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hockeybrian Author

Level 1

60 points

WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

I (presumably like many others) have always used my watch to listen to music and track my runs.

WatchOS has progressively gotten worse in being easy and obvious to play music from the watch, if you try to start it while it is in range of your phone. It defaults to try and start music by controlling the phone. I got used to it but it was always annoying.

Now with WatchOS10 it makes it REALLY unintuitive and cumbersome.

Here are the steps I have to do to start my music. The music.app is a complication on my main watch face specifically so I can easily start music before a run. (This assumes that I am in range of my phone when I want to start the music which I always am at the beginning of my run and have played music on my phone since the last time I played it on my watch, which will always be the case)

Hit music
Hit the 3 little dots in the upper right
Hit airplay
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the device list (of which I have many because this is showing every airplay destination my phone currently sees)
Hit "Control other speakers & TVs"
Hit Apple watch
Hit play

That's really unintuitive and a crazy amount of steps and to do every time I want to go for a run.

Am I missing something?

They seemed to have completely overlooking people using their watch this way despite all the previous ads for working out/running while listening to music.

Posted on Sep 29, 2023 3:52 PM

Top-ranking reply

newsdude

Level 1

58 points

Posted on Oct 12, 2023 3:03 PM

Not rare. It's just really difficult for a community of people dealing with crappy new watch functionality to come together quickly. I'm having the EXACT same problem on my Apple Watch. If I ever needed an excuse to not go for a run now, it's my Apple Watch and the ten minutes I spend before every run battling its desire to play music on my iPhone (BTW, out of all the features on my Apple Watch, the thing I least need to do is use it to control the music on the phone that's literally in my other hand). And there's no easy nor obvious way to switch it back to my BT earphones (which are already paired. Have already been unpaired and re-paired. So don't send me that link, please.).

In addition to borking the watch so it plays to the phone by default, the other thing that's happened is that playlists no longer continue where I left off the day before. I don't know about the other runners here, but I keep five or six really big playlists loaded to my watch at all times. When I start a run, I start up a playlist and hit "shuffle" (which is also now buried multiple taps into the system). When I finish the run, I hit "pause." When I run the next day, my watch used to remember right where I left off, and would keep playing. Now I've got to start the playlist over every single time, leading to lots of repeats of songs.

I don't know that anyone's suggesting a bug (though it could be). I'm sure some developer thought this new way was oodles better than the old way -- the way we've been doing it for years and years and years. It is not better. It's dumb.

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121 replies

Oct 5, 2023 6:33 AM in response to hockeybrian

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

Dec 6, 2023 11:12 AM in response to James Garrett

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

BobHarris

Level 9

55,253 points

Jan 11, 2024 7:59 PM in response to 2197dave

2197dave wrote:

I hope those at Apple Are Paying Attention This update has me wanting to drop Apple Watch and Apple Music.

No. This is a user-to-user technical support forum. Apple Does not read these forums for user feedback.

But you can send feedback to

Feedback - Watch - Apple

If enough users send constructive feedback, it has a better chance of reaching a decision maker.

CMO-B

Level 1

12 points

Feb 1, 2024 2:35 PM in response to newsdude

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.

Oct 11, 2023 8:14 AM in response to hockeybrian

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

Nov 15, 2023 7:32 AM in response to hockeybrian

Thanks for sharing @hockeybrian

I have the same experience - more or less - or even worse as the watch doesn't play music at all.

I also use my watch primarily to stream music (and often radio) during my running sessions.

I use a 15 Pro with my Watch Ultra

For some reasons, this no longer works under Watch OS 10

In short:

I cannot play music on the Watch
Most of the songs in my playlists are grayed out and can't be played
"Radio" doesn't work either. I see a few Apple pre-selected radio stations but I don't see my own favorite radio selection anymore and anyway, the radio stations doesn't play when I select it...
When I occasionally manage to launch a track, I get a message telling me that I need an Apple music account and that I can register on my phone... even though the watch is paired with my iPhone and my Apple Music account is already connecte to both my iPhone and my watch....

daanjj

Level 1

12 points

Dec 3, 2023 3:41 PM in response to daanjj

I did this today and it worked perfectly fine to play music downloaded to my Apple Watch Ultra on my AirPods Pro:

kill the music app on the iPhone by swiping it way in the app switcher
disable Bluetooth on the iphone
put the AirPods in your ears
open the music app on the watch
navigate to top, then library /downloads and select your favorite playlist
start the first song of the playlist on your watch and when asked, select the AirPods as output device

I hope this helps until Apple has the issue addressed