How to stop music from playing from iPhone instead of Apple Watch

I’m having the same problem. Super annoying. I have to power my phone completely off to play music downloaded to my watch and to earbuds paired with the watch. Otherwise when I try to play music on my watch it plays it on the phone speakers. Weirdest feature. I’ve tried turning off auto launch and it still doesn’t work. Any answer for how to turn off this feature?

This issue is one of the biggest downfalls of the "it just works" Apple ecosystem. I just love when I am outside and only have my watch with me playing music on my AirPods and I happen to walk around the house nearby to where the phone is at and my watch automagically switches over to my iPhone and then I continue to walk out of range and my music stops playing.

This will be my last watch purchase. I'm getting close to abandoning the entire Apple ecosystem. The quality is on a serious downslope over the past few years.

Woah I literally just posted about this and then found this post. This is a super weird ‘feature’. I really don’t get it. Very annoying when I leave my phone in another room and want music playing from Watch to earphones, not Watch to phone speakers in other room.

Since specialists haven’t responded since Oct, I’m assuming there isn’t a solution. It’s an annoying glitch.

My problem is similar but not the same.

I will give my Watch commands and it randomly thinks I want music to play on my phone.

here I am in the middle of some thing and wanting my watch to help me, and I have to stop everything, locate my phone and turn off the music that’s playing on my phone.

it happens enough to be very annoying.

Especially for those of us who hardly even use the Music app at all. We bunch i’ve already been frustrated because you cannot remove the music app from your control panel on the iPhone!

They should make it so that the watch and the phone do not communicate when it comes to music. Because usually people prefer one or the other method in general, and if they switch back-and-forth there can be a generated question-when music is changed, “would you like us to update this choice on other devices?”

that would be the simplest solution to an annoying problem.

I think I have it solved: you need to begin by going to the “Now Playing“ app on your watch, and select the headphones you want to play to (there you may have to add a device), and once you have done that you can go to the Music app on your Apple Watch and it will play music from your Apple Watch to those headphones.

I know how to use AirPlay. The headphones don’t show up as an option to stream to when I select the AirPlay icon. Only my phone and the home pods. And yes, I’ve checked that the earbuds are connected in the Bluetooth setttings. I have to turn my phone completely off for the music downloaded on my watch to play to the Bluetooth earbuds connected to my watch.

After doing extensive playing around with this I can say the problem seems to be the worst with AirPods and the auto-switch feature that is built in. The "default" way the phone, watch and AirPods want to work is for the watch to control the phone and play the audio from there to the AirPods. That saves battery life on the watch. The problem is when you leave your phone behind and the AirPods don't properly switch to the watch. Once that happens, and the watch is still able to talk to the phone, it will go into the state of simply controlling the phone and therefore playing the audio on the device since the phone can't talk to the AirPods (out of range).

That would all be fine, except you can't FORCE THE WATCH TO PLAY TO THE AIRPODS.

I gave up this afternoon and switched over to regular bluetooth headphones and connected the watch to them. Worked perfectly for hours.

[Edited by Moderator]

The only way I figured how to avoid streaming from my phone, which is really a problem at the gym when I leave my iPhone in a locker and when I'm at the far end of the gym the music starts cutting off ( I use Beats Pro ear buds), I just turn off my phone when I leave it in the locker. Leaving my phone in my car out in the parking lot would serve the same purpose, except I can't leave it in the car during the summer when it's over 100, which most of the summer in Texas. Bit of a pain, but never figured another fix.

Understood Cfmorales12,

It sounds like Now Playing may be getting involved here, which is explained at Use Now Playing on Apple Watch - Apple Support. It lets your watch function as an audio remote for your iPhone. Could you double check that the Now Playing app isn't open on your Apple Watch?

Thanks!

Here's a little easier solution that I discovered. Instead of turning off my phone, I just turn off Bluetooth. My Beats work flawlessly then streaming directly from my watch.

Another really weird problem I found if I try to stream directly from my phone at the gym. If I'm laying down doing stretches or crunches and my hands are behind my head with the watch face pointing down, the music cuts off. That never happens if I'm streaming music directly from my watch. Weird

Hello Cfmorales12,

We'd be happy to help. You may need to change which device you're playing music on. You can do that by following the steps here: Play music on Apple Watch - Apple Support

Thanks.