WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

newsdude - you said everything that I also wanted to say (especially running and playlists!). Since seeing your post and the associated replies, I have now 'filed' a comment with Apple feedback: Product Feedback - Apple

Maybe if enough of us go here and ask that they go back to the old way of working music on the Apple watch they will listen.

I've griped about this before, but the situation got taken to a whole new level last week. I went to go for a run, fired up my watch, jumped through the "control other devices," scroll through device, "play on other device," "play on Apple Watch" hoops, then paused the music until I could get out the door. In the time it took me to get to the back door, my watch decided that, no, it was going to play music on my phone, not on my watch. I went back to the phone, and there was the music playing. I put the phone in airplane mode, made sure BT and WiFi were turned off, then jumped through the play-on-watch hoops again. Music started. I paused the music. Got to the back porch and hit play. And there it was playing music on my phone again. The only way I could successfully play from my watch to my Shokz was to turn the phone off.

It's bad, but it's not normally this bad. And I will remain completely confused about why I have to click so **** many things to get to "play on Apple watch." When I click the little icon in the upper right corner, it sure seems like "Play on Apple Watch" should be the first thing in the list. They must be convinced that playing on other devices -- TVs, speakers, etc. -- are what people want to do, ignoring those of us who want to use it to run.

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one. Upgraded to AW9 from AW3 and this is incredibly annoying. I was already thinking of turning off my BT before starting to exercise, as I always leave my iPhone in the locker.

I use Airbuds and have the problem. It worked fine in June/july - the whole reason I bought the buds. It’s been a night ever since. I can not get music and workout alerts to play from my watch to my airbuds unless I shut the phone off.

You are amazing, thank you for posting this and letting me know that I'm not crazy!

I've had the exact same experience you're describing. I'd start my music from home on my watch with my phone nearby. When I'd start running and get away from my house and phone, the music would stop and I'd have to interrupt my run to start it again from my watch. This happened whether or not my playlist was downloaded on my watch or not. I'm using Powerbeats Pro for my running headphones.

This didn't happen prior to the WatchOS10 upgrade. I used your workaround this morning and am pleased to report that it worked for me. It's not a "pretty" solution, especially since prior to WatchOS10 it was pretty easy to choose where you want your music to play when starting it from your watch.

Thank you for posting this!

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.

It certainly sounds annoying. But, unfortunately, probably not a watchOS 10 problem. I say unfortunately because if it were a known bug in the OS, Apple could fix it. But, if it, as I suspect, it's a problem with your watch, updates aren't likely to help.

Have you tried the basics? Restart? Unpair and re-pair?

I'm dealing with the exact same scenario, except for me, it's when I'm in the car driving (as I use a Bluetooth FM transmitter).

On top of having to do the above mentioned steps, I have noticed that if I open the Music app after music is paused for a short while (I'm not sure what exactly causes this), it essentially restarts (like it's the first time I've opened it since I last booted the Watch) and goes right to Listen Now. So I have to hit the back arrow, then Library, then Downloaded, and then find the song I want to play. On watchOS 9 when I opened the Music app, it generally opened to the last album/playlist (or my entire list of downloaded music) from the get-go, unless I restarted my Watch for some reason.

This is an especially bad experience considering, well, I'm in the car, possibly driving, so having to do all of that just to have music downloaded from my Watch play in my car stereo does pose a bit of a safety risk, even if I'm stopped while doing so.

Something clearly isn't working as intended, unless you're saying Apple intentionally made what is reasonably a widely and frequently used app among the install base more difficult to use.

If the app just remembered what it was doing before without acting like it was just opened for the first time, that would probably satisfy most folks. It was sometimes buggy before, but now it's cumbersome as well.