Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

IPhone audio not appearing in Watch Now Playing

So far, 9.5 has continued to work for me. I’ve tried it with Apple Music, Overcast, and Audible. Now Playing starts up and displays controls for whichever audio is playing on the phone just as I would want. It also works with YouTube.

I do hope the fix sticks this time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NME42
Problem is only partially fixed for me. Yesterday, when doing a strength training with the Training app, the now playing screen in the app was frozen (like in 9.4 sometimes). Switched to the Now playing app and it was also frozen when selecting my iPhone as music source.
Switched to Overcast and was able to control the replay. Interestingly, immediately afterwards, the controls in the training app and also in Now Playing were ok again.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: Tagbert
I had the same issue. The now playing seems to be launching fine again, but the crown doesn’t change the volume. It shows the volume bar move up and down, but no response from the audio. Anyone else experiencing this?
 
  • Like
Reactions: NME42
andrewxerdman said:
I had the same issue. The now playing seems to be launching fine again, but the crown doesn’t change the volume. It shows the volume bar move up and down, but no response from the audio. Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...
the volume control is working for me but it has always been flaky.

Before this recent bug, I would spin the crown several times and the whole volume control would bounce up and down but the volume would not change but if you kept doing it eventually it would connect and the volume would change.

Now, when I tried it, it immediately displayed a picker where I could pick the device and then the volume would go up or down. I never realized that if you tap on the volume, it will display that picker. it's such a tiny icon, it never looked tappable.
 
Howard2k said:
I could be wrong, and I didn’t use the auto launch feature, but I feel the behaviour changed a few versions back too. It now defaults to the Watch (now playing on the watch) and then I click the blue arrow (<) in the tile left corner, scroll down, and find my phone. I only ever manually open the Now Playing app, and I also use an AppleTV. In fact sometimes I have both running at the same time (iPhone and ATV) and so maybe the watch just now says “you pick”?
Click to expand...
Is there a way to change this back? Those extra couple screen taps to get to the iPhone now playing is kind of annoying every time.
 
xxFoxtail said:
Is there a way to change this back? Those extra couple screen taps to get to the iPhone now playing is kind of annoying every time.
Click to expand...
Have you upgraded to Watch OS 9.5? In 9.4 they broke the automatic connection to iPhone audio streams and you had to manually launch Now Playing and tap a few times to connect to the iPhone. With 9.5 we got the previous behavior where audio playing on the phone will launch Now Playing controls on the Watch automatically connected to the phone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: xxFoxtail and the future
Tagbert said:
Have you upgraded to Watch OS 9.5? In 9.4 they broke the automatic connection to iPhone audio streams and you had to manually launch Now Playing and tap a few times to connect to the iPhone. With 9.5 we got the previous behavior where audio playing on the phone will launch Now Playing controls on the Watch automatically connected to the phone.
Click to expand...
I had it set up so I’d manually launch Now Playing, but a few updates ago, it started automatically trying to show what’s playing on the Watch - which is almost always nothing. Then I’d have to hit the back button and tap the iPhone button. Before, I’d open the Now Playing app while I had media on my iPhone playing, it would open to the iPhone media. I was hoping there was a way to get it to do this again.

I turned the auto-open now playing back on when I start something on my iPhone. Which works fine, I’ll probably just keep it like this and see if I can get used to it again.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tagbert
xxFoxtail said:
I had it set up so I’d manually launch Now Playing, but a few updates ago, it started automatically trying to show what’s playing on the Watch - which is almost always nothing. Then I’d have to hit the back button and tap the iPhone button. Before, I’d open the Now Playing app while I had media on my iPhone playing, it would open to the iPhone media. I was hoping there was a way to get it to do this again.

I turned the auto-open now playing back on when I start something on my iPhone. Which works fine, I’ll probably just keep it like this and see if I can get used to it again.
Click to expand...
i never play media directly from the watch but always used it to remote control audio playing on my phone and it always automatically connected to the phone audio. The behavior in 9.4 was a big regression and I suspect a bug. I’m glad that they fixed it in 9.5.
 
n1ghtrain said:
I'm also experiencing this a few months now. Disabling/enabling the switch inside the watch app does absolutely nothing.

I guess they are gonna fix this with watchOS 10.
Click to expand...
It's broken again with watchOS 10.0.1. What a joke!
 
n1ghtrain said:
It's broken again with watchOS 10.0.1. What a joke!
Click to expand...
What’s broken again? Seems to work here. 10.0.1
incoming-570AF869-1EF8-410C-B36B-BB55AED839EE.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back