Wear OS app does not work
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I’m unable to control playback with the provided app for Wear OS. The app shows progress of an episode playback, but there is no possibility to either play/pause or adjust volume level.
Hopefully, it’s possible to use default Wear OS playback controls
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From the main Pocket Casts Wear OS screen, you can tap on Now Playing at the top to display playback controls. You can see a video showing this functionality in our announcement post of the Wear OS app:
https://blog.pocketcasts.com/2023/07/12/wear-os-app/
You can also find more information about the Wear OS app on its documentation page:
https://support.pocketcasts.com/article/wear-os/
If you run into any trouble along the way, though, feel free to reach out to us through the mobile app — Profile > Settings > Help & Feedback > Get in touch.
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Can you tell us more about what you’re experiencing? What kind of watch do you have? What version of Wear OS are you using?
there is no possibility to either play/pause or adjust volume level.
Does this mean that the UI buttons for playing/pausing/adjusting-the-volume do not respond, or that the UI responds (i.e., the play icon changes to a pause icon) but doesn’t actually play/pause/adjust-the-volume.
Hopefully, it’s possible to use default Wear OS playback controls
Once you start playback from the Pocket Casts app on your watch, you should be able to use the Wear OS default media controls to control playback (in addition to using the controls from within the Pocket Casts watch app).
One additional thing to try would be to turn off bluetooth on your watch and then try to play the episode. If playback works after that, let me know—obviously you shouldn’t have to do that.
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What kind of watch do you have? What version of Wear OS are you using?
Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro.
Build Number : R920XXU1AWD6 Android version : R(AndroidWear 4) Release Date : 2023-04-24 Security patch level : 2023-04-01
Does this mean that the UI buttons for playing/pausing/adjusting-the-volume do not respond, or that the UI responds (i.e., the play icon changes to a pause icon) but doesn’t actually play/pause/adjust-the-volume.
UI buttons for playing/pausing/adjusting-the-volume do not respond
One additional thing to try would be to turn off bluetooth on your watch and then try to play the episode. If playback works after that, let me know—obviously you shouldn’t have to do that.
I don’t understand this. The only thing I can tell is that In able to control playback from my phone as well as with standard playback menu on my watch
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Thanks for the additional information. If you could send us your logs from the watch after you unsuccessfully attempt to play an episode, that would be helpful. You can do this by opening the Pocket Casts watch app, going to “Settings” → “Help & feedback” → “Contact support”. Tapping that should present a share dialog on your paired phone so that you can email us your logs.
UI buttons for playing/pausing/adjusting-the-volume do not respond
Does everything else in the Pocket Casts watch app respond normally? For example, swiping between the list view, now playing, and up next screens. Likewise, are you able to change the playback effects for the currently playing episode on the watch after you tap the playback effects button on the Now Playing screen?
I assume that you were able to log in fine and it synced your account so that your subscribed podcasts and up next queue are visible in the Pocket Casts watch app?
In able to control playback from my phone as well as with standard playback menu on my watch
Just to give some additional context, the way the phone and watch Pocket Casts apps work currently, playback from the phone app and playback from the watch app are completely independent. The Pocket Casts watch app doesn’t know what, if anything, the Pocket Casts phone app is playing, and the phone app does not know what, if anything, the Pocket Casts watch app is playing.
Both apps do communicate their playback status with the Android operating system though, and that’s why it is possible to start playback from either the phone app or the watch app and pause/play from the Watch OS media controls (i.e., the controls that exist on your watch outside the Pocket Casts watch app). The same does not apply on the phone side though because is not possible to control playback on the Pocket Casts watch app from your phone, even if you have Pocket Casts installed on your phone.
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Just to give some additional context, the way the phone and watch Pocket Casts apps work currently, playback from the phone app and playback from the watch app are completely independent. The Pocket Casts watch app doesn’t know what, if anything, the Pocket Casts phone app is playing, and the phone app does not know what, if anything, the Pocket Casts watch app is playing.
It seems I misunderstood the purpose of Wear OS app. Do I correctly understand that Wear OS app has nothing to do with podcast playback control on the phone?
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That’s right. Playback on the Android Wear OS app for Pocket Casts is completely separate from the phone app. It only communicates with the phone app via syncing your account just like two Android phones running Pocket Casts would communicate. Controlling the phone app from the watch app is in our plans (https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-android/issues/1096), but we don’t have a timeline for when it will be implemented.
This is an area where our Apple watch app (https://support.pocketcasts.com/article/apple-watch/) is a bit more powerful since it already has these two modes for playback: (1) independent playback like the Android WearOS app has, and (2) linked playback where it controls playback on the phone.
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