How to Play Offline Music on Android Watch Without Your Phone.
Yes you can listen to music on your Apple Watch by connecting it to AirPods without the paired iPhone being nearby. It turns out you can do the same with Android watches and any Bluetooth headphones. Useful for morning jogging or workouts in the gym.
Sadly, Spotify can’t run as a standalone app on Android watches, so it didn’t. But fortunately, there are many other ways to download music to your Android watch.
We’re going to do it in 2 steps
- Transfer Music to Android Watch
- Pair Bluetooth Headset with Android Wear
Step 1: Transfer music to Android Watch
1. Google Play Music
The easiest way to quickly download music to your Android watch is through Play Music. However, the Google Play Music app can be very finicky at times. First, download the Google Play Music app on your smartphone and smartwatch. Also, it goes without saying that both your Android watch and phone must be under the same Google account.
After that, launch the app on your smartphone, put all songs in one playlist to make it easy to download multiple songs.
After creating your playlist, go to the Play Music app on your smartwatch. Make sure your watch is connected to Wi-Fi. Then swipe up to go to the “My Library” section and tap on it. Then click on the first option called Playlists.
On this screen, you will see the same playlist that you created on your smartphone. Then you will see a download icon next to the playlist title. Click on it to start downloading songs to your watch for offline listening.
Sometimes when loading a playlist, you may receive an “Unknown loading error” message. Make sure you have enough space on your smartwatch, or simply uninstall the app and try downloading the playlist again.
If Google Play Music won’t load playlists on your smartwatch, try clearing your cache and make sure the Google Id used for Play Music is registered on only one device.
2. Wear a media application
In case the Play Music trick doesn’t work for you, and there are good reasons why it doesn’t work. It took me almost a day and a multi-device connection to get it working. Hence, I would really recommend using the WearMedia app to download songs to your smartwatch.
You will need to download the WearMedia app on both your watch and phone. After installation, grant the required permission and open the app on your smartphone. The smartphone app is divided into 3 sections, or rather tabs. The first tab represents the file structure of your smartphone, and the second is for files on the watch. The last tab is for displaying the file copy status. The main work will be related to the phone app, which is good since it is more interactive for working with a large screen.
If you don’t see the watch files on your phone, open the WearMedia app on your smartwatch and try again.
Read:Â Is a Smartwatch Worth It?
Now, on the Browser File Browser tab, navigate to the folder where you want to save your music files. In my case, I want to save it in the Music folder.
Then go to your smartphone’s file explorer tab and navigate to the music files you want to send to your watch. On the right side of the file, you will see a copy icon. Click on it and you will get a popup notifying you of the source and target location. Click on the “OK” button and the file transfer will begin. You can track the status on the last tab. Since files are sent via Bluetooth, this will take a while.
After copying the files to your watch, go to the Wear Media app on your watch. The music player screen will be blank because the app cannot automatically detect music files. So, we need to manually select the music files to play from the storage. To do this, swipe right and navigate to the folder where you copied the music files.
When you find music files, click on them to play. The application will play all the music files in a specific folder sequentially. Hence, it is recommended to keep all music files in one folder, otherwise you will have to repeat the process of locating the file for each song.
2. ADB
If none of the above methods work for you, ADB is the last solution. As an Android device, you can use ADB to send files to TicWatch. To enable ADB access on the watch, we need to enable ADB debugging. To do this, go to your watch settings by clicking the gear icon in the notification bar or in the watch menu. Scroll down the list and click System.
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In System Preferences, click “About” at the bottom of the list. In the About section, you will see the Build Number label. Click on it 5 times to unlock Developer Options.
Once you’ve unlocked the developer options, head back to the main settings menu page. At the bottom, you will see Developer Options just below the System option. Click on it to enter developer options and go to “ADB Debugging”, click on it to enable ADB debugging.
Once you’ve enabled ADB Debugged, we can finally transfer songs from laptop to watch. Connect your watch to your laptop via a branded charger. For what follows, we need ADB on Windows. The installation is pretty straightforward, and we have a detailed tutorial on it and some useful ADB commands. After extracting ADB on Windows, go to the ADB folder and run the following command. adb devices
You will be prompted for ADB permission on your watch, select “Trust this device†and continue. The command output should look similar to the following screenshot.
Once you connect the watch to your PC via ADB, we can upload music files to it. Use the following command to send a music file to the watch’s internal memory. adb push “C: /Routine.mp3” “/mnt/sdcard/music/Routine.mp3”
Here “C: /Routine.mp3†is the location of the MP3 file on my laptop and “/mnt/sdcard/music/Routine.mp3†is the destination on the watch. Alternatively, you can also send the whole directory instead of a single file, the command would be: adb push “C: / Music” “/ mnt / storage / music / myMusic
After the file transfer is complete, open Wear Media or Play Music to play music files on your watch.
Step 2: Pair the Bluetooth Headset with Android Wear
Once you’ve saved the music to your watch, you can listen to it using your watch’s tiny speaker, which of course doesn’t make sense. So let’s see how you can connect a Bluetooth headset to your watch and listen to music without your phone.
Enable pairing mode on the Bluetooth headset. Now on your smartwatch, swipe down from the home screen and tap on the gear icon to go to settings.
Now you will see the connected devices in the Bluetooth menu. Scroll down the list and click on Available Devices. In the available devices section, you will find the name of your Bluetooth headset. Click on it to connect your Android watch to a Bluetooth headset. Once connected, it will show as connected in the Bluetooth menu.
Packaging
Wear OS has a lot of features and customization as it is an Android based system. But unfortunately, it always gives way to unsatisfactory smartwatch hardware. I think Google will take responsibility for them and release a good Pixel Watch with a clean look and a comfortable Wear operating system.
For any questions or concerns, let me know in the comments below and I’ll get back to you.
Also Read: How to Play Offline Music on Android Watch Without Your Phone.
How to Play Offline Music on Android Watch Without Your Phone