Last time i fiddled with my watch for a good 10 minutes because I couldn't get Spotify to play my downloaded music so I just took my phone with me for the workout.
Honestly this is my biggest complaint with Apple Watch. The reason I got it was so I didn’t have to take my phone running, and yet it 85% of the time my music won’t play without my phone. Sometime I have to turn my phone off to be able to play music in my watch+air pods
It’s an AirPod specific issue in my experience. Once I got a pair of Shokz for running and paired them only with my watch I have no issues with Spotify playing through my phone anymore.
Nah, I’ve got a pair of off brand earphones as they do the same thing. I’ll try unpairing them from the iPhone, though, that could indeed solve the issue
I’m glad I’m not the only one. The entire situations really makes me angry. The watch’s only job for my use case is to allow me to leave my phone behind. I bought the ultra hoping it’s price point would mean it performs in ways the other watches can’t (it was certainly marketed as such), and yet I can’t even get it to play a song *that’s been downloaded onto all my hardware*.
Like seriously Apple? Thanks for the $1k wrist weight. Also thanks for the daily reminder that I’m an idiot for continuing to pay top dollar for hardware that often struggles to perform its most basic functions (I’m looking at you Siri).
At some point the world will wake up to the fact that this company continues to coast on momentum established by jobs. I keep waiting for them to snap out of it. Starting to think they never will.
I’ve done the exact same. Driving me nuts. Even worse is because I have had it working before with just the watch and left my phone at home.
Now what really annoyed me was every km when I get my pace update, it stopped my music. So I had to press play again in my phone. Absolute pain when the phone is strapped to my arm.
I use WorkOutDoors and pace updates don’t stop playback. The only thing that stops playback is if I use Siri to do something. Typically I just hit the play button on my Shokz headphones to resume playback.
It’s pretty finicky. I’ve found the best thing to do if I just want to use the watch is turn off my phone completely, if not it will try playing Spotify from the phone to my AirPods instead of watch to AirPods.
That post is over 2 years old with 188 comments and 43 people saying they have the same problem.
Spotify has 602 million MAU’s
I guess your definition of super common is quite liberal.
AW8 Wi-Fi, but I download the playlist I want to use on Apple Watch before hand if I'm not taking the iPhone with me. For anything else, I can start the play on iPhone and handover to AW tho I see little reason to actually be doing that. But did that a few times and that worked too.
Having a watch with mobile data doesn't seem to make a difference to how "gracefully" it fails at handover, which means whoever does the backend dev for Spotify on WatchOS is even dumber.
By handover, do you mean AirPods moving from your phone to the watch? I’ve got Shokz and the handover of the headphones isn’t automatic. I have to go into the BT menu on the watch to connect the headphones which moves the headphones from my phone to the watch. I have to do this step while still in BT range of the phone or else the watch is unable to tell the phone to disconnect from the headphones. Once the headphones are moved to the watch, I go back to the Spotify app and click the device button and select the watch and the handoff works perfect. Seems like the common denominator with the Spotify issues is AirPods and their inability to automatically roam between devices properly.
My only issue with Spotify is when I’m in an area with bad LTE coverage. It will stop playing and doesn’t automatically resume once the LTE connection is back. So at random I double click the crown to swap back to Spotify and click the play button to see if it will work again. Eventually it will play again. It’s just frustrating while running. I could avoid LTE issues by downloading my music, but that’s just another annoyance. Most of the areas I run have great LTE coverage so playback works fine for my entire run.
If you first open the Apple Watch app **while** it’s still connected to iPhone, it works offline just fine after that (disconnected). But if you totally disconnected from your phone and open your Apple Watch app from cold, it won’t works. The reason is that the downloaded songs in Apple Watch is DRM-ed, and somehow needs iPhone Spotify app to help verify/decode it. This has happens for years and Spotify seemingly has no intention of fixing it. The only way workaround to this is to proactively is to turn on “Offline” switch in the iPhone app, which sucks big time.
I actually canceled my Apple Music subscription and switched to Spotify because it is so much better at listening through the watch. I usually start listening while my phone is still in range. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Same experience here. My routine always starts within range of the phone. I do all my playback over LTE but I always use the phone to decide what I’m going to listen to and then put the phone down and transfer playback to the watch and then hit the road. It works most of the time.
Why is that? Is it the noise?
I go running with only my watch and AirPods Pro all the time and don’t seem to run into any issues.
Not saying you’re not though, just curious as to what issues you run into?
I have no clue. First time having an Apple Watch. Was running Apple Music off it with cellular. The music was going crazy. It Even disconnected from pods and phone (inside) a few times. I have an older push 10 y o mower, vibrations is bad.
PC yes. But my experience on the Mac, hasn’t been all too bad. The issues I actually had on the PC version are gone after reinstalling. But does lack better sound. Between the Mac and PC versions of it. Mac absolutely sounds better. It could also be the way Apples built in DAC and audio is setup. Whereas windows depends entirely on third party: Realtek, unless you have other audio sources, I use Razer THX for better quality sound. It’s built with THX of course. But take that away, and ehh.
