Apple's watchOS 4.3 revives ability to browse an iPhone's music library from Apple Watch

With Apple's watchOS 4.3 beta, released to developers earlier on Thursday, users can once again peruse their iPhone's music catalog from a connected Apple Watch, a feature curiously removed from watchOS last year.

As seen in the screenshots above, the first watchOS 4.3 beta allows Apple Watch users to access, browse and control playback of their iPhone's music library.

The new OS appears to fully reinstate media controls lost with watchOS 4, including the ability to "love" or "dislike" songs, delete tracks from a connected library and route audio to AirPlay devices.

Apple caused a bit of a stir when it removed support for browsing connected iPhone music libraries with watchOS 4 last September.

At the time, users were able to control songs being played on a connected iPhone via a "Now Playing" screen, but browsing was limited to tracks synced to or stored on an Apple Watch. The situation improved slightly when Apple Music and iTunes Match streaming arrived on cellular-enabled Apple Watch Series 3 devices with a subsequent update, but the inability to browse an iPhone's catalog was for some a glaring oversight.

In previous watchOS versions, like watchOS 3, Apple Watch users were able to search for songs on a connected iPhone by selecting their phone as a source in Watch's built-in Music app. This feature was integral for the storage-constrained device, which even in its current form is maxed out at 16GB of available space. Audio streaming alleviated the problem to a certain degree, but a restriction to cellular versions of the device left owners of GPS only models in the lurch.

Apple released watchOS 4.3 beta earlier today without notes, leaving developers to spelunk through the OS to find new features like iPhone music library browsing.

21 Comments

clarker99 230 comments · 13 Years

About 6 years ago

Happy this feature is (just about) back!

anantksundaram 20391 comments · 18 Years

Hooray. I will finally do a software update. More importantly, I might seriously consider the Series 3 now.

It it was a frustratingly strange move by Apple. Never explained. The only thing I can figure is that they were desperately trying to push AppleMusic.

krawall 164 comments · 12 Years

Yay! Good news. I think I'll try the beta (not beta 1, of course) of this one, can't wait to have this feature back.

levi 344 comments · 10 Years

Thank god. If you’re not using cellular capable watch, the on device music experience is hardly ideal

StrangeDays 12980 comments · 8 Years

anantksundaram said:

Hooray. I will finally do a software update. More importantly, I might seriously consider the Series 3 now.

It it was a frustratingly strange move by Apple. Never explained. The only thing I can figure is that they were desperately trying to push AppleMusic.

I doubt it was such a sinister waxed-mustache-twirling ploy, and more likely an ease of use debate. my SO had often had trouble playing back from the wrong device, jogging away from the house only to have the music halt — not realizing she was navigating and playing back from the iphone, via the watch. a drag because she‘d then stop her run and dick around with the watch some more. she usually failed to switch it over to “local mode” and just ran in silence, pissed off. to her as a non techie having two modes was counter-intuitive. she just wanted to play music on her watch on a run and not have to fiddlly fart with it. the current mode made this use case easier to accomplish.