How to Use Your Smartwatch to Control Your Music Playback

How to play music on your smartwatch

For a lot of people, music is an integral part of working out. But not everyone wants to schlep their phone around while hitting the trails or working up a sweat. Thats where smartwatches can come in pretty handy. While nearly every smartwatch lets you control music on your phone, a good number can also play music on-device.

Whether its an Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, Garmin, Fitbit or Wear OS watch, youve got a lot of options for listening to music. Much of it will depend on which service is supported and what OS your watch runs on. Some will have options for offline playback, either through downloadable playlists or onboard music storage. If your smartwatch has LTE, you may also be able to stream music directly to your wrist.

Keep in mind that youll likely need a pair of Bluetooth headphones, as not every smartwatch has a speaker. Also, if you want to download playlists for offline playback, youll almost certainly need a subscription to the music service of your choice. Thats not to say you cant listen to music for free. You can, but your phone-free options will be much more limited.

Heres a breakdown of the major players by platform, and how to start listening.

Apple Watch

First, youll want to make sure you have an Apple Watch Series 3 or later, running the latest possible version of watchOS. While you can listen to music on the Series 2, you cant install the latest OS versions on it; Apple stopped support with watchOS 7. Also, the Series 2 is also five years old so youre not likely to have a good experience. You can checkif youre up to date on watchOSby heading to the Watch app on your iPhone, selecting General, and then Software Update.

The easiest way to stream music on the Apple Watch is with, you guessed it, Apple Music. Not only is it preinstalled onto the watch, but if you have an LTE watch with an Apple Music subscription you can stream straight to the wrist. All you have to do is ask Siri to play an artist or song title. You can also browse your library directly from the Music app on the watch. If you dont have an LTE watch, you have the option to download playlists for offline playback.

You can also hop into the Watch app on your phone, scroll down to the Music app menu, and from there you can load your playlists and albums. This might be an easier option if you like setting things up on a larger screen.

In addition, Apple has a ton of third-party apps in case you already subscribe to a different service. After years of customer complaints, Spotify has now added support for offline playlists and downloads on the Apple Watch. All you have to do is go to the watchs on-wrist App Store, download the Spotify app, and log in. Spotify also works with Siri as long as you add on Spotify to the end of your request.

While Apple Music and Spotify are the two most common music apps for the Apple Watch, there are plenty of other options. Pandora and Deezer also support offline playlists. There are also apps like TuneIn and iHeart Radio if you prefer radio. Overcast, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts are also good options if youd rather listen to podcasts.

Just be aware that not all third-party Apple Watch apps are created equally. While some work flawlessly, others havent been specifically optimized for a good watch experience. Also, not every app will support offline playback, and those that do often require subscriptions.

Samsung Galaxy Watches

If you have Samsungs Galaxy Watch 4 or Watch 4 Classic, you can just skip down to the Wear OS section below. The process is a little different if youre still on a Tizen OS watch.

Spotify was one of the few partner apps available on Tizen watches, but its been a while since its been updated. (And it likely wont get updated, given that Samsung has gone all-in on Wear OS.) Users have complained on forums about a degraded experience, so we dont recommend using the app.

Many of Samsungs older Tizen watches the Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Watch Active and Active 2, and the Galaxy Watch, for example have onboard storage so you can directly load music files onto them.

How Android users can add music via the Galaxy Wearable app:

• Load the songs you want onto your phone
• Hit Watch settings and then Manage content or Add content to your watch
• Tap Add tracks
• Select the files you want, or hit All in the upper left corner.
• Once you hit Done you can play music on your watch via the Music app.

iOS users need to have an iPhone 6 or later running at least iOS 12:

• Load the songs you want onto your phone
• Open the Galaxy Watch app
• Navigate to the Home tab in the bottom left
• Select Add content to your watch

Samsung supports MP3, M4A, AAC, OGG, and WMA files. However, you cant export music from streaming services like Spotify or Google Play, which use encrypted files.

Wear OS watches

If youve got a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or Watch 4 Classic, this will be easy. These watches are the first (and for now, only) watches to run Wear OS 3. That means theyve got the Google Play Store right out the box.

Right now your best app choices are Spotify and YouTube Music, both of which support offline playback. (Though you do need to be a paying subscriber.) Android users can also follow the steps outlined in the previous section to physically load music onto the watch. The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic do not, however, support iOS.

Right now, non-Samsung Wear OS watches run Wear OS 2. Itll stay that way until we get a new batch of Wear OS watches or Google finally releases the update sometime later this year.

For a while, Wear OS 2 users didnt really have any good options for listening to music after Google shuttered Google Play Music. Thats no longer the case. The Spotify app now supports streaming and offline playlists for Wear OS 2 watches as well. Googles also finally brought YouTube Music to Wear OS 2. Keep in mind that youll need a subscription and you can only have offline downloads no streaming.