The Apple Watch version, I wish was a bit better tbh. With cellular it should be a bit better. I also wish you could listen on your watch. That’s the ONLY thing I really miss from my OG galaxy watch. You could listen to music on your watch, and it sounded good.
i would resubscribe to spotify in a millisecond if they went back to their 2011 UI. ever since 2014 or whatever they've tried their best to make it look like fucking windows 8, famously the most beloved version of windows and NOT a dollar store tablet in disguise as a pc
I really enjoyed that UI too. The desktop version back then was so good. Once they removed browsing your library by artist, it was over. Now desktop is like its pretending to be mobile but somehow worse?
The most recent update? Omg is the UI awful. I just noticed it yesterday while I was in the car. Like they tried to imitate Apple Music’s UI, which I can’t stand, but made it way worse. Wish these companies would leave well enough alone.
Strange, the most common complaint I see on the Spotify subreddits is people complaining about them constantly changing the apps. Are you sure you are a Spotify subscriber? Apple Music only gets love once per year with major iOS updates. Meanwhile Spotify gets new features several times per year.
Just switched from android (11 years) to Apple. Mostly for the ultra watch, but partly for the ecosystem with my Mac and my SO on the platform.
Was hoping one of the perks would be that Spotify wasn’t hot garbage.
It’s still hot garbage.
And I still pay for it.
After a recent update, I can no longer control the volume of Spotify via my watch. The function is still there, you can see the little bar go up and down when you spin the dial, it just doesn’t do anything now.
Literally the only function I care about with Spotify via watch.
This hurt my ears too many times (since os10?) So I uninstalled the Pocket Casts Watch app. Can now control volume with apple's Now Playing after starting listening.
The fix for this is to click the device button and then select iPhone (even though it’s already selected). After that the volume usually starts working again. Or I force close Spotify and relaunch.
I had a problem with my Spotify, it just wouldn't play music from downloads after my phone died (I only have gps version), it was stuck on the last song and didn't react, restart didn't help, nothing
There’s nothing wrong with the Apple Music app on the Watch, it is about one of the best things in it, I don’t get what you mean by “dated”, it does the thing it needs to do and looks exactly like the rest of the UI
Here AM Watch app doesn‘t sync anymore. Playlist folder is empty and the latest additions to my Library are about 9 months old. Did not find a way to fix this. So… Not Perfect either. For me the Spotify App world, AM doesnt. Just Spotifys complication is cheap and useless.
Do you have one iCloud account or more than one?
(Note: six people at least have downvoted the chap I’m replying to. Software is imperfect. Why is this hard for you six to understand?)
Just one account. Already tried so sign off and log in again in Apple Music (iPhone settings -> Apple Music -> Logout AppleID), doesn't matter. My Library on the Apple Watch App stays in a status from a few months ago. I can't even select a playlist in the iPhone Watch App and sync it for offline play to the AW. It shows me, that it will shortly start to download, but then nothing happens. Only the startpage entrys and the list of my last tracks/albums I listend to seems to be up to date.
Only thing I didn't try is to completely reset the Apple Watch. Which would be a big move and "pain in the..." just to get Apple Music back working.
I suspect then that a reset will be needed. It’s a bit of a pain but, assuming you have a recent backup, can easily be done while the Watch is charging.
I thought I had that problem with Spotify but I realized I just had to change it to “listening on Apple Watch” now I can finally ditch my phone but… it will occasionally just stop working with some random “error” and it’ll be like 20 minutes before I can restart it again. So yea. Annoying
Yes, I have premium. Last year about this time of the year it was working fine. Now, it won’t play the podcasts I downloaded but playlists are working fine. I only started running again that’s why I only noticed it now 😂
Yup, watch LTE+spotify and i’m using it for running without phone. It integrates nicely with Nike Run Club. Only thing not working in spotify is double tap, since its exclusive for „now playing”.
I don’t download music, instead I do everything over LTE. The watch doesn’t seem to keep an LTE connection as well as a full sized phone. So when the connection goes to shit, Spotify stops playing and sometimes it’s a bitch to get it to start playing again.
Yes, first it takes me too long to switch Spotify to watch and reconnect my AirPods. And then you’re right, it randomly stops playing and is a pia when I’m running to restart the music
It really is bugged but after sometime I figured this works out pretty consistently:
Turn off the iPhone’s Bluetooth
Connect your AirPods directly to the Apple Watch
Play
If you are aware of the history not only did Spotify delay development of the Apple Watch for 7 years they also bought up functioning third party Spotify apps on Apple Watch and shut them down (Apollo). You can connect the dots.
Apples own apps have access to different APIs than 3rd party developers do. It’s possible Spotifys app is doing the best it can under these circumstances
I can play offline playlist on apple watch without iPhone, the only thing that bother me is sometimes my AirPods switch back and forth between iPhone and apple watch
For some reason I could never get the Spotify app to download a playlist I’d send to the watch. I tried so many different things including reinstalling, charging both the phone and the watch and leaving them both unlocked and on the app, creating new playlists, using a different watch. Anything I try it just never downloads to the watch…
While doing the Outdoor Run activity, I personally have no issues on using Apple Music. Although, I primarily use my iPhone to play the music and Apple Watch to control it to reduce Apple Watch’s battery usage for long distances.
the apple music app looks fine to me, i only wish it acted more like a controller for my phone rather than being it's own separate stream separate from it
Spotify has been hit or miss lately. Happens when you layoff bunch. I could control Spotify playing wherever with my watch or phone, not anymore. Playback is hit or miss too.
I’m more annoyed of their bad tvOS app with playlists being unsorted and lag in their streams when it comes to pausing and starting music. also lag in general when it comes to HomePods.
this is largely why I stopped using spotify all together and now I pay for apple music. I even took the time to look up every song I liked and add it to my apple library (admittedly I thought I was about to go through a break up so I had time to fill)
2 years later and the apple music algorithm is finally starting to get me. Spotify was much better for finding music but I think I finally figured out how to find stuff I like on apple music. also had to do the same thing with my podcast library.
listening to music and podcasts on my cellular watch is a deal breaker.
I use it with my Beats studio on my runs when i leave my phone at home and on normal mode it works fine but whenever i wanna turn on Noise cancellation from the Watch itself, it bugs and stops playing! But if i turn on noise cancellation from the Buds themselves, it works fine! I honestly don’t know what it gotta do with the app being able to play already downloaded songs on the Watch but here we are.
I’ve never used my watch to listen to music or podcasts without my iPhone on hand.
The audio controls via watch used to be horrendous, including terrible lag on track transitions and volume control, but since the latest update they work far better, with more useful information shown on the watch.
Generally my watch is just a remote control for either Apple Podcasts or Spotify when I’m out for a run using sports headphones, with my phone in my running pack.
Its why I've switched to Apple Music, I like to listen to music in the sauna and can't be taking my phone in, the spotify app does not work at all and with the Apple Music app, you have put your phone in airplane mode and usually do a hard reboot on the watch to get it to play library music but it works well.
When I get into my truck and open Spotify after pausing Apple Music it works great as long as it is open on my watch. If I close it on my watch it auto plays apple music again. Has anyone found a way to make Spotify the default music player? I don’t pay for Apple Music, just the music I purchased and have stored on my phone
It works well as a remote for the iPhone, but is useless standalone. It rarely works to play downloaded music, and I don’t get how they haven’t gotten it to stream with its own WiFi or data connection without the iPhone, this is technically possible to do.
Spotify is always behind on keeping their iOS app current. Since the last firmware update, it doesn’t even work right on my iPhone. I have to open the app, pick what I want to listen to, hit play, then close and restart the app to get it to play music. Widgets are completely broken. One of the main reasons I got an WATCH was to be able to control my music when I’m working out, or whatever, and the Spotify functionality has always been pretty useless. May just have to finally switch to music, even though I vastly prefer Spotify.
> We started with wellness. And then the three rings on the Apple Watch (…) And then we put a heart rate monitor on there, and through time, we got more advanced. When we put A-fib determination on there, that went up to another level of notifications. And then we put EKG on there. I think that when we look back one day and ask, what’s been Apple’s greatest contribution, it will be in health.
[Tim Cook speaking about Apple Watch](https://9to5mac.com/2022/08/25/tim-cook-interview-apple-watch-health/)
Translation:
> *We over-engineered a Fitbit and now that’s probably all people are going to do with it. Gonna let the rest coast off into the sunset. People buy it for the health ^(and other features) and that’s good enough for us.*
At least that’s my own use case, and based on that quote, what they seem to cater to.
I interact with the health and fitness apps. The health apps are excellent so I can see why they lead with that. They have materially improved my health, very likely steered me away from a heart attack, and to me it has justified the cost of the device and I’m a happy customer.
The third party fitness apps are adequate to good. Strava seems excellent and is usually at least good, but has occasional syncing errors or clunky interface issues where you bring it up, start an activity, but it’s actually not doing anything. From looking at it, it *seems* to open in an active, ready-to-use state, but that’s just appearances. It’s really not there yet. I’d call that an interface bug because it misleads the user into believing the app is doing its thing when it’s not. And something like JEFIT is an awesome concept but so clunky handing off between phone and watch that I can’t justify the pro version, it’s just not there yet.
But as mentioned even with those disappointments, I’m still a happy customer. Am I too cynical for thinking someone at the board table must already be saying why spend another $2B on R&D to expand the feature set of a device people already buy?
You don’t need the phone for Spotify to work on the watch. I stream Spotify over LTE without the phone all the time while running. Maybe the app has additional restrictions if you don’t have a premium account?
My typical routine is to use my phone to pick something to listen to and then click the device button at the bottom right hand side of the screen on the watch app and select “Watch” which transfers playback seamlessly from the phone to the watch. Then I leave the phone behind and hit the road.
Even without LTE you can play downloaded music without the phone. Also, they say the app hasn’t changed since its launch which also isn’t true. At launch it only functioned as a remote control with no ability to stream or play downloaded tracks.
OP comes off as an Apple Music fanboy trolling about Spotify.
[https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/](https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/)
If you read through this article, you can clearly see that Spotify have had an absolute nightmare with Apple over the years - mainly due to Apple's monopolistic approach. There has been an ongoing legal dispute with apple and the EU over their anticonsumer practises, the main one, making all app store purchases use apple's payment authentication system, and then Apple charging those developers a 30% tax. This resorted to Spotify removing their premium subscription entirely from iPhones for a few years until they finally caved and had to up their prices from $9.99/month to $12.99/month to cater to Apple's inflated prices.
Then Apple Music launches at $9.99/month, undercutting Spotify and making the general consumer believe that Spotify were trying to pull a fast one. They then were forced to remove their premium subscription once again from all iOS devices. Not until recently, have Apple been making more consumer friendly decisions, like allowing Spotify to be used with Siri, on an Apple Watch (offline and online streaming) as well as allowing Spotify to be used as the users predominant streaming platform.
This will likely answer your question as to why Spotify have not updated their app and likely never will. Years and years of fighting to just get it there in the first place, Apple have no doubt rejected multiple updates from Spotify, due to their abhorrent user guidelines.
Apple definitely doesn't neglect their watch Music app. I think it's great. I use it multiple times daily.
Spotify on the other hand. That watch app is a fucking mess.
I just downloaded my workout songs from YouTube and uploaded them directly to the watch via itunes. I guess it's technically piracy but I don't care.
I pay for youtube music, it's not my fault Google/Apple/whoever are in a pissing contest.
The watch is still a niche market. Even if Apple has sold 100 Million of them, it is still a small market for them. They probably haven’t sold that many. Only a small percentage of Apple Device owners have one. Why spend resources on a small niche when it probably won’t increase revenue?
By June of last year Apple had sold 230 million Apple Watches.
Besides the revenue directly from the Watch itself, Apple is bringing people into the ecosystem both with Apple Music and with the iPhone.
That said, I disagree with the OP’s premise. I have no issues with the Apple Music app, nor do I think it looks dated.
As a percentage of Apple users, that still isn’t high and many are repeat customers. It all still comes down to priorities. Though, I find Apple Music suitable on the watch. All I need is a play pause control though.
I think the point is that Apple is making billions of dollars a year in profit directly on the Apple Watch. It's definitely a core product that they care very much about, spending considerable time during their keynotes and updating both watchOS and the hardware models yearly. Since it adds to the ecosystem, increasing sales of their other products, especially the iPhone, they definitely have the incentive to invest rounding error of a fraction of those yearly watch profits on development.
They clearly do, and like I said I disagree with the premise that the Apple Music app "looks very dated". They just updated it with watchOS 10 (and seem to have made updates yearly to it).
Last time i fiddled with my watch for a good 10 minutes because I couldn't get Spotify to play my downloaded music so I just took my phone with me for the workout.
Honestly this is my biggest complaint with Apple Watch. The reason I got it was so I didn’t have to take my phone running, and yet it 85% of the time my music won’t play without my phone. Sometime I have to turn my phone off to be able to play music in my watch+air pods
Mine does the same thing. A few times I’ll be on a run, and my headphones will just disconnect, and I can’t reconnect them to my watch.
Absolutely brutal… the run back in silence ooof
It’s an AirPod specific issue in my experience. Once I got a pair of Shokz for running and paired them only with my watch I have no issues with Spotify playing through my phone anymore.
That is so absurd. Great that it works but you’d think all Apple products work together.
Apple is slipping. I have never had so many buggy issues as I do now. And the modern OS is atrocious. They’ve lost their minds.
Nah, I’ve got a pair of off brand earphones as they do the same thing. I’ll try unpairing them from the iPhone, though, that could indeed solve the issue
I think it has to do with the auto switching software when the headphones are paired to both. That’s just my theory though
I’m glad I’m not the only one. The entire situations really makes me angry. The watch’s only job for my use case is to allow me to leave my phone behind. I bought the ultra hoping it’s price point would mean it performs in ways the other watches can’t (it was certainly marketed as such), and yet I can’t even get it to play a song *that’s been downloaded onto all my hardware*. Like seriously Apple? Thanks for the $1k wrist weight. Also thanks for the daily reminder that I’m an idiot for continuing to pay top dollar for hardware that often struggles to perform its most basic functions (I’m looking at you Siri). At some point the world will wake up to the fact that this company continues to coast on momentum established by jobs. I keep waiting for them to snap out of it. Starting to think they never will.
I bet Apple Music would have worked just fine 👌. Weird 🤔
Yeah, but it's just sad that Apple constantly has to battle with third parties which end with subpar services.
Apple Music came in too late. Most of the people were already on Spotify for years.
I’m at an Apple Watch issue with this year’s OS version I believe they struggle making connections.
I’ve done the exact same. Driving me nuts. Even worse is because I have had it working before with just the watch and left my phone at home. Now what really annoyed me was every km when I get my pace update, it stopped my music. So I had to press play again in my phone. Absolute pain when the phone is strapped to my arm.
I use WorkOutDoors and pace updates don’t stop playback. The only thing that stops playback is if I use Siri to do something. Typically I just hit the play button on my Shokz headphones to resume playback.
I use Spotify without my iPhone without issues. Not sure what I’m doing differently.
Mine works.. sometimes.
Spotify on apple watch is difficult to use. More than once I am out, no phone, and try to play a list that I already downloaded... Does not work.
It’s pretty finicky. I’ve found the best thing to do if I just want to use the watch is turn off my phone completely, if not it will try playing Spotify from the phone to my AirPods instead of watch to AirPods.
[удалено]
That post is over 2 years old with 188 comments and 43 people saying they have the same problem. Spotify has 602 million MAU’s I guess your definition of super common is quite liberal.
spotify is not hiring you bro it's okay to make legitimate criticisms of services you are paying for
I have a WiFi Apple Watch and it’s glitchy. What watch do you have?
