOS 9, when my phone connected to my AirPods during the run and then refused to reconnect to my Watch after answering that call). I then started a downloaded playlist on my watch. This worked like a charm.

Until WatchOS 10. As others have documented here, the Music app on the watch always tries to start the Music on the iPhone. Even if Bluetooth is disabled on the iPhone and the AirPods are already connected to the watch. I noticed that magically Bluetooth on the iPhone regularly was switched back on again (!). Even when disabling both Wifi and Bluetooth on the iPhone, the watch continues to activate the Music app (!).

I have become 'better' in listening music from my Watch, but it always takes me around 10 minutes before I have it properly fixed. Disabling Bluetooth on the iPhone first. And a lot of cursing. Today, it took me a reboot of my watch before my AirPods finally connected to the Music app on the Watch.

So yes, I recognize all the issues mentioned in this thread. It has nothing to do with non-Apple headphones or EarPods as I experience all these issues with my AirPods Pro 2. It is due time for Apple to take this serious and fix this, as indeed WatchOS 10 is far inferior to earlier WatchOS versions.

(And it is annoying indeed that you always need to re-select the Downloaded section on the watch, then select the playlist, then activate Shuffle instead of before when it just resumed where you left it. Apple, this is a no-brainer to fix!)

Have you tried turning off Auto-Launch Audio Apps?

Watch: Settings, General, Auto-Launch.

iPhone (Watch app): My Watch, General, Auto-Launch.

SAME THING! I usually have to turn my phone off completely to get the watch disconnected from the phone then go through the process of getting it to play music.

hockeybrian wrote:

I don’t think you can say it isn’t a bug just because it supposedly isn’t “known” yet.

Well, I know that not everyone has this issue and I also know that there has been very little discussion of this on these forums. Which usually means, if it is a bug, it's one shared by very, very few people. Lastly, most things that go wrong are not system software bugs.

But, I recommend you report it to Apple nonetheless:

Product Feedback - Apple

Hello,

Well, that should do the job to I think… The unlink is:

• open the Apple Watch app
• on top you should see ‘All Apple Watches’ - Hit this
• You get your Watch(es) displayed
• Hit the ‘i’ of the watch you want to unlink, you go to another screen
• Underneath the next page you see on the bottom a red text stating something like ‘release Apple watch’
• Continue and reconnect it again after a reboot of the phone and the watch

Hope this help.

Jan

After all… The bug came back… So sad.

I Have done 2 workouts without any problem, but listening music during my yesterday’s evening workout, with brand new Apple AirPods Pro 2(!) was very difficult again. Play during workout: default on iPhones. After a lot of manual manipulations have set it on Apple Watch, so far so good. The first crossroad - pause music for safety reasons - play and yes, plays music again on iPhone. What a disaster. I’ll contact Apple support again. Slightly glad the problem appears also on their branded Bluetooth devices, it should definitely be a bug…

Perhaps what's more irritating (or rather, what's compounding this issue) is that watchOS 10 now closes apps in the background that aren't being used. That's generally not a problem, unless it's Music.

This means that if I pause music from the app, then turn my wrist down and go do something else, even just for a few minutes, the Music app can (and often does) close, which means I lose where I was at in the song and album/playlist, and have to do the above mentioned steps all over again.

It is seriously infuriating every time this happens.

Thank you for sharing this because what you have described is completely true and I have the same issue.

On OS9, the music app on the watch only handled the music stored natively on the device or on the Apple Music subscription using the watch as the source.

In OS10, it seems apple merged the music functionality across the watch and iPhone and now and even when I pair my AirPods or my Pulse 4 to my watch, and select a playlist on the watch, it starts playing music using my phone as the source and not my watch. This is incredibly frustrating because no matter how many times I download the playlists I want, Music on my phone just ALWAYS has to keep undownloading some songs even though optimize storage is turned off in setting. This doesn’t happen on my watch, and it’s very annoying to have to pull out my phone to skip songs while I’m snowboarding just because my phone uninstalled a bunch of songs and now the music app is stuck trying to play it rather than just skipping to the next song.

I do want to add it is genuinely heartbreaking to watch Apples software and ecosystem regress every year. What is Craig doing? How could he allow the music experience to become so shabby?

Update: I have submitted a bug report (for the watch insisting to connect with the iPhone iso using the watch music app) and a usability complaint (for the not-resume ‘feature’ of the watchOS music app) to Apple. Please do the same!

Maelock, not sure if it would help with your problem, but I have the airpod pro and when I put them on, if you go to your phone, settings, a line will appear with listing your airpod, click on it, scroll down to "connect to this iphone", click there and you have two options "automatically" or "when last connected to this iphone". If the chosen option is automatically, it would explain why your earbuds connect to you phone as a first option. Choose the other option "when last connected to this iphone". By default (or sometimes after an update), it will revert to "automatically", which means that as soon as you put your earbuds on, it connects to your phone. It took me some time to figure that out, in fact I found it by chance. It should resolve your problem. Since you have other earbuds than the airpods, not sure if you have this option.

The music app with WatchOS10 is a real screw up as far as I am concerned. I haven't figure out how to put the "remember the last song played" on my watch. I have a 1200 song playlist, and it starts back at the beginning after each workout, and the "shuffle" option is a waste of time (out of 1200 songs, it played the same song twice after 3 workout). Before, I could go 2 months before reaching the last song.

It seems the Apple has lost track of why people buy a watch, for me, it is an add-on to my iphone...I do not want a mini-iphone on my wrist...

James Garrett wrote:

Apple hopefully you are listening to the above but I agree, the way to control downloaded music and playing back music on the watch with the phone in range is absolutely terrible. Fix it please

No, Apple is not reading here for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple