Up until now, if you wanted to use Spotify on your Apple Watch, the app would only act as a glorified remote – you’d have to do the actual streaming from your paired smartphone.
Now, the streaming giant has started rolling out a server-side update to its watchOS app, with 9to5Mac reporting that several users have had their Apple Watches display a message telling them it was ready to stream directly from Spotify.
Wish Spotify streamed on Apple Watch? The time has arrived for some https://t.co/EoaMw1FKmN by @michaelpotuckNovember 3, 2020
While you won’t need your connected phone to stream the music itself, you will still need your Apple Watch to have internet access for it to stream live, whether it be LTE or Wi-Fi.
It appears that selecting the option to stream Spotify from your Apple Watch will function much in the same way as currently choosing between devices, with a menu item in the bottom right corner of the UI allowing you to cycle between your devices that actively have the app running.
With limited screen real estate to work with, the watchOS version of the app won’t allow you to search via typing, but Siri will be able to help you out there in the usual fashion.
Instead of searching, you’ll be able to access your recently played items, as well as your library full of artists, albums and playlists.
If you aren’t seeing the update yet, we expect it will roll out to your device in the coming days, but without any official word from Spotify, there’s no promise on the timeframe.
It’s even possible that it’s just another trial group of users that are receiving the functionality at present, although this is doubtful as the feature has been undergoing testing since September with a set of select users.
When Spotify makes an announcement, we’ll update this article with more details on exactly how fully-featured the Spotify watchOS app has become.