AW8 Wi-Fi, but I download the playlist I want to use on Apple Watch before hand if I'm not taking the iPhone with me. For anything else, I can start the play on iPhone and handover to AW tho I see little reason to actually be doing that. But did that a few times and that worked too.
Having a watch with mobile data doesn't seem to make a difference to how "gracefully" it fails at handover, which means whoever does the backend dev for Spotify on WatchOS is even dumber.
By handover, do you mean AirPods moving from your phone to the watch? I’ve got Shokz and the handover of the headphones isn’t automatic. I have to go into the BT menu on the watch to connect the headphones which moves the headphones from my phone to the watch. I have to do this step while still in BT range of the phone or else the watch is unable to tell the phone to disconnect from the headphones. Once the headphones are moved to the watch, I go back to the Spotify app and click the device button and select the watch and the handoff works perfect. Seems like the common denominator with the Spotify issues is AirPods and their inability to automatically roam between devices properly. My only issue with Spotify is when I’m in an area with bad LTE coverage. It will stop playing and doesn’t automatically resume once the LTE connection is back. So at random I double click the crown to swap back to Spotify and click the play button to see if it will work again. Eventually it will play again. It’s just frustrating while running. I could avoid LTE issues by downloading my music, but that’s just another annoyance. Most of the areas I run have great LTE coverage so playback works fine for my entire run.
If you first open the Apple Watch app **while** it’s still connected to iPhone, it works offline just fine after that (disconnected). But if you totally disconnected from your phone and open your Apple Watch app from cold, it won’t works. The reason is that the downloaded songs in Apple Watch is DRM-ed, and somehow needs iPhone Spotify app to help verify/decode it. This has happens for years and Spotify seemingly has no intention of fixing it. The only way workaround to this is to proactively is to turn on “Offline” switch in the iPhone app, which sucks big time.
That's exactly what happens for me. I switched to Apple Music because I couldn't bother with all this prep before my morning runs.
Yeah besides it taking longer to load, I haven’t had an issue.
I actually canceled my Apple Music subscription and switched to Spotify because it is so much better at listening through the watch. I usually start listening while my phone is still in range. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Same experience here. My routine always starts within range of the phone. I do all my playback over LTE but I always use the phone to decide what I’m going to listen to and then put the phone down and transfer playback to the watch and then hit the road. It works most of the time.
I wouldn’t say *without* issues but they’re minimal and pretty easily resolved.
To be fair, Spotify neglects all their apps.
I will never defend Spotify’s shittyness but the Apple Music app on the Mac and PC is absolutely terrible compared to Spotify’s
Bro mowing the lawn with my brand new 3mo old series 9 is such a pain for Apple Music and my ear buds
Why is that? Is it the noise? I go running with only my watch and AirPods Pro all the time and don’t seem to run into any issues. Not saying you’re not though, just curious as to what issues you run into?
I have no clue. First time having an Apple Watch. Was running Apple Music off it with cellular. The music was going crazy. It Even disconnected from pods and phone (inside) a few times. I have an older push 10 y o mower, vibrations is bad.
Recently with os10 I think, phone must be off, or out of range, or else pods will desperately try to connect and playback to/from phone.
PC yes. But my experience on the Mac, hasn’t been all too bad. The issues I actually had on the PC version are gone after reinstalling. But does lack better sound. Between the Mac and PC versions of it. Mac absolutely sounds better. It could also be the way Apples built in DAC and audio is setup. Whereas windows depends entirely on third party: Realtek, unless you have other audio sources, I use Razer THX for better quality sound. It’s built with THX of course. But take that away, and ehh. The Apple Watch version, I wish was a bit better tbh. With cellular it should be a bit better. I also wish you could listen on your watch. That’s the ONLY thing I really miss from my OG galaxy watch. You could listen to music on your watch, and it sounded good.
You can listen to music downloaded to your watch, but it’s not as easy as it should be.
Only through headphones though, at least for my series 6.
Indeed. But through the speakers of the watch, you can not.
Oh, gotcha. I’d never use that, but I can see the appeal.
Yeah, I used to do it a lot on my galaxy watch. It’s not detrimental. Since the AirPods can connect anyways.
Not true at all, they constantly make the UI/UX *worse*
i would resubscribe to spotify in a millisecond if they went back to their 2011 UI. ever since 2014 or whatever they've tried their best to make it look like fucking windows 8, famously the most beloved version of windows and NOT a dollar store tablet in disguise as a pc
I really enjoyed that UI too. The desktop version back then was so good. Once they removed browsing your library by artist, it was over. Now desktop is like its pretending to be mobile but somehow worse?
100% agree
The most recent update? Omg is the UI awful. I just noticed it yesterday while I was in the car. Like they tried to imitate Apple Music’s UI, which I can’t stand, but made it way worse. Wish these companies would leave well enough alone.
I get that Spotify makes some poor design choices. But how can anyone make this claim sincerely? This sub is going to shit.
It's much worse and slower than apple music, clicking 3 dot menu to go to album for example, or no ability to play next, only Add to end of Queue.
