Spotify Not Working Offline on Apple Watch

[jskiing360]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Apple Watch SE

Operating System

watchOS 9.0

My Question or Issue

I have an apple watch SE and downloaded a spotify playlist to play offline.  If I turn on my apple watch and my phone is not nearby, then when I open the spotify app it won't play my downloaded playlist.  It will only work if my phone is nearby for a few minutes to "sync".  Then I can leave my phone to workout and the spotify app will work fine.  It shouldn't need to pair with my phone to play a downloaded playlist.

[RealRayLin]

To play from your Watch without your phone, you need:

Spotify Premium
Apple Watch Series 3 or later
watchOS 7.0 or above
Paired Bluetooth headphones to the Watch
A cellular or WiFi connection

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

Apple Watch Ultra

Operating System

watchOS 10

My Question or Issue

as long as iPhone shutdown, Spotify stuck on watch and can't play from your Watch without your phone

[iHateBuggySoftware]

My girlfriend just had a bad day and after 6 hours of crying she got herself together and wanted to go for a run to get her spirits up, and I was really proud of her.

She wanted to use Spotify on her watch (apple watch series 9) for playlists she had downloaded in advance to listen to music on her headphones that she paired in bluetooth settings on the watch (sony wh-1000xm4) while she runs.

When she pressed play on a downloaded playlist first nothing happened. Then it just started playing on her phone. Selecting the apple watch in the speaker list on the phone switched the speaker indicator icon a pulsing apple watch icon but then timeouted after thirty seconds or so.

She came back to me for help and we tried turning off bluetooth on the phone, re-downloading the playlist and a bunch of other things.

It took too long to fiddle around and she got really frustrated at the app and now no longer wants to go on her run and her day is even more ruined. She just wants to lay in the sofa because **bleep** day and nothing works. In the end I got it working with some combination of what we did before, enabling flight mode on her phone and re-booting her watch, but it was too late.

Please test your spotify on watch experience more and iron out all the kinks, it's borderline unusable. And I know this is a low-prio ticket somewhere in your issue tracker because only 0.3% of your sessions are on apple watches or something but please know that this issue is bad enough to ruin someones day and tarnish your company's reputation for anyone who comes across it. Not fixing this is a grave misprioritisation.

[snapdragon-x]

Has this been fixed? I still have the same issue with iOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and Spotify 8.9.62.

[PurpleFan]

worst support ever!

[LucaSoato]

I had the same experience. I can't understand why they don't test these kinds of stuff. Running worry-free is the only reason I bought an Apple Watch and paid Spotify premium.

Spotify developers, if you read this: YOU HAVE TO PRIORITIZE THIS.

DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR MANAGERS, FIX**bleep**.

[sifusifu]

Same issue. Everything is updated and newer models.

[Snickets05]

Same problem- Apple Music works without any issues - spotify not at all even after restarting reinstalling etc. This is really annoying guys so what will happen now? Is a billion dollar company able to fix this issue??

[arviduhlig42]

Same here, 

went to the gym, wanted to hear some podcasts via spotify.

Took only the watch with me (series 7) and apple ipods pro.

Didn't download the podcast, played it over mobile data (GSM / 4G)

When i started the podcast id played fine in the first place. But only as long, as i kept my wrist up.

Always when i lowered my wrist the podcast slowly faded out and stopped playing. It's like spotify turns down the volume as a reaction to the wrist down / display standby. But it's only the volume!

The spotify app on the watch still showed the running podcast (progress bar moving, time ticking, pause button visible) but nothing to hear! I was able to stop the podcast and restart again, but same issue again. When i keep my wrist up, all fine, when i take it down, music fades away!

I even took a phone-call via the watch a few minutes later, worked like a charme. No problems, no fading volume etc.

So it's not the watch, it's spotify!

I tried some stuff later, delete the app from the watch, restart, installed spotify again, etc. Nothing helped!

It's very sad, that spotify in general, and the watch app in particular are sooo glitchy

Please do something about that!

