WatchOS 10 makes playing music on watch so much more tedious

Newsdude, on the watch, go to setting, general, handoff and turn « enable handoff «  off. It did it for me, but like you, I still have the problem with the app not remembering the last song played, and the shuffle option is real crap, I have 1200 songs on my Watch and sometimes the same song will play twice the same week

I have the full setup: iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and Airplay receivers, Macs, Apple TV, Apple music. I've progressively chosen to go all-in on Apple solutions regarding music, hoping for the state of the art user experience. Sadly it's not the case.

Each technology is quite good in itself, AirPods are fantastic, Airplay is perfectly in sync, but the underlying audio routing part used is flawed when used with all these devices.

- It's very complex. It's difficult to understand, difficult to explain to others, and requires several manipulations to get the right player connected to the right destination(s). So far, I'm the only one in my family really able to get the "Control an other device" thing, which itself have different behavior when controling AirPods and Airplay 2 devices

- Apple Watch is really struggling to take the music player position + takeover the AirPods connection. Every single time, you need to manually request to play from Apple Watch (and not iPhone) and confirm AirPods connection (often several times). I already left the house with only my Apple Watch and AirPods and was totally unable to listen music until I get back home and can reconnect everything to my iPhone.

These two devices are technically considered "iPhone accessories" and require an iPhone to setup at first. But this approach seems to create hard limitations on the promised seamless experience.

- If you try even more complex scenarios, everything crumble...

Siri on Apple Watch is unable to select the device to operate and will always control your iPhone (if reachable) even if music is already playing from Apple Watch or HomePod.

Try to listen downloaded music with limited network, these device can't, you'll need to force airplane mode to properly listen offline music.

Try Siri from Apple Watch when wearing AirPods, it will always use AirPods microphone as input and add a bad delay despite way better microphone and a snappy experience on the Apple Watch itself.

I did not even mention Airplay issues but there's literally tons of work on all of this to get the polished experience we're now expecting from Apple

That's not the only persistent issue with WatchOS. The schedule widget is now DOA and has been since IOS 17.0 The latest set of OS updates did nothing to remedy any of these issues and in fact lessened the utility, ease of use, and Apple's 'it just works' ethos. This applies to WatchOS, IOS, and MacOS. It is a shame as the hardware is well engineered. I have finally given up and am waiting for my current products to age out so I can purge myself of the entire ecosystem. Just can't afford nor have enough time in the day to work through all the OS issues and the dramatic downturn in productivity and usability that has come with the latest round. Hence, the only reliable fix I have found to any and all of these persistent OS issues is to move to alternative hardware and ecosystem after over 30 years with Apple.

This issue had me ready to throw my watch into the ocean and did get me to start transitioning back to Spotify on Watch (after making the opposite transition years ago when Spotify wasn't supported).

Now, maybe this is just me and I got lucky, but the 10.3 update has completely fixed the issue. Well, at least 95%. When I tap on a playlist or album, it does not start playing on my phone. Hallelujah. It doesn't automatically start playing on my APP2 or other connected BT earbuds the way that it used to do before the 10 update, but it's only one screen - basically asks to confirm that I want to play on the APP2, and the other options (phone, etc.) are well down the screen so it's easy to select.

You described every problem I have with this new watch update. It is HORRIBLE and has lead to a lot of frustration.

I use my apple watch to play music on a bluetooth speaker in my classroom. I use a playlist with specific songs I need to play at a moments notice to help the students transition.

Before the update, I just had to turn on the bluetooth speaker, tap the music icon on my watch face, the playlist would appear that I left off at, and tap the song I wanted. The song would seamlessly play on the bluetooth speaker in a few seconds.

Now, I turn on the bluetooth speaker, click on the music icon, it always takes me to the "Listen Now" screen with songs I haven't played recently and don't want to play. To get to my playlist, I have to click multiple times, and when I press play, it auto plays on my iphone. So I click the three dots to pair with another device and every device shows up except my bluetooth speaker that is inches away. I go into my watch settings and connect the bluetooth speaker. I go back to my music app on the watch and try again. Still the music plays to my iphone. I now have to go into my iphone and tell it to play through the bluetooth speaker.

This has made my transitions so much longer!! The kids are staring at my while I'm fiddling with my watch and phone. It does this every time, multiple times a day. I already tried "forget this device" and unpaired and repaired the bluetooth speaker to both my watch and phone. If there is a solution out there, I need it.

This has been driving me nuts. I just found this thread. Has anyone found the fix other than going to Spotify or only using AirPods ? Also it annoys me that it doesn’t resume in the last playlist played. Now I only listen to the first 50-60 minutes of each playlist since that’s how long I usually workout.

The quickest way I found to force prevailing the watch was to put my phone in airplane mode. Otherwise, whether Bluetooth or Airplay take over my attempts.

I asked Apple to add a simple toggle selector on the watch in the music App to determine which source you want to feed your Airpods (or else).

Have you tried turning off Auto-Launch Audio Apps?

Watch: Settings, General, Auto-Launch.

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

Sadly it doesn't seem like 10.1 will include a fix for this.

I actually got it to work. It’s not easy but I figured it out. The key is the upper right corner of the music app on the watch. Click on it and select Watch and it seemed to work.

This does not help. Thank you.

Your explanation has just helped me listen to music on my watch. I wasted 15 minutes trying to get it to work before my run…. so unintuitive and annoying!!!