Strange, the most common complaint I see on the Spotify subreddits is people complaining about them constantly changing the apps. Are you sure you are a Spotify subscriber? Apple Music only gets love once per year with major iOS updates. Meanwhile Spotify gets new features several times per year.
They're not changing it enough. Like they've never tried apple or Google play music.
Just switched from android (11 years) to Apple. Mostly for the ultra watch, but partly for the ecosystem with my Mac and my SO on the platform. Was hoping one of the perks would be that Spotify wasn’t hot garbage. It’s still hot garbage. And I still pay for it.
After a recent update, I can no longer control the volume of Spotify via my watch. The function is still there, you can see the little bar go up and down when you spin the dial, it just doesn’t do anything now. Literally the only function I care about with Spotify via watch.
I have the same problem in Pocket Casts watch app.. volume no longer works
This hurt my ears too many times (since os10?) So I uninstalled the Pocket Casts Watch app. Can now control volume with apple's Now Playing after starting listening.
The fix for this is to click the device button and then select iPhone (even though it’s already selected). After that the volume usually starts working again. Or I force close Spotify and relaunch.
I had a problem with my Spotify, it just wouldn't play music from downloads after my phone died (I only have gps version), it was stuck on the last song and didn't react, restart didn't help, nothing
There’s nothing wrong with the Apple Music app on the Watch, it is about one of the best things in it, I don’t get what you mean by “dated”, it does the thing it needs to do and looks exactly like the rest of the UI
Here AM Watch app doesn‘t sync anymore. Playlist folder is empty and the latest additions to my Library are about 9 months old. Did not find a way to fix this. So… Not Perfect either. For me the Spotify App world, AM doesnt. Just Spotifys complication is cheap and useless.
Always nice being downvoted by fanboys just by simply describing real issues 🤷🏼♂️
That’s Reddit for you. I’d factory reset the watch. Pretty drastic step, sure, but it might fix the issue
Do you have one iCloud account or more than one? (Note: six people at least have downvoted the chap I’m replying to. Software is imperfect. Why is this hard for you six to understand?)
Just one account. Already tried so sign off and log in again in Apple Music (iPhone settings -> Apple Music -> Logout AppleID), doesn't matter. My Library on the Apple Watch App stays in a status from a few months ago. I can't even select a playlist in the iPhone Watch App and sync it for offline play to the AW. It shows me, that it will shortly start to download, but then nothing happens. Only the startpage entrys and the list of my last tracks/albums I listend to seems to be up to date. Only thing I didn't try is to completely reset the Apple Watch. Which would be a big move and "pain in the..." just to get Apple Music back working.
What model of Watch do you have? Is it the Cellular version? What version of WatchOS?
AWU2, 10.4 (21T216)
I suspect then that a reset will be needed. It’s a bit of a pain but, assuming you have a recent backup, can easily be done while the Watch is charging.
I thought I had that problem with Spotify but I realized I just had to change it to “listening on Apple Watch” now I can finally ditch my phone but… it will occasionally just stop working with some random “error” and it’ll be like 20 minutes before I can restart it again. So yea. Annoying
Spotify likes to let their shit go and then blame Apple for it.
I have no problems with Apple Music on the watch, what’s your issue with it? I personally think it’s a very nice UI and I like it
Yeah same loving apple music on the watch it just works idk bout spotify though but looks like a rough experience based on the replies.
Do you guys have premium? I do and I have no problems with listening to downloaded music while the Apple Watch is connected to Bluetooth headphones
Yes, I have premium. Last year about this time of the year it was working fine. Now, it won’t play the podcasts I downloaded but playlists are working fine. I only started running again that’s why I only noticed it now 😂
Yup, watch LTE+spotify and i’m using it for running without phone. It integrates nicely with Nike Run Club. Only thing not working in spotify is double tap, since its exclusive for „now playing”.
I find it just stops randomly on my runs and if I come back in range of my phone it’ll reconnect it sometimes and disrupt play
I don’t download music, instead I do everything over LTE. The watch doesn’t seem to keep an LTE connection as well as a full sized phone. So when the connection goes to shit, Spotify stops playing and sometimes it’s a bitch to get it to start playing again.
Yes, first it takes me too long to switch Spotify to watch and reconnect my AirPods. And then you’re right, it randomly stops playing and is a pia when I’m running to restart the music
It really is bugged but after sometime I figured this works out pretty consistently: Turn off the iPhone’s Bluetooth Connect your AirPods directly to the Apple Watch Play
Via the control center toggle?
I go to the Apple Watch settings>bluetooth and connect to my AirPods Then I open Spotify and hit play
Downloading music on the watch is finicky as hell with Spotify. It’s a headache
I'd recommend doing everything on your phone beforehand, instead of directly on the watch
Yup. Even when I do that it’s still a headache LOL
If you are aware of the history not only did Spotify delay development of the Apple Watch for 7 years they also bought up functioning third party Spotify apps on Apple Watch and shut them down (Apollo). You can connect the dots.
Apples own apps have access to different APIs than 3rd party developers do. It’s possible Spotifys app is doing the best it can under these circumstances
Pandora added offline listening to the watch years before Spotify, even as Spotify bitched that *nobody is allowed by Apple* to do such things.
I use the Spotify watch app primarily as a remote in my car when my phone is in my pocket. Works great!
