WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

Many of us are dealing with the annoying tendency for our Apple Watches to start playing music on our phones instead of our headphones/earbuds as we are walking out the door for a workout. 

Then, we waste 10 minutes going through hoops to get the watch to play through our headphones, including disconnecting and reconnecting our headphones via Bluetooth, and powering off our phones. 

Both of these should be unnecessary, and I seem to have to do them every few weeks or months at inconvenient times. Frustrating.

Has anyone found a way to stop the watch from playing through the phone?

Literally the iPod shuffle could do what we’re expecting. Those were $70 - a Series 9 Watch is closer to $700 and can’t PLAY MUSIC.

HOLY MOLY.

Hi. To me this seems like a bug. When operating Apple Music through the watch, the watch always defaults to AirPlay to the iPhone instead of to the Bluetooth headphones that the watch is connected to. That’s not necessarily a bug, but what seems like a bug to me if that after I switch from AirPlay with the iPhone to my Bluetooth headphones, if I then do anything at all in Music such as changing a song or choosing a new playlist, it goes back to AirPlay on the iPhone, and I was again have to switch to the Bluetooth headphones.

This doesn’t work well enough. A) you have to go through the hoops to get be controlling the music on the watch, or you’ll be playing it from your phone (assuming it’s in range). And, B) as soon as you pause or come back into range of the phone after being away from it (like while you’re running), it goes back to the phone.

Cly they have ignored our requests …. Moreover for me, after I power down the phone the watch will only play through right earbud….ive been a loyal Apple user since 80’s…., this is by far the most disappointing and head scratching situation I have ever seen

Indeed, I often take a walk without my phone but then it becomes almost impossible to force using my watch playlist. The main issue is that you cannot in any case distinguish what’s on the iPhone from what’s on your watch. Even though you select « Downloaded » it keeps feeding from the main source.

The Apple watch should have a manual toggle iPhone>Watch. Choose the source to force the transfer, do not take that decision for me please, let me free!

Hi hockeybrian,

Instead of playing music from your iPhone and using AirPlay to send it to your Apple Watch, you can try to start the music directly from your Apple Watch. You can also add a widget for the Music app in Smart Stacks. Lastly you can have a playlist start when starting a work out. Checkout these resources and YouTube videos from Apple Support for more information:

• Play music on Apple Watch
• Use the Smart Stack to show timely widgets on Apple Watch
• How to use the Smart Stack on Apple Watch 
• How to start a workout playlist on your Apple Watch

Hope this helps.

Take care.

Switched to Spotify for music downloads 2 clicks and I can start my run.

I’m also having the exact same problem and thought I was going mad

No no, we’re right here with you buddy. We’re all being punished for not being patient enough for the NEXT SUPER AWESOME FEATURE OF WATCH OS 23! DEVICE CONTINUITY ON APPLE MUSIC!

….

For me, with WatchOS 10, what I find annoying is the fact that my watch does not remember the last song I played. I have one playlist of some 1200 songs that I use when I work out, and it is sorted by song title (I find it is a good way of not having multiple songs from the same artist/album play in a row). So by the time I have finished my playlist, it takes 2 months of workout. Now, with WatchOS 10, it goes back to the beginning of my playlist at each workout; in fact, when I hit the music app, it goes to "listen now", then I have to go back, hit library, hit downloaded, hit playlist, hit next to have all the songs, try to remember the last song played, scroll down, and then start listening to my music. I tried to unpair and pair again my watch (3 times), but it changed nothing. I even erased all my music on my iphone, unpaired my watch, paired it, downloaded my playlist to my iphone, added my playlist to my watch, and nothing changed. I called support and they have no clue why it does that.

I could use the shuffle option to listen to my playlist, but I don't find it works well. Some songs will repeat themselves more than others; if "shuffle" would at least go through my whole playlist at random before starting over, that would do what I want.

I don't subscribe to Apple Music, I have the impression that Apple wants to make it very cumbersome to listen to music if you don't subscribe...and unfortunately, there is no other app that I could use to replace the standard music app.

Anyone has that problem and found a solution?

This has to be the absolute worst implementation of Apple Music they’ve ever come up with - just tried to stop the music playing on my headphones so I could talk to smne at the gym, having finally convinced it to play out of them, & instead it starts playing a completely different track on my iPhone. Bluetooth and wireless were DISABLED in order to get my watch to play on my headphones so how can it even ‘talk’ to my phone? Never mind the question of why on earth would I want to control something in my pocket from my wrist - why why why? Block 2 hands to do something I am easily do with one? I want to play directly to headphones so I can hear the fitness tracker updates while running so why would it default back to the phone. So incredibly stupid

same problem. It’s gotten so much worse. I have to give myself more time before I run or workout because I know that I’m gonna have to go through 10 minutes of trying to configure my watch and my headphones. It will drive you nuts over time. Having to select play every time a song ends becomes annoying. Definitely switching to a garmin.

I have the same problem as stated above. You'd think that Apple has runners as part of their staff to test this functionality before it's released to the general public. Much to be desired from what's supposed to be quality ( and expensive) products. This just started happening to me, but I'm new to the apple watch. It appears to be going on for a while.