Is there anything I can do to speed up the sync with my brand new, shiny Apple Watch? So far, 3 of 121 songs have synced and it has been over 7 minutes. Feels like we're back in the 90s with dial up!
Apple Watch Series 3, watchOS 4.2
Okay, I had this same; if not very similar problem; myself. I tried turning off my watch and restarting, I tried turning off my iPhone and restarting. And I tried some other things and none worked until I did what I am about to describe below, step by step which seemed to heal me. First off, I have an iPhone 6 Plus and I have two apple watches: a series 2 and a series 3 with cellular. I had the song updating issue on both of my watches, not just one of them. And, to be clear, my updating issue was that the songs took a very long time to update to my watch(es). When there was any progress at all, it would be about one song per 20 minutes or more. It finally got to the point that no songs would even update to the watch: I would instead see a message like: updating song 120 of 175. And that message would be there for hours and hours with no progress. If this is your issue, please see what I did below. I could guess as to what the root cause was, but I won't do that. I will just tell you what I did that seemed to heal me. I hope it heals you too. I don't know if every single step is critical but it wouldn't hurt to do everything I did (because I didn't do anything too crazy like resetting the watch or removing a watch setup from the phone). And while I have two watches, I did the following steps, one by one for each watch...so, for my two watches, I went through the steps twice (once per watch).
Here, then, is what I did:
1. On your iPhone, turn Bluetooth OFF. (Bluetooth is how you phone and your watch communicate.)
2. On your iPhone, go to the WIFI settings. Then "FORGET" the WIFI network that you are currently connected.
3. At this point your Bluetooth should still be OFF. And NO network should be connected to your phone. If you have WIFI networks automatically connecting to your iPhone (shame on you) you need to stop those. The objective is to NOT turn WIFI off but to keep WIFI on but have NO WIFI networks connected to your phone.
4. Again, don't continue until you have ensured no WIFI networks are connected to your phone while your WIFI toggle is still on (green)
5. Now, and this may seem odd but please do it, reconnect to WIFI. Don't connect to a 5GHz network--this is not compatible with apple watches. My wireless router transmits both a non 5GHz signal and a 5Ghz signal, yours may as well. It is important that you connect to the non 5GHz WIFI signal (presumably the 2.4GHz signal).
6. At this point, on you iPhone: Bluetooth is STILL off (Step 1 of this instruction sheet) and WIFI is connected to the WIFI network you just selected.
7. Now check out your watch (these steps work best if the watch is on your wrist and you have unlocked it). Verify your watch is NOT connected to your iPhone. You should see a red X at the top of the watch or NOT CONNECTED in red font or something similar to indicate that your watch is not connected to you iPhone.
8. On the iPhone, turn Bluetooth ON. (This will re-establish an iPhone to watch connection.)
9. Check out you watch. You should now be connected to your iPhone. Your red X or disconnected message should be gone.
10. On the iPhone, now, turn Bluetooth OFF and turn WIFI OFF. That's right, turn them BOTH OFF on your iPhone.
11. Now, it may take several seconds, but your watch is going to do something pretty cool and perhaps you may have never realized it could do such a thing: it is going to be connected to your WIFI directly without leveraging your phone. But before we get ahead of ourselves we need to make sure that the iPhone to watch connection is truly disabled. For me, I had to do some unexpected things because the watch really wants to stay tethered to your phone. To make sure you really get iPhone talking to a WIFI without leveraging your iPhone, do step 12 (the next step now).
12. I didn't think this was necessary and perhaps I was just being impatient but I finally turned airplane mode ON on the watch. After 15 or 20 seconds, I turned airplane mode back to OFF on the watch. At this point, verify that on your iPhone that airplane mode is OFF (my airplane mode went ON on my iPhone when I turned airplane mode ON on my watch). So verify that airplane mode is OFF on your iPhone and that Bluetooth and WIFI are still OFF on your iPhone.
13. Okay, at this point your watch is doing something very powerful, it should be connected to WIFI completely independently of your watch. To prove it, raise your wrist (or however you activate Siri on your watch) and ask Siri about the weather outside: "Hey Siri, is it going to rain outside?" Siri should answer you. If Siri answers you, you have validated that your watch is no longer connected to your watch and is connected to WIFI directly. Ask Siri another question like: "Hey Siri, what time is sunset (or sunrise) today?" Again Siri should answer.
14. For me, I think forcing Siri to get on my good 2.4GHz WIFI signal was the key to fixing this whole issue. I could be wrong but that is my opinion. (So step 14 is just my editorial, no real steps to execute).