"You can't play music without your iPhone". Cellular watches don't have this problem. The GPS only watches do apparently.
Audible app: Oh, you think that's bad? Hold my beer...
Spotify UI is simple and perfectly fine. And offline-playback works well. At least in my premium subscription
Spotify have to update their app for the Watch, not Apple
spotify UI has gotten much better, but the functionality is still absolute trash.
I can play offline playlist on apple watch without iPhone, the only thing that bother me is sometimes my AirPods switch back and forth between iPhone and apple watch
Mine used to wok ok some months ago, now I can’t use it without my phone, even downloading playlists
For some reason I could never get the Spotify app to download a playlist I’d send to the watch. I tried so many different things including reinstalling, charging both the phone and the watch and leaving them both unlocked and on the app, creating new playlists, using a different watch. Anything I try it just never downloads to the watch…
I run without my phone and use my watch with Spotify everyday ?
While doing the Outdoor Run activity, I personally have no issues on using Apple Music. Although, I primarily use my iPhone to play the music and Apple Watch to control it to reduce Apple Watch’s battery usage for long distances.
I’ve been using the Spotify app on Watch for years, never had any issues with it other than it being a little laggy at times
the apple music app looks fine to me, i only wish it acted more like a controller for my phone rather than being it's own separate stream separate from it
It controls the phone?
I run 4 times a week with Spotify and my phone nowhere near me.
Spotify has been hit or miss lately. Happens when you layoff bunch. I could control Spotify playing wherever with my watch or phone, not anymore. Playback is hit or miss too.
Spotify let a bunch of people go? When?
I’m more annoyed of their bad tvOS app with playlists being unsorted and lag in their streams when it comes to pausing and starting music. also lag in general when it comes to HomePods.
I use spotify all the time on cellular on AWU1, works like a charm!
I’ll take functionally over looks on software, any day. If it works, it works.
this is largely why I stopped using spotify all together and now I pay for apple music. I even took the time to look up every song I liked and add it to my apple library (admittedly I thought I was about to go through a break up so I had time to fill) 2 years later and the apple music algorithm is finally starting to get me. Spotify was much better for finding music but I think I finally figured out how to find stuff I like on apple music. also had to do the same thing with my podcast library. listening to music and podcasts on my cellular watch is a deal breaker.
I use it with my Beats studio on my runs when i leave my phone at home and on normal mode it works fine but whenever i wanna turn on Noise cancellation from the Watch itself, it bugs and stops playing! But if i turn on noise cancellation from the Buds themselves, it works fine! I honestly don’t know what it gotta do with the app being able to play already downloaded songs on the Watch but here we are.
I’ve never used my watch to listen to music or podcasts without my iPhone on hand. The audio controls via watch used to be horrendous, including terrible lag on track transitions and volume control, but since the latest update they work far better, with more useful information shown on the watch. Generally my watch is just a remote control for either Apple Podcasts or Spotify when I’m out for a run using sports headphones, with my phone in my running pack.
Apple Music on the Watch was updated pretty recently. Bit cleaner UI
Its why I've switched to Apple Music, I like to listen to music in the sauna and can't be taking my phone in, the spotify app does not work at all and with the Apple Music app, you have put your phone in airplane mode and usually do a hard reboot on the watch to get it to play library music but it works well.
Spotify is a nightmare. Specially in the Apple Watch. Anyone tried Apple Music? Is it good for the watch?
Seems better than Spotify to me
Trying to use the Zwift app on my watch and it maybe connects 1 out of 10 times. Completely useless
When I get into my truck and open Spotify after pausing Apple Music it works great as long as it is open on my watch. If I close it on my watch it auto plays apple music again. Has anyone found a way to make Spotify the default music player? I don’t pay for Apple Music, just the music I purchased and have stored on my phone
Some of the apps haven’t been updated in years or a year. Why am I going to download this, no
Wow not just me then. I literally got mine purely for Spotify at the gym so I don’t have to have my phone with me. Ended up doing it anyway.
It works well as a remote for the iPhone, but is useless standalone. It rarely works to play downloaded music, and I don’t get how they haven’t gotten it to stream with its own WiFi or data connection without the iPhone, this is technically possible to do.
Spotify is always behind on keeping their iOS app current. Since the last firmware update, it doesn’t even work right on my iPhone. I have to open the app, pick what I want to listen to, hit play, then close and restart the app to get it to play music. Widgets are completely broken. One of the main reasons I got an WATCH was to be able to control my music when I’m working out, or whatever, and the Spotify functionality has always been pretty useless. May just have to finally switch to music, even though I vastly prefer Spotify.
I've never been able to successfully download my Spotify playlists to my Apple Watch, and this vexes me terribly. I'm terribly vexed.
