Just last month, YouTube Music’s smartwatch app was only available on Galaxy Watch 4 exclusively which was pretty limiting considering only a few people have the latest Samsung smartwatch. A few weeks later it became available for Wear OS 2 devices that were powered by Snapdragon Wear 4100. The promise was that older smartwatches will also be getting the music streaming app and now finally, it’s indeed available for those smartwatches running on the Wear 3100 chipset and the latest version of Wear OS 2.
The “older” smartwatches that have a Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset will now be able to install the YouTube Music app on their device. You can search for it on the Google Play Store either on your watch directly or through the phone client using remote downloading. You’ll be able to download playlists on your device so you can listen to music even without your smartphone near you either while you’re running outside or doing errands around the house.
You will of course need to have a YouTube Music Premium subscription to be able to have on-the-go listening. The app shows “Downloads” which can include your Offline Mixtape, Your Likes, and Discover Mix, “Recommended” for some playlist suggestions, and “Library”. There’s also “Settings” at the bottom where you can set how many songs can be stored on your wearable device. Once you start playing music, you can swipe left for the Now Playing controls.
Just a couple of weeks ago, only devices like the Galaxy Watch 4, the new Fossil and Michael Kors Gen 6 devices, the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 Cellular/LTE, and the TicWatch E3 had YouTube Music. Now devices like the Moto 360, TAG Heuer Connected and basically, any smartwatch launched in the past two years that are running on Wear OS 2 will be able to get their music on the go without their connected smartphones.
Now the big question for Wear OS 2 device owners is will Google also bring Wear OS 3 eventually to them? There hasn’t been any news about this or if this is even possible so we’ll have to wait and see. Or just buy a new smartwatch eventually, wallet willing.