• Navigate to the Google Play Store
• Download YouTube Music onto your watch
• Sign in to your YouTube Music account
• Tap the song or playlist you want to download
• Hit the download icon

Fitbit

By far the easiest way to listen to music on a Fitbit smartwatch is to use Spotify, Deezer, or Pandora.

The Spotify app is more of a music control app. It doesnt support offline playback, so your phone needs to be nearby with the Fitbit app running in the background and connected to the internet. You also need a Spotify Premium account.

Pandora and Deezer come preloaded on the Fitbit Ionic (which was recently recalled), Sense, and Versa series (with the exception of the Versa Lite). You need to have a paid subscription to either service, as well as a Wi-Fi connection. Deezer users can download their playlists, while Pandora users can download their most-played stations or popular curated Workout stations.

You can also use the Fitbit Connect app to transfer your own files onto your device (the only exceptions are the Fitbit Sense, Versa Lite Edition, and Versa 3). The app is free to download here just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.

Fair warning: this is a tedious process that Fitbit outlined here under the How do I download playlists to my Fitbit watch? section. Once you expand that section, scroll down to the Mac or Windows drop-down menus to see step-by-step instructions.

Garmin

Right now, Garmin supports four major music streaming services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and iHeartRadio. You can download all the apps via the Connect IQ store. (Again, youll need to have a subscription.) But once youve downloaded the app in question, navigate to your watchs music/media widget. From there you can select your service of choice and youll be prompted to log in to your account. Once thats done, you can begin syncing your music and playlists.

The majority of Garmin watches come with music storage; you can check out the list here. But as with Fitbits, loading your personal libraries onto the watch can be a tedious process. Youll have to download the Garmin Express app onto your computer and from there, follow Garmins detailed step-by-step instructions for both Mac and Windows users on how to manage your music and audio files.

Correction, March 9, 2022, 9:30AM ET:A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Spotify offline playlists and streaming wasnt available for Wear OS 2. We regret the error.

How to play and control your music with Apple Watch

A key reason to own an Apple Watch is to make it less necessary to fish your iPhone out of a pocket or, in some cases, to remove the need for an iPhone.

One area in which this works well is music, where Apple Watch can act as a remote to control playback on other devices, or as a standalone music player. In the former case, controlling playback using Apple Watch is about convenience, yet having the wrist-based device as a player becomes a tempting proposition in situations when an iPhone could be unwieldy, such as when you're at the gym.

For remote control, you can use two of the built-in Apple Watch apps: Music and Remote. In the former case, by selecting your iPhone as the source, the app lets you browse music on your iPhone and pick something to play.

If you're in a hurry or indecisive, there are alternative means of getting to music. You can call upon Siri to select a track, album or band. Alternatively, use the Music app's Beats 1 or Quick Play buttons to fire up Apple's internet radio station or play something random from Apple Music, respectively.

Once something is playing, your Watch's Music glance gives you a quick way to skip tracks, pause and resume playback, adjust the volume level, and mark the currently playing track as a favourite.

Meanwhile, the Remote app provides the means to select a device on your network a Mac or PC running iTunes, or an Apple TV that has Home Sharing activated, and then skip tracks and change the volume.

Leave your iPhone behind

When it comes to using your Watch by itself, you'll need to pair Bluetooth headphones first, to which the Watch subsequently streams playback.

Once you've done that, you can sync music to your Apple Watch using the process outlined in the walkthrough.

It's worth noting a couple of things when doing so. First, you can limit how many songs are synced to your Watch by total quantity instead of storage space if you want. Secondly, and more importantly, syncing songs over Bluetooth to your Watch is an extremely slow process.

We recommend creating a playlist with a smallish number of songs that you want to copy across, geared towards whatever task you'll do with your Watch (such as uptempo numbers for gym sessions).

To find out more about creating playlists, check out our guide on how to use iTunes

Alternatively, prepare the sync before you go to bed and leave it running overnight.

1. Select a playlist

Open the Watch app on your iPhone, then scroll down to find Music and tap it. Tap Synced Playlist and select the playlist you'd like to sync to your Apple Watch.

If your Watch is charging, the sync process will start immediately.

2. Adjust the limits

The Watch app defaults to syncing 1GB of music from your iPhone to your Watch (which has little storage), but you can increase this to 2GB, or reduce it as far as 100MB.

Once the process is done, the number of synced songs is shown.

3. Play some music

On your Watch, open the Music app and select Apple Watch as the source to play from. Use the My Music and Playlists options to browse the music you synced to your Watch, and to select and play it through paired Bluetooth headphones.