All the music streaming apps require a phone connection it seems. Is there one that doesn't? I have music on my Apple Watch, but sometimes I want to stream more than I have on the Apple Watch when at the gym.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apps Music streaming app that doesn't phone?
- Thread starter PlainviewX
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It doesn't? How do you connect your watch to the internet and access data that way? Can you give an example where this works for some app on the watch which functions with the internet without interfacing with the iPhone?
The Apple Watch can access the internet on a known network. There's no reason, unless Apple is restricting, for an app to work stand alone in the Apple Watch.
I'm not sure that answered my question. You want to know if we know of any apps that can stream music to your watch without connecting to your phone. But it seems that I'm correct in saying that there are no apps which allow you to directly connect your watch to the internet for the purposes of receiving data for literally any purpose. The watch WILL connect to wifi in order to find your iPhone on the same network and will communicate with your iPhone via that wifi connection but that isn't the same as the watch connecting to the internet as a stand-alone device. And the fact that it could do that in theory doesn't mean it currently does that.
So I'll repeat my original question again. You want to stream music directly to your watch without your iPhone?
How would that work without a connection to the internet?
There are no apps. That's been established. Now, we need to know why there aren't any. The Apple Watch can connect to the internet. Is it an Apple restriction preventing Apple Watch apps from directly accessing an internet connection or is it a hardware limitation? From what I've read, it's not a hardware limitation. Apple themselves have made it a policy that all Apple Watch apps need to be Apple Watch native apps. Needing to connect to the phone to access an internet connection is counterproductive to having native Apple Watch apps.
Any facts to back up your claim? I'm not believing there be a significant, if any, difference in battery life compared to streaming music from you iPhone which is a built in feature.TheWatch battery is FAR too small to stream any large amount of data (like needed for music) over the internet. Continuously streaming music over the internet would lower the battery life sufficiently.
If you stream music from your iPhone you are using the iPhone's battery which is about 10x larger. You can't even do a simple update without plugging your
Watch into a power supply AND having the charge level above 50%.
Last edited:
I think you're getting confused about connecting to a wifi access point and internet.
I talked about connecting to the internet. Never mentioned connecting to a cellular network. Even mentioned "known network." No confusion on my end.
Been wondering this myself. Apple does allow some exceptions. Messages, Weather, and Maps, all can pull data from a known wifi network without a companion iPhone. In those instances, the AW is functioning as an independent connected wifi device accessing data from the internet. There seems to be no technical limitation to the ability to allow streaming music apps.
Battery life may be part of it but not because streaming directly is significantly different than streaming through an iPhone. It may be more about the significant change in user behavior. In other words, if Apple allowed it, people would use it much more than they're using the AW now as a listening device. Just a hunch, because from a hardware and software perspective, there's nothing preventing it.
Battery life may be part of it but not because streaming directly is significantly different than streaming through an iPhone. It may be more about the significant change in user behavior. In other words, if Apple allowed it, people would use it much more than they're using the AW now as a listening device. Just a hunch, because from a hardware and software perspective, there's nothing preventing it.
Last edited: