Apple Watch
Listen to your Audiobookshelf audiobooks and podcasts on Apple Watch: browse your library from the wrist, download to the watch, and play offline with the iPhone left at home
If you run, swim, or otherwise would rather not strap a phone to your arm, this is the page you want. Browse your library from the wrist, put audio on the watch, and listen with the iPhone left behind. The watch app can also drive playback on the phone, so it works as a remote when the phone is in a bag.
Requirements
- watchOS 11 or later
- An Apple Watch paired to the iPhone running SoundLeaf
- The SoundLeaf watch app installed (see below)
Installing the Watch App
The watch app ships inside the iPhone app, so there’s nothing separate to buy.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone
- Scroll to Available Apps
- Tap Install next to SoundLeaf
If you have “Automatic App Install” turned on in the Watch app’s General settings, it installs on its own after you update SoundLeaf.
Sending a Book to the Watch
- Open the book or podcast episode on your iPhone
- Tap Send to Watch
- Leave both apps open for a moment while the handoff starts
The watch fetches the audio itself, over Wi-Fi when the phone isn’t around to relay it, so the phone doesn’t need to stay awake for the whole transfer. Progress shows on the watch’s own downloads screen, and on Settings → Apple Watch on the phone.
There’s a Send to Watch entry in the book’s overflow menu too, and tapping the button again on something already sent offers to take it back off.
Send to Watch only appears when a watch is paired. Big books take a while, so send them the night before rather than five minutes before a run.
Downloads can also start from the watch itself: open anything under Books or Podcasts on the watch and tap Download. Same result, no phone screen needed.
The Watch App
The watch app’s home screen is a short menu. At the top sits Play on, a two-way switch between Watch and iPhone. It decides where a tap plays: the watch itself, or the phone in your pocket. Everything below behaves the same either way.
Then the menu:
- Continue picks up the books and episodes you were in the middle of, most recent first.
- Under Books and Podcasts is your whole library, browsed from the wrist, books ordered by what you played last. These lists come from the phone, and the watch keeps its own copy, so they still open when the phone is nowhere near.
- What is fully downloaded sits under Downloads. Everything on that screen plays with the phone left at home.
- Status at the bottom reports what the link to the phone is doing right now, and shares logs when something needs reporting.
Open a book or an episode and the screen offers what is actually possible right then:
- Play if it is downloaded to the watch
- Stream if it isn’t, with the phone in reach to set it up
- Download to fetch it onto the watch, started from the watch itself
Listening Without Your iPhone
Once the audio is on the watch, everything you need is on your wrist:
- Play, pause, and skip, matching the skip lengths you chose in Settings
- Chapter list for jumping around a book
- Playback speed
- Volume on the Digital Crown
- Headphone controls, including the skip buttons on AirPods
The player marks which one it is at the top: Watch in red when the watch is playing, iPhone in blue when it is driving the phone. The bottom row is speed on the left, volume in the middle (turn the Digital Crown) and the chapter list on the right.
Pair your headphones to the watch directly (Settings → Bluetooth on the watch), not to the phone. This is a watchOS thing, not a SoundLeaf thing: the watch can only send audio to something paired with the watch. With nothing paired, the watch plays through its own speaker.
Using the Watch as a Remote for Your iPhone
Set Play on to iPhone and the watch drives the phone instead: play, pause, skips and speed all land on the phone’s player. The button in the top right opens a remote screen showing what the phone is playing. Browsing works the same; a tap plays on the phone. Useful when the phone is in a bag or a coat pocket.
When the phone cannot be reached, the remote says Phone out of reach in plain words rather than pretending the buttons work.
Manage From Your Phone
Since v2.2 the phone handles the whole of what sits on the watch. Nothing needs doing on the watch itself.
Go to Settings → Apple Watch → Content. The picker at the top switches between Books and Podcasts.
Take Several Things Off At Once
Every row has a circle on the left. Tap rows to pick them, and a card appears at the bottom saying how many you picked, with a Remove button. One confirmation and they all go.
An item still on its way to the watch cannot be picked. Wait for it, or let it arrive and remove it after.
Keep the Newest Episodes of a Show
With shows picked on the Podcasts tab, the Keep newest menu sets how many episodes of each stay on the watch: 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100. New episodes arrive on the watch by themselves and the oldest drop off as the count is passed.
The same setting sits on a show’s own settings screen if you’d rather set one show at a time.
