One of the big selling points of smartwatches is the ability to control apps without needing to pull out your phone. However, due to the absence of an official Apple Watch app, adjusting music in Spotify using Apple’s smartwatch always felt kind of clunky. Now that’s changing. Spotify is finally gracing Apple Watch owners with bespoke software after months of rumours and speculation.
Before you start shouting for joy though, you should know that Spotify’s Apple Watch app is still missing a few major features.
While the Watch app lets you control music and favourite songs playing on your phone or Spotify Connect devices, it doesn’t offer the ability to download songs or podcasts to the device offline. It also doesn’t let you stream music from the Watch to Bluetooth headphones on Apple Watches with built-in 4G LTE.
That last caveat is a biggie. Apple often positions its 4G-equipped Watches as standalone devices that you can use to stay connected while on a run or bike ride without the need to drag your phone around. Spotify says it’s working on adding this functionality in the future, but currently there doesn’t seem to be a specific timeframe for when those features will be available.
We’ve reached out to Spotify for more info regarding why offline playback and local music streaming aren’t available at launch. In response, the company reiterated that it has “many exciting things coming up —including the ability to listen to your music and podcasts offline.”
For now, Spotify says its limited Apple Watch app will start rolling out to iOS users sometime in the “coming week.” Once you do get the app, when listening to music normally on Spotify, Apple’s traditional Now Playing screen will automatically get replaced with Spotify’s UI, so you can pause and skip between tracks quickly, and even go back 15 seconds with a tap in case you missed something.