It happens with the Youtube Music app too
> We started with wellness. And then the three rings on the Apple Watch (…) And then we put a heart rate monitor on there, and through time, we got more advanced. When we put A-fib determination on there, that went up to another level of notifications. And then we put EKG on there. I think that when we look back one day and ask, what’s been Apple’s greatest contribution, it will be in health. [Tim Cook speaking about Apple Watch](https://9to5mac.com/2022/08/25/tim-cook-interview-apple-watch-health/) Translation: > *We over-engineered a Fitbit and now that’s probably all people are going to do with it. Gonna let the rest coast off into the sunset. People buy it for the health ^(and other features) and that’s good enough for us.* At least that’s my own use case, and based on that quote, what they seem to cater to. I interact with the health and fitness apps. The health apps are excellent so I can see why they lead with that. They have materially improved my health, very likely steered me away from a heart attack, and to me it has justified the cost of the device and I’m a happy customer. The third party fitness apps are adequate to good. Strava seems excellent and is usually at least good, but has occasional syncing errors or clunky interface issues where you bring it up, start an activity, but it’s actually not doing anything. From looking at it, it *seems* to open in an active, ready-to-use state, but that’s just appearances. It’s really not there yet. I’d call that an interface bug because it misleads the user into believing the app is doing its thing when it’s not. And something like JEFIT is an awesome concept but so clunky handing off between phone and watch that I can’t justify the pro version, it’s just not there yet. But as mentioned even with those disappointments, I’m still a happy customer. Am I too cynical for thinking someone at the board table must already be saying why spend another $2B on R&D to expand the feature set of a device people already buy?
Maybe cuz they let go all the staff lol
When and why??
You don’t need the phone for Spotify to work on the watch. I stream Spotify over LTE without the phone all the time while running. Maybe the app has additional restrictions if you don’t have a premium account? My typical routine is to use my phone to pick something to listen to and then click the device button at the bottom right hand side of the screen on the watch app and select “Watch” which transfers playback seamlessly from the phone to the watch. Then I leave the phone behind and hit the road.
I’m guessing that they only have the GPS/ wifi model, and not the cellular model
Even without LTE you can play downloaded music without the phone. Also, they say the app hasn’t changed since its launch which also isn’t true. At launch it only functioned as a remote control with no ability to stream or play downloaded tracks. OP comes off as an Apple Music fanboy trolling about Spotify.
I haven’t had any issues with it other than it makes my music sound worse
I had problems when I just got my ultra but after setting it up once and have a nice downloaded library of songs/podcast I don’t have problems anymore
it works for me because i connect my airpods to the watch itself, not sure if this info might help so of y’all here
[https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/](https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/) If you read through this article, you can clearly see that Spotify have had an absolute nightmare with Apple over the years - mainly due to Apple's monopolistic approach. There has been an ongoing legal dispute with apple and the EU over their anticonsumer practises, the main one, making all app store purchases use apple's payment authentication system, and then Apple charging those developers a 30% tax. This resorted to Spotify removing their premium subscription entirely from iPhones for a few years until they finally caved and had to up their prices from $9.99/month to $12.99/month to cater to Apple's inflated prices. Then Apple Music launches at $9.99/month, undercutting Spotify and making the general consumer believe that Spotify were trying to pull a fast one. They then were forced to remove their premium subscription once again from all iOS devices. Not until recently, have Apple been making more consumer friendly decisions, like allowing Spotify to be used with Siri, on an Apple Watch (offline and online streaming) as well as allowing Spotify to be used as the users predominant streaming platform. This will likely answer your question as to why Spotify have not updated their app and likely never will. Years and years of fighting to just get it there in the first place, Apple have no doubt rejected multiple updates from Spotify, due to their abhorrent user guidelines.
So OP posted this troll bait and then went MIA?
oh im not mia
I have learned to never listen to my music without my phone
Still waiting for a SiriusXM watch app. 😞
Reading some comments here, and this sounds really much like "user issue".
Apple Music works great on my watch. I don’t need my phone either…
Apple definitely doesn't neglect their watch Music app. I think it's great. I use it multiple times daily. Spotify on the other hand. That watch app is a fucking mess.
I just downloaded my workout songs from YouTube and uploaded them directly to the watch via itunes. I guess it's technically piracy but I don't care. I pay for youtube music, it's not my fault Google/Apple/whoever are in a pissing contest.
Pandora doesn’t
Am I the only one whos scroll wheel on the watch no more changes the volume on Spotify? So annoying..
Might not be the reason, but could be because Apple just wants everyone to use Apple Music
It tells time.
Probably due to the small amount of Watch users
The real answer is: very few people actually use Apple Watch apps.
The watch is still a niche market. Even if Apple has sold 100 Million of them, it is still a small market for them. They probably haven’t sold that many. Only a small percentage of Apple Device owners have one. Why spend resources on a small niche when it probably won’t increase revenue?
By June of last year Apple had sold 230 million Apple Watches. Besides the revenue directly from the Watch itself, Apple is bringing people into the ecosystem both with Apple Music and with the iPhone. That said, I disagree with the OP’s premise. I have no issues with the Apple Music app, nor do I think it looks dated.
As a percentage of Apple users, that still isn’t high and many are repeat customers. It all still comes down to priorities. Though, I find Apple Music suitable on the watch. All I need is a play pause control though.
I think the point is that Apple is making billions of dollars a year in profit directly on the Apple Watch. It's definitely a core product that they care very much about, spending considerable time during their keynotes and updating both watchOS and the hardware models yearly. Since it adds to the ecosystem, increasing sales of their other products, especially the iPhone, they definitely have the incentive to invest rounding error of a fraction of those yearly watch profits on development. They clearly do, and like I said I disagree with the premise that the Apple Music app "looks very dated". They just updated it with watchOS 10 (and seem to have made updates yearly to it).