Samsung Watch 4 Classic Playback

[joecol]

Plan

Spotify Premium Duo

Country

United States

Device

Samsung Galaxy S21 Paired with Samsung Watch 4

Operating System

Phone: Android 12 / Watch: One UI 3.0/ System Version 11

My Question or Issue

I downloaded music to my Samsung Watch 4 Classic.  When I try to playback the music, I am prompted to indicate if I am playing from my phone or watch.  When I select the watch, it just brings up the Bluetooth menu.  I've downloaded/played music directly from my watch in the past.  However, I have no idea what the watch/Spotify app is doing lately.  I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the Spotify app and pairing it with my phone.  Attached are screenshots showing 1. Downloaded music and 2. The menu that pops up when I try to playback downloaded music directly from my watch.

Downloaded MusicMenu that pops up when trying to playback downloaded music on watch

[Kiril]

Hey @joecol,

thanks for posting. We don't have anyone on the moderator team with a watch like yours, so we're not experts on the device, but we'll still try and offer some suggestions.

Reinstalling of course is an important first step. When you did that and repaired your phone, did you pair it through the Samsung wearable mobile app or just from your phone? Also, we noticed you're on the newest Android version. Do you recall if this was an issue while using Android 11?

Lastly, we know it can be bothersome, but it might be worth trying to factory reset your watch to see if functionality is restored.

Keep us posted!

[joecol]

Hi Kiril,

I tried the following steps:

• Factory reset the watch (Did not solve the issue.)
• Uninstalled/reinstalled the Spotify app on the phone and watch in the following order:
  1. Installed Spotify on my phone, logged in, and downloaded music.
  2. Installed the wearable app on my watch. 
  3. Opened the app on my watch, received a pairing code, then paired Spotify wearable to my phone.
  4. I downloaded music to my watch.
  5. I try playing music directly from my watch without my phone which brings up the Bluetooth menu as I noted in my first post.
• The problem does seem to coincide with the phone recently updating to Android 12.  The app worked as recently as a few weeks ago before the phone updated.  Also note, the watch and wearable app received numerous updates since I purchased it a few months ago.
• My wife has a Google Pixel 3a XL paired to a Samsung Watch 4 (I have the Watch 4 Classic).  Her Spotify wearable app used to work until recently and she is experiencing the same issue as me.  Her phone also updated in the last few weeks to Android 12.

Thanks for your help.  Any additional ideas are greatly appreciated.

Joe

[Alex]

Hey @joecol,

Thanks for the reply and the detailed info.

Can you go into your phone's app settings and check that the Spotify app is granted all Permissions. These can be automatically disabled when the phone updates.

Also make sure that Battery Optimization is not turned on for Spotify.

If that doesn't help, let us know if you can play music from the watch while you're close to the phone and are on the same WiFi.

Cheers.

[joecol]

Alex,

As requested, I tried:

• The "Nearby devices" permission was granted.  I granted all other permissions to ensure this isn't the issue.
• I ensured battery optimization is not on for the Spotify app and I tried disabling the "Power saving" mode on the phone.
• The phone and watch are connected to the same wifi network. 

None of the above suggestions worked.  The only thing I am able to do with the Spotify app on the watch is control playback on the phone.  When I begin playing a song on my phone, I am able to play/pause/FF/rewind music from the Spotify app on my watch.

Thanks,

joecol

[MafeG]

Hi @joecol,

Thank you for keeping in touch.

In order to keep investigating this, can you access your account on a friend or family member's phone with Android 11 and pair your watch to it? 

We want to be sure if the same account on different Android versions exhibits different behavior. 

Let us know how this goes.

[joecol]

MafeG,

Thank you for responding and sorry for not replying until now.  I'm trying to find someone who has a phone that is still running Android 11 to test.  I'll keep you posted if I find one.

Thanks,

joecol

[astrobird]

Hi

   I cast music from my phone and control it with my watch samsung G4.

Suddenly the spotify app showed the music I played last week and would not go away.

When I pressed pause music would stop and voice would say sorry you music is being played on another device.

Best solution I have found is uninstall spotify from SG4 and use the media player which shows a spotify logo and controls everything quite well.I think the player is samsung music.