Garmin has rolled out support for offline YouTube Music on their watches. It allows you to download music and podcasts from YouTube Music in exactly the same way as you do for Spotify, Amazon Music and others. Like this one, this also requires a subscription to those platforms to download music.
For those familiar with Spotify and other platforms on Garmin watches, this is basically the same thing. You link your music provider account to the watch, then use WiFi to download the music you want to play, and then you can access that music anytime (without needing cellular or WiFi).
The requirements:
I thought I would give a quick explanation on how to do the installation as it is quite simple and easy. But first you need four things:
1) Garmin Connect IQ app installed on your phone
2) Garmin Connect Mobile app installed on your phone
3) Some kind of Bluetooth headphones/speaker
4) Compatible Garmin watch, see below
As for which devices are compatible, here’s the full/updated list, but basically it comes down to:
– Garmin D2 Mach 1 Pro
– Garmin Epix & Epix Pro series
– Garmin Enduro 2 series
– Garmin Fenix 7 & Fenix 7 Pro series
– Garmin Forerunner 255/255S/265/265 Music, Forerunner 955/965
– Garmin Tactix 7 series
– Garmin Venu 2/2S, 2 Plus, 3/3 series
There are some very many music compatible devices not listed (supporting Spotify and others), which I find strange. Things like the Fenix 6 series, or the Forerunner 945, or, or, or… I asked Garmin why there were so many missing devices and they said, “More devices are expected to be added after launch added!” There is no set date, but I can keep you posted as I find out more. So… let’s hope.
Quick installation guide:
The first thing you do is install the YouTube Music Connect IQ app on your watch. To do this, you’ll need to crack open the Garmin Connect IQ store.
1) Open the Garmin Connect IQ app and make sure your watch is selected in the bottom right (especially if you have another Garmin device such as an Edge bike computer). You’ll probably see the YouTube Music app on the homepage:
2) If you don’t see the YouTube Music app on the homepage, just search for it. Once opened, tap to install it. Also tap ‘Allow’ to grant permissions.
3) The installation on your watch will take a few seconds, after which you will see a page indicating that the installation has been successfully installed. To continue the installation:
4) Your phone opens a web page through Garmin Connect. If Garmin Connect wasn’t open at the time, reopen Garmin Connect and then (if you get an error message) simply reopen the Music app on your watch. This time it is requested.
5) Enter the code into your watch, in the form above, then tap through the linking agreement above.
With that you are ready to start using it:
Download and play music:
1) Your watch probably has the app open, but just in case it doesn’t, you can scroll down your widget overviews to find it:
2) Once you’ve done that, you’ll end up here:
3) You can open ‘Library’ to see things in your library (things you’ve previously saved to the YouTube Music app on your phone), or click ‘Music’ to see more general music recommendations, like workout playlists . Podcasts is for…well, podcasts. Here are the training recommendations:
4) In my case, if I select Podcast, I see the podcasts I have and choose to download a particular episode:
5) The same also applies to other music playlists, which I can then select to download.
6) After you select the things you want to download, it will search for WiFi (networks you set up earlier):
7) And from there it starts downloading them:
8) Once downloaded, you can choose any music playlist (or podcast) to play, using your paired Bluetooth headphones:
9) As before, you can play/pause/skip/back/shuffle/repeat at your discretion from the menus.
All of this is consistent with how other music sources with Garmin watches work today.
Complete:
Ultimately, I’m quite surprised that this is happening. I remember hearing that this was in the works many years ago, but I assumed it was eventually canned when Google decided to make a bigger push for music on their own or partner devices. Maybe that was the case, or maybe someone at YouTube Music has now decided that subscription revenue is forever worth more than one-time hardware revenue. Or that it was more likely to generate subscription revenue than product revenue. Anyway, it’s good to see!
As for other music sources, many people have naturally asked for Apple Music. Keep in mind that this isn’t really Garmin’s choice here. Garmin has repeatedly said that they would love to support Apple Music on Garmin devices, but I suspect Apple isn’t exactly in a rush to help a competitor out here. In the same way that Garmin has said they would like to sync Peloton workouts natively with Garmin Connect. If and when this kind of thing happens, it will happen at the start of Apple or Peloton, rather than Garmin.
But as this week proved with YouTube Music… never say never.
With that – thanks for reading
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