Garmin has rolled out support for YouTube Music offline on their watches. It allows you to download music and podcasts from YouTube Music in the same way as for Spotify, Amazon Music and others. Like those, it also requires a subscription to those platforms to download music.
For those familiar with Spotify and other platforms on Garmin watches, you’ll find it essentially the same. You’ll connect 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 (no cellular or WiFi needed).
Requests:
I thought I’d do a quick walkthrough on how to get set up, as it’s pretty easy and simple. First, though, you’ll need four things:
1) Garmin Connect IQ app installed on your phone
2) Garmin Connect Mobile app installed on your phone
3) Some sort of Bluetooth headset/speaker
4) Compatible Garmin watch, as below
As for compatible devices, the full/up-to-date list is here, but basically it boils 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 a number of very music-capable devices that aren’t on the list (which support Spotify and others), which is strange to me. Things like the Fenix 6 series, or the Forerunner 945, or, or, or… I asked Garmin why so many devices are missing and they said “more devices are expected to be added after release! There is no set date, but I can keep you posted as I learn more.” So here’s to hoping.
Quick Setup Guide:
The first thing you’ll do is install the YouTube Music Connect IQ app on your watch. This requires you to open the Garmin Connect IQ store.
1) Open the Garmin Connect IQ app and make sure your watch is selected in the lower right corner (especially if you have another Garmin device, such as an Edge cycling computer). You’ll probably see the YouTube Music app on the home page:
2) If you don’t see the YouTube Music app on the home page, just search for it. Once it opens, tap to install it. Also tap “Allow” to grant permission.
3) The installation will take a few seconds on your watch, after which you will see a page indicating that it has been installed and to continue the configuration:
4) On your phone, it will open a website through Garmin Connect. If Garmin Connect wasn’t open at the time, re-open Garmin Connect and then on your watch (if you have an error), just re-open the Music app and you’ll be prompted this time.
5) Enter the code on your watch, in the form above, and then tap through the link agreement above.
With that, you are ready to start using it:
Downloading and playing music:
1) Your watch probably has the app open, but in case it doesn’t, you can scroll down the widget views to find it:
2) Once you have it, you will find yourself here:
3) You can open Library to see things in your library (things you’ve previously saved in the YouTube Music app on your phone) or tap Music to see more general music recommendations, such as . workout playlists. Podcasts are for…yes ..podcasts. Here are the workout recommendations:
4) In my case, if I choose Podcast, I will see the podcasts I have and choose to download a specific episode:
5) The same goes for other music playlists, which I can then select to download.
6) After you have selected the things you want to download, it will go to search for WiFi (the networks you configured earlier):
7) And from there, their download will begin:
8) Once downloaded, you can select any playlist (or podcast) to play, which will use your paired Bluetooth headset:
9) As before, you can play/pause/skip/back/shuffle/repeat as you see fit from the menus.
All of this is in line with how other Garmin-enabled music sources work today.
Conclusion:
After all, I’m kind of surprised to see this happen. I remember years ago when I heard this was in the works, but I assumed it was eventually canned when Google decided to make a stronger push for music on its own/partner devices. Maybe it was, or maybe now someone in the YouTube Music department decided that perpetual subscription revenue is worth more than one-time hardware revenue. Or, that it was more likely to receive subscription revenue versus product revenue. Either way, it’s good to see!
As for other music sources, of course many people have been looking for Apple Music. Keep in mind, this isn’t really Garmin’s choice here. Garmin has repeatedly said that it would be more than happy to support Apple Music on Garmin devices, but I’m going to guess that Apple isn’t exactly rushing to help out a competitor here. In the same way that Garmin has said that they would be happy to sync Peloton workouts at first with Garmin Connect. If and when these kinds of things happen, it will be at the start of companies like Apple or Peloton, rather than Garmin.
However, as this week proved with YouTube Music…never say never.
With that – thanks for reading
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