WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

Hello,

I Have exactly the same problem since watch os 10!! Listening music in a workout, on a non apple Bluetooth headset you are lost in menu’s when you have paused the music. It will start playing again on the phone speakers but not true the headset. Not even possible to hit play in de dedicated music screen (swipe right in workout app) I Have the slight impression apple forces users to go buy EarPods to seamlessly work with watch/music/workout. How dare they!!

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.

I'm not what you would call a "runner", but for me, it's not even a week - it happens even over the span of a few minutes. I can be driving with my music (paired to my Watch as it's a BT-FM transmitter), then go into my local McDonald's or something (I do use its app to use my account code even when I'm in the store), then get back in my car and I have to pick my music again, starting from backing out of Listen Now. Again. It's like the app just randomly closes.

Hello,

Unfortunately, this is not 100% working for me if the Apple Music app is yet open on the iPhone. The earphones then switches easily to the iPhone once the pause function is used by the earphone buttons. Once I force close the iPhones Apple Music app it’s nearly working as expected, but still switches to iPhone from time to time when using the earphones buttons. If only using the Apple Watch ‘play now’ software controls it’s fine. Hooray! I Am still searching for a more consistent workaround where the earphone buttons can be used all the time.

What a sad change in WatchOS 10!

Hey Apple folks out there, please explain what’s the reason for implementing this silly setting!

I have exactly the same issue as hockeybrian. I've been using apple watch to work out for years. I recently upgraded to Apple Watch Ultra 2 and iPhone 15 and have had this incredibly annoying issue ever since. The watch defaults to wanting to play music from my iPhone - literally using my iPhones speakers instead of the PowerBeats Pro headphones I always use. When I try to go in and change air play source as hockybrian does, sometimes it will just spin and not connect to my headphones. It's at that point I just say the heck with it and leave the headphones at home. Is there an issue with using my old(er) Beats headphones with the new Apple hardware/software?

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....

Hello,

I am having the exact same problem, so the problem is definitely out there. Since IOS 10, playing music from my watch is a pain. I use it almost every day for working out, but each day I have start over and find my last song instead of it just starting where it left off the day before. Today I had my air pods in, went to my playlist, scrolled to the last song I’d played the day before and when I hit play it played the song from my phone which then transmitted to my air pods from the phone. I couldn’t get it to play music directly from my watch no matter what I did.

By the way IOS 10 for Apple Watch is the worst version by far. It’s unwieldy, awkward and generally sucks.

Yes, the issue is the same with AirPods.

Beside volume and FW I cannot use the controls on my Airpods at all.

It is even slightly more stable on my Shocks Bluetooth headphones, probably because the AirPods are in constant contact with all devices in range. This can be turned off on Shocks.

It is so sad Apple has implemented this horrible configuration.

I used to play music from my iphone using my watch by opening music app on the watch and going to “On the iPhone” section but after upgrading to WatchOS 10, it’s gone. Now my only option is to download music to my watch and play it but the problem is that my music library is larger than my watch’s storage. My first time seeing a company remove a useful and harmless feature just wow

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?

watchOS 10.2 seems to have made it worse in my experience.

I listened to downloaded music from my Watch with my AirPods at work today. No problems there. Then I get off work, and on my way out I pull out my phone (Watch music is still playing at this point), then putting it back in my pocket, deciding instead to reply to a message on Watch. After that I get to the car, and put my AirPods back in its case (so the Watch can connect to the transmitter when I turn the car on), then I turn the car on. I turn on the speaker and hit play on the transmitter....nothing happens.

So I return to the Music app on Watch, only to find that it's restarted entirely. Then I notice.....it's connected to the iPhone. Not the transmitter (at least for playing music). Even weirder, the song I was playing in Watch is now what wanted to play on iPhone. So I had to do the whole song and dance to change it back to the transmitter and have it running through my car stereo.

Why Apple has yet to fix this is beyond me. Even Zollotech on YouTube hasn't brought up the issue.

So frustrated about this. Considering the importance of running as use-case for Apple Watch, it’s almost unbelievable that they shipped it this way.

Until they fix it, here is the best work-around I’ve seen:

• Use the Listen Now option, as described in this guide. It’s totally unintuitive, but for whatever reason this will always play music on your Apple Watch.
• Music will now be playing from your Apple Watch. If you want to listen to something else you can browse to it and play it without having to go through the whole three-dots/airplay/bluetooth madness.

I have contacted Apple SEVERAL times regarding this issue. Here is the issue with me. I have ALL of the advanced technology devices, but by many standards I am technologically primitive. My wife, children, and even my granddaughter rib me continually. At any rate, my first Apple Watch was the series 3 and I used to be able to control my entire iPhone library with over 200 albums and 14k songs EASILY with the watch. I was fortunate to be able to utilize this function for well over 3 years. One day I updated both my iPhone and Watch and the control function was zapped. I tried EVERYTHING. I called Apple and I’ve emailed them. I have posted on the Apple Community several times. It would seem obvious that if we were capable of utilizing full control of our iTunes music on our iPhone with our Apple Watches before, it shouldn’t take much to reimplement this function. Apple has a way of appeasing many of its other customers/subscribers with various apps, but they seem to ignore those of us who enjoy music. This is extremely frustrating and disheartening as an owner of an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch.

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.