15. Now, go back to your iPhone. On you iPhone, turn Bluetooth ON and turn WIFI ON.
16. Take your watch off and attach it to your apple watch charger.
17. On your iPhone, go to the watch app and select Music to see if music is now updating to your watch. Be patient, it does take several seconds (maybe 30 to 90 seconds) for your iPhone and apple watch to engage and start the music updating process. The good news is that after that initial handshaking is completed, your songs should start flowing into your watch. For me, the songs starting importing into the watch at the rate of about one song per 20 seconds. Some songs took 30 seconds, some songs took 7 seconds. But songs definitely were moving SIGNIFICANTLY better than before.
18. On one of my watches (remember I had to do this for both of my watches) songs were still not moving onto my watch. Maybe I was just being impatient but nonetheless: I unlocked my watch while on the charger and navigated to the music icon. I clicked on the music icon and while scrolling through albums, I noticed that for the New Music Mix playlist and the Favorite Mix playlist and the Chill Mix playlist all had the "swirling circle" appearing in the lower right hand corner of the playlist covers which, to me, meant they were busy (or just plain confused) with those playlists. Therefore, I went back to my iPhone and and turned the slider OFF for the New Music Mix, Favorite Mix, and Chill Mix. I waited a 10 or 20 seconds and turned the slider back ON for those 3 playlists and the song progress started. And to push my luck, I added a favorite compilation album to make sure those songs (the entire album) was imported into my watch. I am happy to say, the album loaded those several songs, too, into my watch at the rate mentioned above.
THAT IS WHAT I DID. I HOPE IT WORKS FOR OTHERS THAT MAY A SIMILAR ISSUE. AGAIN, I SUPPOSE MY STEPS, OR AT LEAST SOME OF THEM MIGHT BE TECHNICALLY UNNECESSARY, BUT THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME. GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU. AND YES, I AM HAPPY AGAIN! I HOPE YOU WILL BE TOO.
Okay, I had this same; if not very similar problem; myself. I tried turning off my watch and restarting, I tried turning off my iPhone and restarting. And I tried some other things and none worked until I did what I am about to describe below, step by step which seemed to heal me. First off, I have an iPhone 6 Plus and I have two apple watches: a series 2 and a series 3 with cellular. I had the song updating issue on both of my watches, not just one of them. And, to be clear, my updating issue was that the songs took a very long time to update to my watch(es). When there was any progress at all, it would be about one song per 20 minutes or more. It finally got to the point that no songs would even update to the watch: I would instead see a message like: updating song 120 of 175. And that message would be there for hours and hours with no progress. If this is your issue, please see what I did below. I could guess as to what the root cause was, but I won't do that. I will just tell you what I did that seemed to heal me. I hope it heals you too. I don't know if every single step is critical but it wouldn't hurt to do everything I did (because I didn't do anything too crazy like resetting the watch or removing a watch setup from the phone). And while I have two watches, I did the following steps, one by one for each watch...so, for my two watches, I went through the steps twice (once per watch).
Here, then, is what I did:
1. On your iPhone, turn Bluetooth OFF. (Bluetooth is how you phone and your watch communicate.)
2. On your iPhone, go to the WIFI settings. Then "FORGET" the WIFI network that you are currently connected.
3. At this point your Bluetooth should still be OFF. And NO network should be connected to your phone. If you have WIFI networks automatically connecting to your iPhone (shame on you) you need to stop those. The objective is to NOT turn WIFI off but to keep WIFI on but have NO WIFI networks connected to your phone.
4. Again, don't continue until you have ensured no WIFI networks are connected to your phone while your WIFI toggle is still on (green)
5. Now, and this may seem odd but please do it, reconnect to WIFI. Don't connect to a 5GHz network--this is not compatible with apple watches. My wireless router transmits both a non 5GHz signal and a 5Ghz signal, yours may as well. It is important that you connect to the non 5GHz WIFI signal (presumably the 2.4GHz signal).
6. At this point, on you iPhone: Bluetooth is STILL off (Step 1 of this instruction sheet) and WIFI is connected to the WIFI network you just selected.
7. Now check out your watch (these steps work best if the watch is on your wrist and you have unlocked it). Verify your watch is NOT connected to your iPhone. You should see a red X at the top of the watch or NOT CONNECTED in red font or something similar to indicate that your watch is not connected to you iPhone.
