Syncing my owned music to Apple Watch Ultra 2

I have a small library of ALACs (.m4a) files that I have ripped from CDs using the Music app on Mac. I've synced these albums to my iPhone 12 using Finder. Following the direction from Apple to upload music to my Apple Watch Ultra 2 leaves me with the error:

Download Failed

"Playlist" will resume downloading the next time your Apple Watch is

charging and connected to the

internet.

The progress bar/circle turns into a cloud icon and that's as far as I can get.

My watch and phone are on the charger, connected to the same wifi, with bluetooth on. I've tried restarting both devices multiple times with the same result.

Using the same files, but on my wife's Mac, iPhone 16 Pro, and Apple Watch Series 8, the transfer works without any issues.

Apple Watch Ultra 2, watchOS 26

Posted on Oct 26, 2025 12:43 PM

Top-ranking reply

IAmCroot Author

Level 1

6 points

Posted on Oct 26, 2025 12:49 PM

It turns out the Watch App will convert ALACs to AAC, which may be why this process is hanging on my relatively old iPhone 12?

By selecting "Convert higher bit rate songs to: 256 kbps AAC" in Finder before syncing my music to my iPhone, I was able to get them synced to my Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Which is great, but now I don't have lossless music files on my phone.

I hope this is helpful to the next Apple Watch user. I've seen a lot of unresolved posts on here with the same problems.

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Syncing my owned music to Apple Watch Ultra 2

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