YouTube Music Streaming via Wear OS Watches
Google, via a recent Community post, has revealed that users will be able to play music via the YouTube Music app on Wear OS, whether on LTE or Wi-Fi. This will allow people to easily get access to their playlists on their Wear OS smartwatches without the need for having the phone around.
There’s another perk too; users will now able to add the YouTube app as a widget to easily access their playlists via the app. There are two conditions, though. Firstly, the supported device should be Android as cellular streaming is not supported on iOS and secondly, a YouTube Premium subscription is a must.
Once these conditions are fulfilled, you can easily access music on your smartwatch, even offline. The YouTube app also supports the Smart Downloads feature, which will automatically refresh the list of downloaded songs on Wear OS smartwatch when connected to Wi-Fi. This way, offline streaming will become more convenient. Additionally, the app will also provide users with custom playlists based on the streaming history.
This new functionality comes as a welcome change for Wear OS users as previously there wasn’t any direct support for YouTube Music streaming since the Google Play Music shut down in 2020. And, it was just last year when this functionality came to Wear OS 3 and while it did roll out to Wear OS 2 (a developer did it first!), it was just meant for offline playback. To recall, Apple Watch already has a YouTube Music app.
Plus, it kind of makes sense, considering Google is on the road to release its first smartwatch in the form of the Pixel Watch and adding direct access to one of its service will only be right. To recall, the Pixel Watch was recently previewed at the I/O 2022 event and shall become official by the end of this year, along with the Pixel 7 series. So, what do you have to say about YouTube Music streaming on Wear OS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
