Offline Spotify playback on Wear OS is coming soon

As convenient and endlessly useful as smartwatches are, they’re still largely dependent on their connected smartphones for their cooler features. Like Spotify playback for example. Having to worry about your fragile, glass brick clunking around in your pocket while you run kind of undermines the convenience of controlling your music through your smartwatch, doesn’t it? Well, Spotify’s fixing that problem on Wear OS watches, by rolling out offline playback.

Spotify on your wrist, offline

“In the coming weeks, Spotify users will be able to play their favorite playlists, albums, and podcasts with their smartwatches that run Wear OS,” the streaming platform announced in a blog post. Such Wear OS watches include the newly unveiled Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. 

You’ll be able to access your entire Spotify selection through the Wear OS app, and what’s more, is you’ll be able to download your favourite playlists and podcasts directly onto your smartwatch’s internal storage. Watch storage isn’t particularly impressive though, so you’ll have to be selective with your offline choices.

Now, this isn’t available to everyone, or every device. Devices will need to be running Wear OS 2.0 or higher, Spotify notes, and downloads will only be available to Premium members. This kind of tracks, considering non-premium users in the mobile Spotify app can’t download everything, only podcasts. 

The download process is almost exactly the same as it is in the mobile version of the app, but if you’ve never seen that before here’s a quick explainer:

• First, find what you want to download in-app on your watch
• Then tap “Download to watch”
• You can then leave it alone for a few minutes or watch the downloading process in your watch’s “Downloads” section
• Once the download is complete, you should see a green arrow next to song/podcast/album/playlist, indicating that it’s ready to be played offline. 

The new feature comes along with an update and redesigns for Spotify’s Wear OS app. Users can expect to see it appearing on their wrists in the next few weeks.