Choosing Off, remove from the watch does what it says, and taking a show off the watch turns its keep rule off too, so episodes stop arriving. The confirmation tells you when that’s about to happen.
Put Back an Episode You Removed
Tap the arrow on a show to see its episodes one by one. An episode you took off reads you removed this and carries an Undo button. Tap it and the episode is sent to the watch again.
A removal by hand is remembered. The keep rule leaves that episode alone from then on, so it will not quietly come back on the next pass.
If the phone doesn’t hold that show’s episode list, the screen says so. Whatever is downloaded stays on the watch, and you can still take the whole show off from All shows.
Every row says where it stands in plain words: downloaded, downloading with a percentage, waiting to be picked up by the watch, stopped, or removing at the watch’s next pickup. When the watch hasn’t been in touch for a while, the screen says how old what it’s showing is rather than pretending to be live.
Complications and the Smart Stack
Add SoundLeaf to your watch face as a complication for a one-tap route back into what you’re listening to. It also shows up in the Smart Stack.
How Progress Gets Back to Your Server
Your listening from a phone-free session reaches your Audiobookshelf server on its own, once the phone is around again.
The reason it needs the phone is deliberate. The watch holds no credentials. Not your password, not a token. Your iPhone is the only device that talks to your server with your identity attached. Lose the watch and you have lost a watch, not an account.
So listening offline on the watch works fine, and the sessions wait on the watch until the phone is next in contact, usually within moments of opening either app. Sending a new book is the one thing that needs both apps awake at once, because the phone has to ask your server for the play session.
”Watch app asleep” is not an error
The Watch settings screen says things like “Watch app asleep · last talked just now” with a grey dot. That is the normal resting state of every watch app, and nothing is wrong.
iOS reports the watch as reachable only while the watch app is actually running and able to take a live message. A watch on your wrist, inches from the phone, with the app closed, reads as not reachable. Earlier versions translated that flag into “Out of reach” with an orange warning dot, which told you nothing you could act on.
So the screen now says what is actually happening. Settings → Apple Watch shows both directions as their own lane: what is queued to go to the watch, and what has come back from the watch.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
Talking now | The watch app is open and in contact |
Watch app asleep | Normal. The watch app is not running right now |
Waiting since 3h ago | Something is queued and hasn’t gone through yet |
Orange dot | An actual fault worth looking at |
If something is queued, the phone shows how long the oldest item has been waiting. Opening the watch app usually clears it immediately.
Troubleshooting
Send to Watch doesn’t appear
Either no watch is paired, or the Send to Watch buttons switch on Settings → Apple Watch is off. The button also stays hidden on an item with no audio tracks.
A transfer has been waiting for hours
Open the SoundLeaf app on the watch with the phone nearby. The transfer needs both apps awake at the same time.
Audio plays on the phone instead of the watch
Your headphones are paired to the phone. Pair them to the watch in the watch’s own Bluetooth settings.
Downloads on the watch are slow
The watch downloads over Wi-Fi, and its Wi-Fi is much slower than the phone’s. Keep the watch on the charger while a large book transfers.
A row on the Content screen can’t be picked
It’s still on its way to the watch, or you already removed it. Only what the watch actually holds can be removed.
New episodes stopped arriving on the watch
Taking a show off the watch turns its Keep newest rule off. Set the count again on the Podcasts tab, or on the show’s own settings screen.
The watch says “Phone out of reach”
The watch could not raise the phone at that moment. Lists still open from the watch’s saved copy, and downloads still play; what needs the phone right then (streaming, the iPhone remote) says so instead of failing quietly. Opening SoundLeaf on the phone usually reconnects within a second.
Stream says “needs phone”
Starting a stream needs the phone in reach, because the phone asks your server for the play session. To listen with no phone at all, tap Download instead and wait for it to finish.
A list on the watch looks out of date
Lists are the phone’s answer, saved on the watch. They refresh whenever the phone is reachable; a stale list just means the two have not talked since the library changed.
Progress isn’t showing on the server
Open SoundLeaf on your iPhone with the watch nearby. The phone is what talks to your Audiobookshelf server. The watch’s Status screen shows this working: it says whether progress has been handed over, and hands it over by itself when the phone is in reach, even with the watch app closed.
Reporting a problem
The watch’s Status screen (bottom of the home menu) shows the phone link, listening progress hand-over, and storage, and has a Share logs button covering the current run. That log is the fastest way to get a watch bug fixed.