8. On the iPhone, turn Bluetooth ON. (This will re-establish an iPhone to watch connection.)
9. Check out you watch. You should now be connected to your iPhone. Your red X or disconnected message should be gone.
10. On the iPhone, now, turn Bluetooth OFF and turn WIFI OFF. That's right, turn them BOTH OFF on your iPhone.
11. Now, it may take several seconds, but your watch is going to do something pretty cool and perhaps you may have never realized it could do such a thing: it is going to be connected to your WIFI directly without leveraging your phone. But before we get ahead of ourselves we need to make sure that the iPhone to watch connection is truly disabled. For me, I had to do some unexpected things because the watch really wants to stay tethered to your phone. To make sure you really get iPhone talking to a WIFI without leveraging your iPhone, do step 12 (the next step now).
12. I didn't think this was necessary and perhaps I was just being impatient but I finally turned airplane mode ON on the watch. After 15 or 20 seconds, I turned airplane mode back to OFF on the watch. At this point, verify that on your iPhone that airplane mode is OFF (my airplane mode went ON on my iPhone when I turned airplane mode ON on my watch). So verify that airplane mode is OFF on your iPhone and that Bluetooth and WIFI are still OFF on your iPhone.
13. Okay, at this point your watch is doing something very powerful, it should be connected to WIFI completely independently of your watch. To prove it, raise your wrist (or however you activate Siri on your watch) and ask Siri about the weather outside: "Hey Siri, is it going to rain outside?" Siri should answer you. If Siri answers you, you have validated that your watch is no longer connected to your watch and is connected to WIFI directly. Ask Siri another question like: "Hey Siri, what time is sunset (or sunrise) today?" Again Siri should answer.
14. For me, I think forcing Siri to get on my good 2.4GHz WIFI signal was the key to fixing this whole issue. I could be wrong but that is my opinion. (So step 14 is just my editorial, no real steps to execute).
15. Now, go back to your iPhone. On you iPhone, turn Bluetooth ON and turn WIFI ON.
16. Take your watch off and attach it to your apple watch charger.
17. On your iPhone, go to the watch app and select Music to see if music is now updating to your watch. Be patient, it does take several seconds (maybe 30 to 90 seconds) for your iPhone and apple watch to engage and start the music updating process. The good news is that after that initial handshaking is completed, your songs should start flowing into your watch. For me, the songs starting importing into the watch at the rate of about one song per 20 seconds. Some songs took 30 seconds, some songs took 7 seconds. But songs definitely were moving SIGNIFICANTLY better than before.
18. On one of my watches (remember I had to do this for both of my watches) songs were still not moving onto my watch. Maybe I was just being impatient but nonetheless: I unlocked my watch while on the charger and navigated to the music icon. I clicked on the music icon and while scrolling through albums, I noticed that for the New Music Mix playlist and the Favorite Mix playlist and the Chill Mix playlist all had the "swirling circle" appearing in the lower right hand corner of the playlist covers which, to me, meant they were busy (or just plain confused) with those playlists. Therefore, I went back to my iPhone and and turned the slider OFF for the New Music Mix, Favorite Mix, and Chill Mix. I waited a 10 or 20 seconds and turned the slider back ON for those 3 playlists and the song progress started. And to push my luck, I added a favorite compilation album to make sure those songs (the entire album) was imported into my watch. I am happy to say, the album loaded those several songs, too, into my watch at the rate mentioned above.
THAT IS WHAT I DID. I HOPE IT WORKS FOR OTHERS THAT MAY A SIMILAR ISSUE. AGAIN, I SUPPOSE MY STEPS, OR AT LEAST SOME OF THEM MIGHT BE TECHNICALLY UNNECESSARY, BUT THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME. GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU. AND YES, I AM HAPPY AGAIN! I HOPE YOU WILL BE TOO.
Apple Watch cannot connect to 5Ghz WiFi networks. If you turn off your phone’s BT then make sure you’re on the 2.4 GHz network, undock your watch to stop the sync, then redock and you should now see transfers at one song per 5-10 sec.
I found a solution that takes 4 to 5 seconds per song. It forces the watch and iPhone to sync over wifi. In my case it was on my home wifi. This has to be wifi that your watch has been linked to.
1. Make sure you are close enough to the router for the watch to pick-up the wifi
2. Switch off the Bluetooth on your iPhone under the phone settings
3. Slide up from the bottem of your watch and make sure the green phone icon that indicate a connection to your phone is relaced by blue concave lines indicating wifi signal. There will be 3 if you have full signal.
