Can the cellular Apple Watch stream everything from apple podcasts without a phone?

[basehead617]

I love listening to podcasts when running but I have a non-cellular Apple Watch 4 and having to drag my (huge XS Max) phone along with me is a bummer.

I assume if I buy the GPS + Cellular variety, I can listen to the Apple Podcasts app without my phone, but can I scroll around the app and listen to ANY podcast streaming from the watch's cell connection or do I have to save them to the watch while on wifi to be able to listen to them solely from the watch?

Probably a stupid question in that I'm hoping the answer is yes, but I absolutely don't want to get it if this doesn't work. On my watch, the podcast library is browsable but all the episodes have the cloud icon, there's no 'play' button as such.. which is different than the phone, but that might be a UI quirk, or might be due to non-cellular version.

 

[Significant1]

Not using podcast app on watch, but have you tried enabling sync in podcast settings on your phone. I would imagine, that would already allow you to have offline podcasts on your GPS aw4.

 

[perezr10]

Yes, you can stream anything from Podcasts from your Apple Watch without having to download it first. With a cellular Apple Watch downloading becomes almost irrelevant. Like if you have a subscription to a certain podcast, if it’s not already downloaded when you head out for a run, the watch will simply stream the podcast. And you can scroll through all the latest episodes and pick whatever you want.

Yes, you can search through all of your subscriptions and stream whatever you want while away from your house without your iPhone. But I don’t think you can search the whole podcast universe looking for new podcasts. You have to subscribe on your iPhone first.

 

[mk313]

I agree with everything Perez said except that I d say that downloading isn’t quite irrelevant yet. There is still a hit to your battery life using streaming so I do have mine set up to download podcasts so that most of them are already on the watch. But on the times that a new one comes out that hasn’t yet downloaded ( usually around the Tour de France coverage), streaming works fine.

 

[basehead617]

Thank you all!

 

[perezr10]

I agree with everything Perez said except that I d say that downloading isn’t quite irrelevant yet. There is still a hit to your battery life using streaming so I do have mine set up to download podcasts so that most of them are already on the watch. But on the times that a new one comes out that hasn’t yet downloaded ( usually around the Tour de France coverage), streaming works fine.

Great point! In a 1 hour run with heart rate tracking and streaming podcasts over cellular, I lose 20-25% of my battery on a Series 7 45mm watch.