Artwork not showing up on Pixel Watch 3

  • Unknown's avatar
    dyastrab · Member ·

    I own a Pixel 9 XL and Pixel Watch 3. Until a few weeks ago, when I played podcasts on my phone, the watch would show the artwork from the podcast. The artwork hasn’t appeared for a while. I’ve reset the watch, checked the connections and reinstalled the app. I checked that Use Episode Artwork setting is toggled on. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

  • staff-joey8 · Staff ·

    Hi there, @dyastrab

    That’s certainly odd. It would be best to send through your logs to us, as per: https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/collecting-app-logs/

    Also, please let us know if it isn’t working for all podcasts, or just specific ones?

  • Unknown's avatar
    dyastrab · Member ·

    I just sent in my logs.

    This affects all podcasts.

    Please note that this issue does not present itself for other apps like Youtube Music or Antennapod. It only is a problem when using Pocket Casts.

  • staff-eleanor · Staff ·

    Thanks for sending the app logs from Profile > Help & feedback > Contact Support > Get Support. We’ll keep an eye out for the log!

    Since you’ve already reset the watch, reinstalled the app, and confirmed “Use Episode Artwork” is on, here are a few additional things worth trying on the Android side:

    1. Open Pocket Casts on your phone and go to Profile > Settings > Appearance.
    2. Tap Refresh All Podcast Artwork to force the app to re-fetch artwork from scratch.
    3. While still in Appearance settings, confirm that Show artwork on lock screen is toggled on. This setting controls artwork delivery to connected devices including Wear OS watches, so it needs to be enabled alongside “Use Episode Artwork.”
    4. After doing both of the above, restart your phone and watch, then test playback again.

    You can find more detail on these settings in our [Appearance Settings article](https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/appearance-settings/).

    If none of the above helps, we’ll dig into the logs you sent to investigate further.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dyastrab · Member ·

    It had no effect on the problem. There is still no artwork showing up.

  • mikerockwell · Staff ·

    Could you try the following steps to see if it resolves the issue?

    1. On your Pixel Watch 3, open the Pocket Casts app and swipe to the leftmost screen
    2. Scroll down and tap “Settings”
    3. Tap “Refresh now” to manually sync your watch with your account
    4. Enable “Background refresh” in the watch settings for automatic updates

    From there you can try playing an episode and artwork should appear after a few seconds of playback. But let us know if you’re still having trouble afterward.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dyastrab · Member ·

    It works if I download and play the episode directly from the watch. The issue is that I normally stream pocket casts from my phone. (I use the watch for playback control. The watch memory is extremally small). Streaming a podcast episode is when the artwork stops working.

  • staff-lynn · Staff ·

    This does appear to be a known issue our development team is actively looking into related to how artwork is cached and delivered in certain playback scenarios. We don’t have a timeline to share on a fix, but your logs were added and will help the team investigate. Thanks for your patience.

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