Streaming Apple Music

[whsbuss]

I don’t know how many times I have tried streaming Apple Music on my Ultra 2 only to have it use AirPlay via my iPhone. I finally found the sure way to get it done.

First turn on Airplane mode and disable Bluetooth on the iPhone. Then connect your headphones, or in my case AirPod Pros on the watch itself. Then ask Siri to play what you want. After which you can enable Bluetooth and disable airplane mode.

I don’t understand why Apple just can give an option on the watch app like iHeart app does.

 

[waw74]

It's not airplay*

The music app in the watch is acting as a remote for the Music app in your phone, and the phone is using bluetooth to send to your AirPods.

Apple has made decisions to give you the best battery life on the watch, and the way they currently handle this situation will do that. The watch using one of it's onboard radios to stream music from the internet, and then using bluetooth to send to your AirPods is battery intensive.

Someone the other day had similar issues, when they go for a run, they have to wait till they get a short distance away from their house and the phone and watch drop their bluetooth connection before starting their running music directly on the watch. If they didn't, it would start to play on the phone, and then drop out once they got away from their house, and they'd have to re-select and re-start their music on the watch.

If your phone is going to be close to you anyway, the way it works is probably best.

*It does say airplay, But it looks like a bug/oversight/strange decision/laziness on apple's part, and they don't differentiate between airplay (to a HomePod or other third party speaker) and bluetooth (to AirPods, speakers, or headphones). It just says "airplay" if it's playing somewhere besides the phone speakers no matter if it's via airplay or bluetooth. I have a sonos roam which supports both methods. In playing around just now, it says airplay for both , but for airplay it has a speaker (white box with 2 circles), for bluetooth has a speaker (side facing speaker cone) with a bluetooth symbol. There is a second line that says "iPhone -> roam" in airplay mode, while bluetooth just says "iPhone"


You can try Apple's feedback, or a brief and nicely worded email to Tim Cook, with an explanation of why you want to play directly on the watch, such as the person above where it complicated the start of their run. Chances are pretty slim that Tim will personally read the email, but the team that handles it are good about getting things to the right people.

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[whsbuss]

Thank you for your response. Yes I understand why Apple wants to operate this way, but why not give us the opportunity to select how we want to use their music app. My Ultra 2 has great battery life and streaming only via the watch does not affect it like a series watch. With 17.4.1 iPhone battery life is less than stellar. Using bluetooth to stream to my AirPods only makes it worst.

 

[Howard2k]

Close the audio app on your phone, and/or disable the auto-switching of the AirPods back to the phone, and/or don't start streaming music until you're away from your phone, and/or disable bluetooth on the phone. There are a few ways to make it happen. Ultimately if you tell the phone to hijack the AirPods then that's what they will do.

 

[fsfty]

When Im at the gym, I go into the bluetooth settings on my watch and manually connect the airpods. This disconnects the airpods from my phone and connects to the watch. I then open the apple music app on the watch, hit shuffle and Im all set.

 

[tatarin]

When Im at the gym, I go into the bluetooth settings on my watch and manually connect the airpods. This disconnects the airpods from my phone and connects to the watch. I then open the apple music app on the watch, hit shuffle and Im all set.

Yes, this works. The problem for me is that I carry my iPhone with me while jogging and if I pause Apple Music by single clicking on the airpod and then restart the music, the iPhone hijacks the connection to the airpods. It then takes several minutes of futzing with the Apple Music app on the watch to get the iPhone button unchecked and the Airpod button checked so that playback happens from the watch (somehow both buttons always have check marks at first).

I have the preference selected in the iPhone bluetooth settings for the airpods to only "connect to this iPhone when last connected to this iPhone". It doesn't seem to work in this situation. I like to play back from the watch so I can hear the splits and goal achievement announcements.

 

[Howard2k]

Have you tried ensuring the Apple Music is closed on the phone?

 

[whsbuss]

Have you tried ensuring the Apple Music is closed on the phone?

Yeah but it doesn’t matter. Apple has decided their watch should not stream the music app. It’s why I use iHeart on my watch for some of the stations I used to listen to in Apple Music.

 

[tatarin]

Have you tried ensuring the Apple Music is closed on the phone?

Before I went jogging, I closed the Apple Music app on the iPhone by swiping up on its preview. When I paused playback on the airpods while jogging and then restarted playback, the watch continued to play my playlist -- no hijacking by the iPhone.

So thanks for showing me the solution to my problem!