Apple watch downloads dont work offline

[Slartybartfast]

I have an apple watch SE, all IOS versions are up to date (watch and phone). If I download a playlist, spotify refuses to play it through my watch (as a device) unless the watch is 1. Connected to my WiFi, and 2. Disconnected from my phone. This completely defeats the point of downloading a playlist for offline use. Further, if my phone is connected to my watch it refuses to play from my watch at all, and will just start playing from my phone.

I have tried:
- Updating IOS versions
- Turning my watch off and on again
- Deleting the spotify app and downloading it and the playlist (twice)
- Force closing the app and re-starting it
- Deleting and redownloading spotify on my phone
- Trying WiFi and Bluetooth off and on in every combo.

[AlejaR · Accepted solution]

Hey folks,

Thanks for all your recent replies.

Some of you mentioned you followed the troubleshooting steps you found in this thread. It would be really helpful if you could include in your next replies the exact steps you've tried so far. That way we can avoid repeating any steps.

If you haven't, we'd suggest:

• Forcing close and restart the app, reboot the watch and reset the network settings on your iPhone.
• Perform a clean reinstall of the app on your smartphone. By doing that, the app can be up-to-date, and you can make sure some damaged cache is not leading to this inconvenience. You can find out the steps for doing it here.
• Take a look at your settings on your Apple Watch. Under Music, make sure that Optimized Storage is turned off (this option is not available in all Apple Watch models).

If the above doesn't do the trick, then we'll need to gather some additional info to better understand this behavior:

• The OS of both your Apple Watch and your mobile device.
• The exact Spotify version you're running in both.
• How many playlists have you downloaded? Have you noticed if the issue happens after a specific number of downloaded playlists?

We'll be on the lookout for your replies!

[brettbe]

This happened again to me.

Before my run, went to check that the downloaded playlist would play.

Playlist was still downloaded (good) but could never get it to play from the Apple Watch. Would tap on the 'playback' icon showing playback on the phone, select Apple Watch, Spotify would think for a long time and then switch back to phone playback.

The "workaround" was to uninstall Spotify from the watch, re-install Spotify on the watch, re-download my playlist (which takes longer than it seems like it should).

Then Spotify was able to play the downloaded playlist from my watch.

If anyone is actually looking into the problem, I would be happy to run a debug version of the app on my watch to provide logs, etc.

Very annoying that the one Spotify feature that I use on the watch works correctly so infrequently.

[brettbe]

Happened yet again!!

Went to the gym.

Put my headphones (Wireless Beats) in.

Podcast I had been listening to on my phone in Spotify started playing – tapped pause (I very infrequently use Spotify on my phone, so this could be a new wrinkle).

Swiped over to “Your Library” on Apple Watch.

Watch already had my library filtered for Downloads and said “Spotify is offline”

Selected my downloaded playlist – error message “Something went wrong – Check you connection and try again.”

BUT… I am offline, so why do I need a connection??

Eventually the “Your Library” page didn’t show any downloaded content – so Spotify un-downloaded my playlist??

I connected to the gym WiFi away from my phone and re-downloaded my playlist.

I was then able to playback the playlist – but I wonder if my watch was streaming as it would sometimes stop playback between tracks (would start back up if I pressed Play).

HELP!!

[Joan]

Hi there @brettbe,

Thanks for reaching out and for providing all of this info. We'll be glad to look deeper into this one.

Could you please try the following steps if you haven't already to make sure we've covered all of our bases for troubleshooting:

• Restart Spotify
• Reinstall Spotify from your watch and phone
• Uninstall now playing app
• Unpair/Re-pair your watch to your phone
• Make sure the app is on the latest version across both devices

Let us know how it goes.

[jawor44]

Same problem here. 

Apple Watch 6: watch OS 11.2

IPhone 12: iOS 18.2

Spotify: 8.9.92.330

I download albums not playlists. But once they are downloaded, they disappear after a second. I can not have even one now.  

Problem started a month ago..more less..

Please help if possibile.

