How to Pair AirPods with the Apple Watch!

Check out our Related Videos!

Subscribe for Tech Videos including Tech How To’s with New Videos Every Friday!

Follow us on Twitter: @LifeHacksIRL

In this video I’m going to show you how to play music directly from your Apple Watch so you can listen to it on your AirPods without the presence of your iPhone!

I’ve talked to a lot of people who are having problems using their AirPods, bluetooth headphones or even a bluetooth speaker with their Apple Watch and found I was having an issue as well whenever I tried.

I would recommend pairing your AirPods with your iPhone through the usual process, if you’d like to see that in action please check out my video “Apple AirPod User Guide and Tutorial!”. Once you setup or pair your AirPods to your iPhone then they are automatically available to all of your other apple devices that you are logged into through the same iCloud login.

Then on your Apple Watch, you would just swipe up on the main watch face to access your apple watch control centre and change the airplay audio output by pressing the airplay button.

Once you are in the airplay output menu you should see your AirPods there already as an option since they were setup with your iPhone. You would just press the AirPods button and it you’d think it would work. And if it does, then right on!! But a lot of us usually end up with an error message saying “Connection Failed make sure your AirPods are turned on and in range”. I was getting this error message every time no matter what I did. You just need to essentially reset the bluetooth transmitter, which is really easy. before changing the airplay audio output to the AirPods put your watch in airplane mode for a short time.

To do this you first swipe up to access Control Centre on the watch and choose airplane mode. Make sure you wait until you get the status message at the top that says your “disconnected”. then you can turn off airplane mode and now go change the airplay output to your AirPods, now it works! You can now play music that you loaded to your watch, directly from your Apple Watch to your AirPods without your iPhone.

Now I know what many of you are probably asking, how do I get music on my watch and play it?

First on your iPhone open the watch app, from the main “my watch” tab scroll down to and press music. This will take you to the music menu where you can choose to sync any playlist from your iPhone to your Apple Watch. In my case you can see I chose my “music mix 2017” playlist. As you can see on this screen the Apple Watch has a maximum storage limit of 2 gb for music, but you can adjust this option to decrease the storage space or specify a song limit instead if you prefer. Personally, I just left it at 2 gb, but it’s nice to know you can control the space allocation if necessary.

Now that you’ve specified the music you just need to sync it over to your apple watch, this is the part that takes a while. As the description on this screen says “Music syncs when Apple Watch is on its charger. Once it’s synced music will be available on Apple Watch even when it’s out of range of your iPhone.” I usually charge my apple watch and iPhone overnight while I’m sleeping, I synced about 738mb worth of music over to my watch and if I recall that took 2 or 3 nights to copy over to my watch. so like I said, it’s takes a while. As a side note, if you like the Apple Watch and iPhone stand I use it’s available on amazon and isn’t overly expensive, I’ll leave a link in the description below if you’d like to check it out!

To play the music from your Apple Watch you just launch the music app. I usually just use the music complication to access it, as I find it faster and more convenient. Once in the app just scroll all the way to the top and choose the music source to play from, in this case the apple watch and then you can explore the music through either my music or playlists, I like using the playlists option because then it only shows what’s actually on my watch. I can then enter the playlist and select what I want to hear, it’s pretty easy. At any time you can switch back to your iPhone by either changing the source in the music app or changing the airplay output on your iPhone.

So now you know how to pair your AirPods with your Apple Watch and play music without your iPhone!! I find this really comes in handy when I go for an outdoor jog around the neighbourhood and don’t want to bring my phone with me!

If you found this video helpful feel free to give the video a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more Tech how to’s!

As always, thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!

[levig-man]

After I Trying this Method I still can’t pairing my AirPods to my watch series 5.

[itsfrdemarcus]

Who else is watching this video with their airpods

[sophialarkin]

This video needs more thumbs up 👍 it’s great

[TheCelestialhealer]

Thank you for this video, but I have a different problem. I love using the application ismooth run and listen to it only over the Apple Watch. But the volume is so low, even when I put it on highest. Any ideas.

[PatrickJGamboa]

Thank you for this video! I have a Series 3 GPS-only, and I've researched online and they said you require your iPhone nearby in order to pair your AirPods directly to your Watch, but when I lost power on my iPhone and couldn't connect my AirPods at all, I thought it was all over for me, thank goodness for this simple video, you saved my life! Thank you!

[stasvladimer]

Thank you my man! Some times I’m at the gym and while working out it would disconnect randomly from my EarPods now it’s fixed

[franciscovargas]

Can you connect two of them at the same time?

[jarviswilson-short]

Fantastic video man. Really well edited, informative and straight to the point. Subscribed man!

[viktorrr]

Whenever i turn on airplane mode I just get the disconnected symbol (phone with a stripe over it) but not the text and when I then try to connect after that it still does not work (it says make sure...) what is the fix in that case?

[CissyBrazil]

How to up volume? I did all the steps but volume really low. Anyone know?

[carolinamasso]

I have an applewatch series 3 gps which I just bought and everytime i try to connect my airpods the advise of connection failed pops up, I have tried everything and it stills doesnt work, whay should I do?

[yungplague]

Am I able to pause my music with the Apple Watch if I use Spotify ?

[slyrixz]

Can I add music to my apple watch from my samsung note 9

[henryhalbuer]

Thanks so much. This worked! I admit that I was very frustrated with the inability of my new airpods making the connection to my new Apple Watch 3. Although going back and forth to/from Airplane Mode is a quick fix, Apple really needs to debug this problem ASAP.

[jocatt]

Thank you!! wish i would of seen this earlier, would of saved me lots of time & frustration!

[jshwau]

OKAY I SEE *SHINEE AND JONGHYUN* IN YOUR PLAYLIST... TASTE!!

[marahammari]

Does the AirPods work with Apple Watch series 1 ?

[gabecalandrino]

So we obviously need Apple Music for this right?

[davindersingh]

I have one question. I own a Bluetooth earphone of skullcandy with I usually pair with my iphone 6s, I’m planning to buy apple watch. Will I able to connect watch and use Bluetooth earphone at same time???
Thanks in advance

[excellentenwiico]

wow thanks this actually works! even on the newest watchOS! thanks a lot! 👍