Downloading music on Apple Watch

[Hubo]

Hey folks!

Here's a few tips & tricks to share about downloading music from Spotify on your Apple Watch! - If you're looking to get started, check this out!

Not seeing the 'Download to Apple Watch'-button yet? Make sure your Spotify app is up-to-date the Spotify app is installed on your Apple Watch as well! 

To download music, you'll need a Apple Watch Series 3 or newer on watchOS 6.0 or higher (7.1 or higher is recommended).

Want to download Liked Songs? Just add them to a playlist and use the steps from this page to download them to your Apple Watch. 

Downloads keep stopping? Make sure your Apple Watch is on and the Spotify app is open on your Watch. After a bit of time, your Apple Watch might suspend the app if you're not using it actively so be sure to keep it in focus.

Downloads not working? Your Apple Watch battery might be a bit too low to download. Make sure your Apple Watch is charged or on a charger to start downloading. 

Want to check (the status of) your downloads? On your Apple Watch, swipe right to Your Library and choose for 'Downloads'. There you should be able to find everything you've downloaded and the status of your downloads.

Got any more tips to share? Post them here!

If you're looking to get help with downloading music from Spotify on your Apple Watch, create a new thread on the iOS Help-board.

[Hubo]

Hey everyone,

From the comments here, we can see that many of you experience different types of issues.

In order to avoid potential confusion we've summed them up below.

Keep in mind that there is a limit of songs per playlist (50) that you can download on the watch. If you try downloading a playlist that contains more than 50 songs, issues might occur. In order to avoid that, you can divide the songs in to different playlists.

In case you've added new songs to a downloaded playlist, you'll need to redownload the playlist to your watch so the new songs can be included.

If you try downloading a playlist and it gets stuck at the first song, we recommend that you follow the steps under the Status Update in this thread.

If you've downloaded a podcast episode or a playlist and you can't play them, you can give the steps below a go if you haven't already. In most cases they resolve such issues:

• Restart the watch
• Re-pair the watch with your phone
• Reinstall the app on the watch
• Reinstall the app on your phone
• Try a different internet connection

If you still experience one of the above mentioned issues or another type of an issue, you can write in the relevant Help Board. That way we can look into them separately.

Be sure to also check out @Hubo's tips and tricks regarding this feature.

Thanks!

[WHL]

I use Apple Watch 7 with the latest iOS, WatchOS, and Sportify app. Howwever, I have followed the steps below:

Find the music and podcast you want to download on your watch
Select the playlist, album, or podcast and press (…); then choose Download to Apple Watch
Head over to the Downloads section on the watch to check the progress of your download
Once playlists, albums, or podcasts in your library have been downloaded, there'll be a little green arrow next to their names
Connect your headphones and start listening

When I go to check the Download session on the watch app, it is keep loading. What should I do?

[Eni]

Hi @WHL,

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community. 

Could you let us know which troubleshooting steps you've already tried? That way we can avoid any repeating steps.

We'll be waiting for your reply.

[bareyb]

Hey there! LOVE Spotify but I'm having issues with the playlist I downloaded to my Apple Watch. In short, it's acting crazy.

Backstory: I downloaded my "Elliptical One" Playlist to my Apple Watch (newest version) as per the instructions and yes it downloaded just fine. Unfortunately, some of the songs refuse to play! They won't play on the downloaded playlist or the original ONLINE playlist it came from. When I go to the cloud (original online version) the song titles start spinning around like a slot machine. It eventually lands on a song that I can play, but it's fairly random.  It's the oddest thing I've ever seen. Is anyone else having this issue?

When I remove the downloaded playlist (by deleting and reinstalling the Spotify App on my Apple Watch),  the online cloud versions of the playlist start working again. So it appears that downloading a playlist to my Apple Watch screws up the original cloud version? Why don't some of the songs work on the downloaded version? I'd include a video, but I removed the download to get my original playlists to work again. 

[Alex]

Hey @bareyb,

Thanks for the post.

This sound very odd. It would be great if you can record a video and share a link to it here. This will help us investigate the matter further.

Please add your device model, OS version and Spotify version on both your phone and watch.

Cheers.

[psinke1974]

Spotify I hate you. I typed something more constructive first but even posting that fails on your miserable failed platform. 

[psinke1974]

Really, all I want is to download a few louzy tracks to my apple watch so I can run with music. Is that too much to ask? Downloading literallytakes ages, and when it stalls at 95% (and it will, that's for sure), I'm not even able to listen to the songs that ARE downloaded. And even when I finally manage to download a playlist, I probably get an error message after all. 

Ironically I just received a badge for being a Spotify user for over 9 years (it must be even longer) but I'm on the point to cancelling my subscription for good and switch to Apple Music. That's not perfect either, but at least it's reliable.

[Ver]

Hey @psinke1974,

Thanks for posting.

Could you please try the following to see if anything changes?

• Re-pair with your phone
• Restart your watch
• Reinstall the app on the watch

If that doesn't make a difference, could you send us a video recording of what you're seeing? That way we can have a better overview of the issue and can look into this further.

It's important to make sure that you've logged in to your account before posting on the Community.