It's one of the things why i bought an apple watch. Beeing able to go for a run without the need for a phone. Spontaneous music / phonecalls etc. But when spotify dosn't work that way i have to go back to apple music...

[noeleee]

I updated to the iOS 18 and WatchOS 11 previews today.  I also reinstalled Spotify on the phone/watch again, just to make sure.  The download issue still persists.

Between this issue and an unrelated billing issue where I was forced to move from the "Basic Family" plan to "Premium Family" plan, I'm cancelling and moving to Apple Music.  The family plan for Apple Music is a bit cheaper and works.

I've been a paying Spotify customer since 2011, but they've lost their way.

Has anyone found a good tool to export Spotify playlists so they can be imported onto other platforms?  This tool gets great reviews:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/playlisty-for-apple-music/id1459275972

[GaRunners]

Date 26/08/2024, and this problem persist

[GaRunners]

26/08/2024, don't work offline and far from iphone

[GaRunners]

This problem persists, 26/08/2024

[Rabvigil]

Finally caved. I just switched to Apple Music yesterday. There's no point on giving money to a company that either doesn't listen or doesn't care. 

[noeleee]

---

@Rabvigil wrote:

Finally caved. I just switched to Apple Music yesterday. There's no point on giving money to a company that either doesn't listen or doesn't care. 

---

Did you use anything to transfer your playlists from Spotify to Apple Music?

[Kaymakba]

Same here, over a year in and still unresolved. This is just incompetence, I was supposed to go for a run 35 mins ago, instead browsing forums to search for updates. I will finally look into alternatives later today.

[finn5616]

Hey Everyone

i can promise you this issue won’t be fixed for years. Spotifys team has a strange mix of disregard for its users, and inability to fix basic bugs. Unfortunately there’s minimal

competition. I’m leaving Spotify, but if no one else does, they have 0 incentive to fix things. When is the last time Spotify has added anything if meaning, or fixed any bug under 3 years. It took 5+ years to be able to add more than 50 songs to a watch playlist. 

Repeat after me…. They don’t care. 

[writingfromtherace]

Just had to run an entire half marathon with no music. Great job Spotify! This probably will be the reason I switch to Apple. 

I had 10 downloaded playlists to my Ultra 2 and not a single one would play.  I was in a low service area and didn’t have my phone but Apple Watch Spotify app refused to play the downloads. What is even the point of a download to the watch if they don’t play with a phone nearby or require  the watch be connected to cell service!

[WillyNicksy]

Same issue here. Apple Watch Series 7 and iPhone 13 Pro - both up-to-date, even factory-restored my Watch and still have the same issues with downloads not playing from the Watch. 

Had this issue for 18 months since buying my Apple Watch. Tried everything and problem persists. 

I’ve been paying for Spotify for several years and now will switch to Apple Music

[chavesgabie]

I'm having the same issue. Years pass by and they don't fix it. i tried to use to today and the app only downloaded a few song on my playlist. 

[Bene9]

Same issues.

The most annoying part is that you can‘t start playing a playlist that you downloaded to your watch when you are not connected to the internet or your phone. 
Some people online suppose that is because Spotify having to actually check that you have an active subscription. But in that case couldn‘t you do it like you did it on iphone? Where you could use offline mode for a certain time window after which you had to go online to verify your subscription?

Because having to be connected to the internet to be able to play downloaded playlists just defeats their purpose.

And even if I ignore this problem and accept that I can only play one playlist when I go for a run without my phone(because switching playlists again requires a connection), there is still the pain in the ass process of connecting my airpods to the watch while it constantly wants to connect to the phone.
I won‘t go into details about this but stars have to be aligned to get this to work.

Here a reddit link where some users detail their problems and workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1bimrtf/why_is_spotify_so_bad_on_apple_watch/

Spotify just test through your watch app including the offline mode and you will find countless bugs. Please fix these because they make the app unusable. I am strongly considering switching to apple music.