Chapter 9
Mucho Media: Managing Your Music, Movies, Apple TV, and More
IN THIS CHAPTER
Managing music from your wrist
Using Siri to play your music
Pairing Bluetooth headphones with Apple Watch
Listening to music on your Apple Watch
Playing podcasts, audiobooks, and radio plays
Using Apple Watch to control Apple TV
Accessing your Apple Music or iTunes library with your watch
Music lovers, listen up. Your Apple Watch can help you get more from your favorite tunes. In this chapter, I cover how to use Apple Watch for listening to music while you’re on the go. Although I share how to use your watch to control tracks stored on a nearby iPhone, you don’t even need your iPhone to listen to music: Your Apple Watch can stream music from the Apple Music streaming service, as well as store and play music on the watch itself.
For the latter two scenarios, there are times when you don’t want to bring your iPhone with you, but as long as you have Bluetooth headphones (shown in Figure 9-1) to listen with, you can still enjoy your music.
FIGURE 9-1: You need Bluetooth headphones such as the trendy Apple AirPods to listen to music and podcasts on Apple Watch. Why? There’s no headphone jack.
I also discuss how to control your music hands-free — as well as audiobooks, podcasts, and radio plays — by using Siri.
Although not widely publicized, Apple Watch can also control the Apple TV connected to your TV or your Apple Music app (formerly iTunes) on your Mac or iTunes on your Windows PC.
Using Apple Watch to Control Songs Stored on an iPhone
Similar to the iPhone app, Apple Watch has a Music app that lets you find and play music stored on your iPhone.
Sure, you can also install music on the Apple Watch itself — something I cover later in this chapter in the “Syncing and Playing Music from Your Apple Watch” section. You can also stream music directly from the Apple Music service (more on this later), but most wearers will likely use their watch as a kind of wireless remote control.
Sample scenario: You’re walking down the street with your swank Beats headphones or wireless AirPods Pro. Rather than taking your iPhone out of your jeans every time you want to switch tracks or choose a playlist, simply lift your wrist and perform those functions from the comfort of your Apple Watch. After all, the watch is all about convenient, glanceable information when and where you need it. Controlling your music is no different.
To manage your iPhone music from your Apple Watch, follow these steps:
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Press the Digital Crown button to go to the Home screen.
Here you see all the icons of installed Apple Watch apps.
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Tap the Music app.
You can also raise your wrist and say, “Hey Siri, play Music” or something more specific. Or if you set up Siri to activate the moment you raise your wrist (see Chapter 7), then you don’t need to summon your personal assistant with your voice at all.
On this Music screen, you see the name of the song, the artist, and the album artwork (if available), as shown in Figure 9-2. If a song is already playing on your iPhone, you see small equalizer bars dance at the top of the screen and some scrolling information, such as the complete name of the track, the album name, and more.
FIGURE 9-2: Swipe up inside the Music app to scroll through album artwork and tap to select that specific track.
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Tap the artwork to play the song if it isn’t already playing.
You hear your selection through your iPhone, wired earbuds/headphones, or Bluetooth headset.
Remember, you can’t hear music through Apple Watch — nor would you want to — unless you have a Bluetooth headset or headphones. See the “Pairing a Bluetooth Device with Apple Watch” section for how to add one to your Apple Watch.
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Tap + or – to increase or decrease the volume, respectively.
A red horizontal bar visually shows you how loud the volume is getting. You can also skip forward or backward between tracks using the double arrows on each side of the Play button. The elapsed time of the track is in the top-left corner and a digital clock is in the top-right corner.
But what do you do if you want to hear a new song? You’ve got many options on how to handle that.
- Swiping up inside the Music app displays the album art of other songs in your library.
- Scrolling all the way to the top opens a menu with the options Shuffle All, Library, and On Phone (to see music content on your iPhone).
- Tapping the phone or library (which has the music stored on Apple Watch or the Apple Music service) reveals four options: Artists, Albums, Songs, and Playlists; these are discussed in detail in the remaining parts of this section. Another screen is the default that you’re currently in, called Now Playing.
Now Playing
This shows you the artist that’s currently playing. You can tap the screen to pause the song, or to perhaps skip back to play the song again from the beginning. If no album art has been imported for this track, as recognized by Apple Music, this area just has text and the virtual control buttons, as shown in Figure 9-3.