[Amos68]

Hello Joan

Can you clarify in which order you suggest these actions, as listed above I can’t understand... Do you mean:

1) uninstall Spotify from iphone and apple watch
2) unpair the watch from the phone
3) reinstall on iphone
4) Pair the watch with the phone
5) Reload spotify on watch

These are very time consuming and I think most of us have un-installed spotify on both phone and watch a number of times and ensured we have the latest OS on each as well …. 

It is very limiting to have Spotify not working on Apple Watch offline … this is what needs to be solved

Thank you


 

[brettbe]

Hi Joan,

Sorry for the late reply. Have been communicating with Spotify support via email and also have had less opportunities to try offline playback during the winter months (less outdoor runs away from WiFi).

I have done all these steps in the past. That usually fixes the problem for a while and then the problem comes back (last time it took about a week and the issue happened again).

And it is not acceptable that people should have to do all these steps every time they want to use Spotify offline on their Apple Watch just to make sure that it is going to work.

[tomkw]

The guys at Spotify are doing an awful job handling this issue. It has been that way for way too long!

It is so upsetting and I am seriously considering canceling my Spotify membership and changing it to Apple Music because of it. It is ridiculous how it can negatively on my workouts and training mood.

[Rdtoyer]

iPhone 15 Pro, 18.3.2

Apple Watch 10 (GPS Only), 11.3.1

Spotify 9.0.26

AirPods Pro 2, A3048

I have run into two issue, similar issues.

One: the Spotify app stops working on the Watch, no apparent reason, no input, it just stops playing music. This is while running without my phone on me, playing offline/downloaded playlists. The app won't play music again.

Two: Transitioning to no phone trying to play offline/downloaded playlists. When I go to a playlist and tap play the app transitions back to the player but nothing happens. I've tried waiting, but nothing loads or plays. Sometimes reselecting the same playlist and tapping play works and the playlist starts. Other times the playlist won't work at all. Selecting another playlist sometimes will start playing. It is very inconsistent.

[Le-davies]

Does NOT WORK

[l6_wuo-ut71kb]

This is not a solution. I shouldn’t have to completely reset the device and app every time I want it to do a basic function like play downloaded songs. Please address the root cause. I am having the same issues as others below. I’ve done all of the steps at various times in various orders but the only thing that consistently remedies the situation is starting from scratch and redownloading everything to my watch, which as I say is not a solution in the same way it’s not a solution for a car that stalls to just install a new engine every time you want to drive it. Fix the issue!!!

[drierp]

Let me add a "me too" to this problem.  I'm on a watch 8, and force update everything weekly at the very least.  My goal is to run with my watch in offline mode playing spotify downloaded songs.  It regularly has problems!

1. if it's in the smart shuffle mode, the entire thing freezes up every few songs.  I would bet it's looking to add in a "smart" song, which isn't possible in offline mode, and this sh-its the bed causing a freeze.  Smart Shuffle needs to understand what offline mode is (cellular is off, wifi is off, no phone available) and stop trying to insert unavailable songs into the playlist.
2. If it's not in smart shuffle mode, the it generally does better, but will eventually get to a song in the playlist it thinks is downloaded right, but isn't (your syncing process must really suck, and have no sanity checks!!)  and then freezes again..
3. If I have my phone with me, the watch app REALLY REALLY REALLY F'ING wants to play from my phone instead..  it's a g-damn fight to get it to play only on the watch.  I've had to turn my phone off to make this work.  Why do I care?  Because announcements come from my running app on the watch, and it's important for me to hear them over the music.  This shouldn't be hard, if I hit the PLAY FROM WATCH button, just stop trying to change to ANYTHING ELSE ( including my home sonos when I'm not even home, wth..) 
4. If it gets stuck playing a song (#1 or #2) I have to manually go in and select a new playlist and find a good song to play..  not so easy to do while running.  A better developer would have some sort of check that if the next song can't be played, then automatically skip to the one after that, etc..  
5. Downloading/syncing songs is too "magical" to work right. Maybe you'll figure it out someday, but in the meantime, PLEASE give us a button to "sync now" which proactively does just that. While also checking that songs that are already synced are complete and playable.  Even better, it should check for changes in the playlists and update accordingly.  
6. I'm dreaming here, but my watch has plenty of space, and I'd like a random subset of my "Liked songs" to be synced as well.  Honestly the whole list could fit, but I'd be happy with 50/100/200 of them randomly selected, and rotated from time to time.  
7. I've never gotten it to play over cellular. Is this even supposed to work?  It's honestly half the reason I got cellular in the first place.  Best I can tell, the watch is at best a "remote" for the phone app, and struggles even at that..  

As for all of these "reset everything" advice from moderators messages..  If the developers wrote good code, that checked for error cases and handled them appropriately, these problems would go away.  It's not that hard to add a "If next song is not valid, then skip" bit of code in..   Nor hard to add a "Sync now" button which runs that process in the foreground with a progress bar..  Please stop telling people to do hours of uninstall + reinstall across multiple devices.  Updates are fine to require, but please be realistic with your hundreds of millions of users.  

Maybe its time to give apple music a chance..  

[Rdtoyer]

Update on the issues I’ve encountered with Apple Watch Spotify. Through testing, I’ve identified that most of the problems I faced with Spotify not playing music when transitioning away from my phone were due to Spotify curated playlists not fully syncing or downloading. I consistently encountered issues with my “Pump Up Running Mix” playlist not playing, which is automatically created and updated by Spotify. To resolve this, I copied the exact same playlist and created a new playlist from it. Surprisingly, the newly copied playlist worked seamlessly offline without any issues. This suggests that there might be a problem with these auto-updated playlists on the Apple Watch when using Spotify offline.

Additionally, I’ve used Spotify while offline without my phone, and music suddenly stopped playing in the middle of my runs 1 out of the last 4 times. Despite the app on my Apple Watch indicating that music was playing, I couldn’t hear anything on my AirPods Pro 2s. The app on the watch showed the music progression as playing, but there was no audio output. However, I could still hear audio cues from my run through the AirPods, which provided information about my pace and miles run. Removing the AirPods from my ears for 3-5 minutes resolved the issue, and music resumed playing when I tried again. But why would the music stop all together?

[reneky]

Thank you!

Creating new playlists with the same songs as the curated playlists seems to have solved my download issues.

[bc15romeo]

Similar to above, just wanted to add in a 'me too'.

iPhone 15 Pro, Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods Pro 2.

If I press the watch icon on the Spotify player it flashes momentarily before reverting to the phone icon (indicating it wants to play media from my iPhone.

Similar to another poster above when I went on a run out of the house without my phone the Spotify app on watch displayed a message that there was a connection issue - but I have a playlist downloaded (not a curated playlist issue either this is a playlist I have made myself) so I should be able to play this offline.

Very frustrating as I just want to be able to take my watch and AirPods and go on a run without having to lug my iPhone around with me. Please fix this!

[Johnny_Mommsen]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Apple Watch 44mm / iPhone 16

Operating System

wOS 10.6.1/ iOS 18.3.2

My Question or Issue

Downloading to watch via the watch itself just doesn't work. Even if it shows the progress of the download and finishes all songs (it's 32 so well below the 100 limit), as soon as i try to play the songs from the watch, the app switches back to my phone, the downloads disappear and i have to start over.

Having to disable the bluetooth connection in the settings instead of control center to be able to download via wifi is very irritating and not very user friendly, but even after doing so i have yet to get to a point where i can confidently leave my house knowing i'll be able to play from my watch once it's outside of wifi range. It used to work fine until recently but neither restarting app /watch/phone nor reinstalling the app on the watch has fixed it. There aren't any open updates i could load for either, watch or phone.

Please tell me i'm missing something because i'm losing my mind and would like to be able to listen to music offline from my watch which was one of the main reasons i even bought the watch.

[Antoinette2503]

Good morning,

Since I have charged my Premium account to a single user account (instead of Duo), the offline mode on my Apple Watch doesn’t work anymore. How can I fix this problem?

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherlands

Device

Apple Watch SE