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Apps Stand-alone Podcast App for Watch OS4

J

jpy1980

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2014
48
11
So I've tried watch player, watchcast and pod2watch and none of them work on my apple watch series 3 to play podcasts when not attached to my iPhone.

Has anyone had any luck being able to play podcasts without being tied to the iPhone? I'm still so surprised that Apple has not implemented this yet.
 
Hmm isn’t that Watchcast’s entire purpose? You need to plan ahead and sync things over, but that is the point of that app and have heard others use it with success.
 
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musicpenguy said:
Hmm isn’t that Watchcast’s entire purpose? You need to plan ahead and sync things over, but that is the point of that app and have heard others use it with success.
Click to expand...
I've used watchcast with os3 but nothing really works with os4

Wanted to know what other people are doing that works with os4
 
jpy1980 said:
So I've tried watch player, watchcast and pod2watch and none of them work on my apple watch series 3 to play podcasts when not attached to my iPhone.

Has anyone had any luck being able to play podcasts without being tied to the iPhone? I'm still so surprised that Apple has not implemented this yet.
Click to expand...
They are clunky but you are not using them correctly if you have no stand alone playback. Watch player is free with unlimited subscriptions. The upload to the watch on all of them takes a few minutes.
 
powerslave65 said:
They are clunky but you are not using them correctly if you have no stand alone playback. Watch player is free with unlimited subscriptions. The upload to the watch on all of them takes a few minutes.
Click to expand...

Got it. Have you gotten it to work with the new watch is? If you dont mind me asking, what is the procedure that you use?
 
jpy1980 said:
Got it. Have you gotten it to work with the new watch is? If you dont mind me asking, what is the procedure that you use?
Click to expand...

I use Watch Player because it's free. You install it on the iPhone, and then make sure the the phone and watch are connected. Once in the app on the iphone click the top right icon and search for podcasts you want to add. Then open the app on the watch. Then back on the the iphone in the app select the one you want to transfer to the watch and click the transfer button. It takes a few minutes and sometimes has to be clicked more than once to get the connection going. The watch implementation of the app indicates the progress not the phone version. Rinse and repeat. Like I said it is a little clunky but you'll get it.
 
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powerslave65 said:
I use Watch Player because it's free. You install it on the iPhone, and then make sure the the phone and watch are connected. Once in the app on the iphone click the top right icon and search for podcasts you want to add. Then open the app on the watch. Then back on the the iphone in the app select the one you want to transfer to the watch and click the transfer button. It takes a few minutes and sometimes has to be clicked more than once to get the connection going. The watch implementation of the app indicates the progress not the phone version. Rinse and repeat. Like I said it is a little clunky but you'll get it.
Click to expand...

Yea that's odd. I'm doing exactly the same thing but when I click the podcast to play on my apple watch, the podcast doesn't start. I'll keep trying but thanks so much for the help!
 
I was using Pod2Watch with some success but after the WatchOS 4 update, as soon as the screen turns off on the Watch (after lowering my wrist) the audio pauses! This occurs whether I'm playing it through bluetooth headphones or through the watch speaker; any suggestions?
 
I also could not get WatchCast to work. I wanted to use it because the interface looked pretty but the transfers are always unsuccessful.

I’m using WatchPlayer on my Series 3 every day which does work. Albeit, it has a lot of quirks. Once you start a podcast you gotta remember to not use Siri or it’ll come to a screeching halt. But Apple makes podcasts on the Apple Watch darn near impossible so I’m just happy that the transfer function has been rock solid thus far. I also have to go into Music first and get sound coming to my AirPods. Then I go to WatchPlayer and start my podcast.

If you have a Series 0, 1, or 2 I’d say forget about it. Transfers will take hours.
 
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It appears that the Now Playing app now works flawlessly with the WatchCast app! The play and pause actually works, and I discovered today that you can tap a corner to switch to playing audio from your iPhone and the AirPods will seamlessly switch sources! In fact the iPhone has the headphone icon while also playing stuff on the Watch, pretty great. Think this may be with the latest iOS and watchOS updates.
 
WatchPlayer (the alternative to WatchCast) was updated today and supports downloading podcasts directly on the watch over LTE or WiFi. I tried this with a very short preview episode and it didn’t seem to work at all, I know this isn’t the experience it should be know devs have streaming up and running and it is functional unlike what I’ve experienced so far with this, hopefully further optimizations come and this kind of feature comes to WatchCast.
 
powerslave65 said:
I use Watch Player because it's free. You install it on the iPhone, and then make sure the the phone and watch are connected. Once in the app on the iphone click the top right icon and search for podcasts you want to add. Then open the app on the watch. Then back on the the iphone in the app select the one you want to transfer to the watch and click the transfer button. It takes a few minutes and sometimes has to be clicked more than once to get the connection going. The watch implementation of the app indicates the progress not the phone version. Rinse and repeat. Like I said it is a little clunky but you'll get it.
Click to expand...

How is Apple not ashamed of this?

My credit card is in my hand, Tim, but until you add pretty basic functionality I’m sticking with my S2.
 
profmatt said:
How is Apple not ashamed of this?

My credit card is in my hand, Tim, but until you add pretty basic functionality I’m sticking with my S2.
Click to expand...

Podcasts transfers are much quicker on the Series 3 than the Series 2. By a magnitude of 10. Also, streaming should be fairly easy over LTE which isn’t even possible on the 2. So the Series 3 is light years ahead of the Series 2.

What MusicPenGuy was talking about was downloading podcasts directly from your watch without your iPhone. Different from downloading to your iPhone and transferring to your watch, which is relatively fast now. The direct to watch method is a new thing still in the experimental stages.
 
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Yea transferring from the phone to the watch is not a bad process right now with the WatchCast app, reliability is there with Series 3 and the speed is pretty good. Streaming apps are in development and I’m pretty sure will come within the next few months.
 
It looks like iCatcher was updated to support local playback on the Apple Watch, I bought it and tried it out and think that WatchCast is still the better option - it displays percentage for transfers and because it was designed just for the watch it offers a simple and clean interface that I’m not finding with iCatcher.
 
CrunchyBagel said:
If you want to try an alternative, I've just released a new app called Outcast. It's just 99c for now: https://outcastapp.com
Click to expand...

Trying your app out for a few days.

What does the “star” feature do if I star a podcast?

Is there a way to see more past episodes from the watch? The list of available podcasts only seems to go back about 15 episodes or so?
 
No idea if this is possible, but I would love if a podcast app for the watch could have a list of the recently released episodes I’m subscribed to, like you see on iOS - is this a limitation of the OS? So far all of the apps require you to go out and look for the episodes. (Currently use Overcast just to get notificed of new episodes and then download on another app)
 
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