4. Choose the playlist/s you would like to sync in the apple watch app on the iPhone under music
5. Now place your watch on the charger
6. Give the watch between 30 and 60 seconds to start the sync of music
7. You should be able to view the progress on the apple watch app on the iPhone under music
8. The songs should take between 4 to 5 seconds per song to sync to the watch over wifi
9. Remember to switch on Bluetooth after the sync completes
I hope this helps.
Turn OFF Bluetooth to sync way faster. It works wonders.
Be sure the watch and phone are on the same WiFi network. The watch can’t be on “Home” and the phone on “Home-5G.” It may or may not work on coffee shop or airport WiFi where they separate connected devices.
Steps:
1. Have your music on your phone ready to sync showing pending or have it syncing to the watch already.
2. Turn Bluetooth completely off. If you do it though control panel and the button changes from Blue to Gray you are still connected to the watch. Go into settings and turn the Bluetooth off completely.
3. Enjoy the faster transfer
Troubleshoot:
If it’s not working, verify your watch is on WiFi by swiping up from the watch face to see the name of the WiFi network. Go to settings>WiFi to change.
Then check you phone is on the same WiFi network. Again, one can’t be on the 5G duplicate of your WiFi router (modern routers have these town networks usually).
Hopefully this helps. I saw a lot of people here and felt compelled to write this. I have done this since the series 2 and even on the 4 the WiFi stood faster than even the Bluetooth 5.0. Using an iPhone X so both have 5.0. Still slow.
I tried JonBoy's steps, and had no luck...until I turned off bluetooth again. I think that is the key. Force it back to Wifi.
Now it's updating one song per 5-20 seconds. I can deal with that.
Thanks!
Yes. For some reason it needs WiFi to work.. which isnt mentioned on the Apple website 🏼♂ When I put both my phone and watch in their charger next to the router with everything turned on (BT, WiFi etc) it’s syncing rather ok. Not super fast but it works fast enoug.
Helped me right away - while the sync was on and it was taking forever to upload music to my brand new iwatch 4, I just turned off bluetooth in THE SETTINGS on my iphone - and music just streamed to my watch the same moment. Apple, this is embarrassing. Can't it be somehow controlled automatically via finding the fastest available sync method? Feels like 90's, true...
For what it's worth, I did a hard reboot on my watch to see if I could speed up the transfer of music from my phone and it worked. It is much zippier now.
Hard reboot = hold both the digital crown and side button until the watch reboots.
I don't know if this will help with your issue or not, but it is trick which works with the "Watch Player" podcasts app, so might be worth a shot?
Before trying to transfer anything to the Apple Watch turn off the Bluetooth via the "settings" app on the iPhone, NOT the slide-up "Control Center" as that doesn't fully disable Bluetooth, which is a whole other issue! No need to change anything on the Apple Watch.
Make sure Wi-Fi connectivity is still enabled for both iPhone and Apple Watch, and that they are both on the same Wi-Fi network, then sync the content. This forces the watch to use the much quicker Wi-Fi connectivity rather than the slow as **** Bluetooth connection.
Once finished remember to turn your Bluetooth back on!
I have found that in the case of the Watch Player app, that hour long podcasts (around 75mb) transfer in a few seconds, rather than what seemed like hours using the normal method.
As I say it might not be the answer to syncing songs, but it could be worth a try. Hopefully Apple will stop neglecting such basic functionality with the watch and address this crazy situation with a software update.
1 - Turning on Wifi (not use wifi 5.4ghz).
2 - Turning off bluetooth in iphone (not use control central, use settings and switch for off bluetooth).
3 - Remove you watch from dock charge.
4 - Connect again watch in dock.
5 - Open App Watch in iPhone, click in Music.
6 - Waiting 1 minute for copy started very fast.
Works for me.
Move the watch about 2-3 meters away from the iPhone. This worked for me when syncing playlists to the watch.
My wife experienced the slow transfer of songs as well and your solution to make sure she was on 2.4 ghz network and turning off BT worked immediately, transfer times went from minutes to seconds. Thanks for the tip.
I can only speak from my experience and after the HARD reboot, my series 3 synced much faster.
I see a lot of people complaining of the slow speed. It appears there is nothing that can be done with the 4.2 version (or prior) of WatchOS. Very surprising, but I suppose it is related to power and storage type on the watch. Oh well...
I did this. It worked perfectly for me. The songs don't sync as fast as they would from my PC to my phone but 20 sec per song is about accurate.
Thanks for the directions. I followed them exactly.
Apple Watch Music Sync takes several minutes per song
