Long awaited: Tired of lugging around your clunky iPhone to listen to music on a jog or while exercising? Relief is here. The watchOS Spotify app is finally getting standalone playback. The beta feature will begin a slow rollout to Apple Watches starting today.
On Wednesday, Spotify announced that it is rolling out standalone streaming on the Apple Watch. Now users can listen to music or podcasts straight from their wrist without being tethered to their phone. With Siri voice control, which it introduced back in April, it should be easy and convenient to operate the app while exercising.
There are a few requirements to use the feature. Of course, since you won't be relying on your phone, the watch must have access to a stable WiFi or cellular signal. You also need a set of Bluetooth headphones paired with your Apple Watch.
Yes! I'm now seeing it on my Apple Watch pic.twitter.com/YBSRXcILWF
— Chad Milburn (@cmilburndesign) November 3, 2020
While the Spotify watchOS app does work on all generations of Apple Watch, standalone playback is only available on Series 3 or later. You will also need to be updated to at least watchOS 6.0. However, Spotify recommends watchOS 7.1+ to enjoy full functionality.
Untethered playback has been a highly requested feature for quite some time, but Spotify only recently took up the challenge. 9to5Mac notes that the company first started testing it back in September with just a handful of users.
Even though standalone streaming is now available to a broader swath of users, it still in beta, so Spotify has it on a slow rollout. If you are not lucky enough to have the update yet, be patient.
Image credit: Moma Okgo
https://www.techspot.com/news/87454-spotify-can-now-stream-music-straight-apple-watch.html