In case you get an error message while trying to post on the Community, could you send us a screenshot of it? We'll investigate this further.

Keep us posted.

[ElChris666]

What's the nonsense with the 50 Song limit? 
I typically run for 2-3 hours and don't want to get bored by listening to the same songs again and again ..... 

[Ver]

Hey @ElChris666,

Thanks for posting here 🙂

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and we'll make sure to pass it on to the right team.

You can also check this idea about removing the song limit. You can add your +Vote and Subscribe to the thread so you can get notified about any updates on this.

If you need anything else, the Community is here for you.
 

[dcasner64]

Hello everyone, I solved the Apple Watch downloads problem by making sure that none of the playlists I was trying to down load had more than 50 songs on it. Once I did this, all the playlists I had specified for download began to appear on my Apple Watch Spotify downloads list. Eureka！

[psinke1974]

I went through all these steps for the bazillionth time and lo and behold, it worked for the first time. 
It’s still not totally reliable because someone starting playback did nothing and I still not dare adding of changing playlists. 

[psinke1974]

Yep, it was fun while at lasted. Today I went for a run, and the spotify app on the watch did nothing after selecting the downloaded playlist en choosing the Airpods as output. Hate to say I told you so, but the Apple Watch app is just SO unreliable it's unusable.

[bareyb]

Just tried my so called downloaded playlist (28 songs) and of course, it doesn't do anything. Is there ANYONE who this works correctly for? I'm beginning to doubt this alleged "feature". I'm guessing it only works in the lab under very controlled conditions. 

I KNOW this is possible to do because I very easily downloaded a playlist from Apple Music to my watch and it works perfectly and just as you'd expect it too. You gotta get it together Spotify. People who need this feature are going to go to Apple Music and once they are gone as customers you'll never get them back. 

[bareyb]

Did you actually try to use it though? They download just fine for a lot of people, the problem is they don't play.

[bareyb]

IT'S WORKING! FINALLY! I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION! FOLLOW THESE STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

1. On your iPhone go to Settings>General>iPhone Storage

2. Scroll down to Spotify App and "Tap" the Spotify App to go to next Screen.

3. Tap on the blue "Offload App" option to temporarily remove the App. Don't worry you will get it right back. 

4. Wait a few seconds until the blue "Reinstall App" option appears and then Tap to reinstall App

5.  Open Spotify App on your iPhone. Start playing the Playlist (must be less than 50 songs) you want to download to your Apple Watch. 

6. Tap the 3 dots ... next to the Play Bar, choose "Download to Apple Watch

7. Go to Apple Watch, Open Spotify App. Swipe right, Tap "Downloads" and wait for all your songs to download

8. Important: Restart your Apple Watch (press and hold on big button on right side of watch). 

That's it! Not only does this fix the download problem, it also fixes the "no lyrics for songs" problem a lot of us were having on our iPhones as well (you can get the lyrics to songs by swiping UP in the Now Playing screen on your iPhone). Note: Lyrics feature is not available on Apple Watch.   🙂 

[Jeremy]

Hi @bareyb,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

We're really glad to see that everything works for you again 🙂
 

It's also extremely nice of you to share what works for you with the rest of the Community.

Let us know if we can help you with anything else!

Take care!

[bareyb]

No problem Jeremy. I hope it helps some others get it working too. It's a great feature.

[flushburn]

Just reading bul*sh*its!

On my iWatch series 7 nothing work! Im tired! SWITCHING BACK TO APPLE AGAIN!

[bareyb]

Yeah. My solution up there didn't really work as well as I'd hoped. My downloaded playlist won't play half the time and the other half of the time I can't even get the App to connect.  So I'm tapping out too, at least for a while. It's just too much trouble... I can always eventually get Spotify to work on my Apple Watch but it takes way too long and there's no one way that works consistently. I hope you get this fixed but in the mean time I got a free 6 months trial for Apple Music from Verizon so I'm gonna switch to that for my Watch and keep using Spotify on everything else.  I was able to transfer all my playlists from Spotify to Apple Music automatically (thank God for https://www.tunemymusic.com ) so that really helped ease the pain. The idea of recreating my years of Spotify one at a time was seriously depressing... Lol.

Anyway, I'm still a fan and will continue to use Spotify on everything but my Apple Watch and hopefully you guys can get this Apple Watch thing figured out in the next six months. Appreciate you trying to help. 

[Chant1]

My set up :  Spotify Premium , iphone 8+, Apple Watch series 6

When the download feature was introduced June last year,  I had set it up and worked ok.  I was able to download music /podcast from Iphone to Apple watch, then play on the watch.  Recently, when I tried to play , it would not play mainly the podcasts. I can still play the music playlist.  Then, eventually, the music won't play either. 

Then I tried a few basic things:   

1) turn off and on the iphone and watch.

2)check both iphone and watch is to the latest IOS  version.

3)check all sync for Spotify app between iphone and watch.

4)finally, i deleted the Spotify app on watch and reloaded to watch.  It worked briefly (i.e. downloading ok , but cannot playback on the watch )

Is there anything else I can try ?

Thank you