Be aware there’s also a dedicated Now Playing app on your Apple Watch Home screen, which lets you continue playing content on your Apple Watch or iPhone.
Artists
You can see your music collection listed alphabetically by artist/band. Swipe up or down with your fingertip or twist the Digital Crown button at the speed of your choosing to review the list. As shown in Figure 9-4, under each artist, you should see how many songs you have from that person or band.
FIGURE 9-3: No album art? No worries. You should still see pertinent information about a song.
FIGURE 9-4: The Artists view inside the Music app on Apple Watch.
Albums
As you might expect, this is where you can see all your music listed alphabetically by album name. This is ideal for when you want to hear an entire album from the same artist, or one or more tracks from an album or perhaps a compilation or movie soundtrack with multiple artists.
Songs
As shown in Figure 9-5, this is where you can find all your songs listed alphabetically, regardless of artist. Swipe up or down using your fingertip or twist the Digital Crown button to find something to listen to. Be aware, choosing to see your music collection by song yields the longest list. No worries: You can scroll up or down using the small bar on the top right side of the screen. The small bar appears when you turn the Digital Crown button.
FIGURE 9-5: Swipe or twist the Digital Crown button to scroll up and down your list of tracks.
Playlists
This shows all your music grouped in some fashion — whether by theme, event, or genre, as shown in Figure 9-6. Windows users can create a music playlist in iTunes, while Mac users have the Apple Music app. Or create your own playlist on your iPhone or iPad. You might call a playlist something like “Driving Tunes,” “Workout Mix,” “Relaxing Music,” or whatever suits your fancy. If you have a playlist on your iOS device, then it’s synced to your Apple Watch.
Keep in mind that although you can access a playlist on Apple Watch, you can’t create a playlist on it. For that, you have to sync via iTunes or your iPhone.
You can also sync a playlist to the watch to listen to media when no iPhone is around. See the “Syncing and Playing Music from Your Apple Watch” section for more on syncing playlists.
FIGURE 9-6: You can’t create a new playlist on your Apple Watch like you can on an iPhone or in iTunes, but you can play it on your watch. You can even store the playlist on the watch if an iPhone isn’t nearby.
You can also use Force Touch to display additional options: While listening to a track, press firmly on the screen and you see the AirPlay option, which lets you easily stream music to your favorite speakers or TV.
Having Siri Play Your Music
Do you know what’s even faster than tapping and scrolling to find music? Asking Siri to play it for you. Say you’re itching to hear a song in your collection that’s been stuck in your head all day. Or maybe you want to give your favorite band’s new greatest hits album a spin from beginning to end? All you need to do is ask Siri (politely) to play an individual song or album. As long as you’re in a place you can talk freely, Siri can launch a song, album, artist, playlist, or genre — just by your asking for it. With cellular models, you can do it all without your phone!
To have Siri help you play your music via Apple Watch, raise your wrist and do one of the following three things:
- Say “Hey Siri, play _____ (name of song, artist, playlist, and so on).”
- If you enabled Siri to wake up when you lift your wrist (as discussed in Chapter 7), simply raise your wrist and ask to play something.
- Press and hold the Digital Crown button to activate Siri. Ask away!
After Siri processes your request — and don’t forget, you need cellular or Wi-Fi access for this to work — you should see and hear the music you asked for via your iPhone (or, if only stored on Apple Watch, through Bluetooth headphones).
Some examples of what you can ask Siri to play:
- “Play ‘Girls Like You.’” (individual song)
- “Play Drake.” (artist)
- “Play ‘Road Trip’ playlist.” (specific playlist)
- “Play some hip-hop.” (genre)
- “Shuffle my music.” (shuffling all tracks)
- “Shuffle The Beatles.” (shuffling tracks by a certain artist)
- “What song is this?” or “Who is this?” (Siri shows and/or tells you)
- “Play similar music.” (to play similar music to what you’re listening to)
You can also control your music with your voice. The following are some commands you can give verbally. Simply press and hold the Digital Crown button (or raise your arm and say “Hey, Siri”), followed by:
- “Play” to play the song shown on your watch screen.
- “Pause” to pause the track you’re listening to.
- “Skip” to go to the next track.
- “Next” to (also) go to the next track.
- “Previous song” or “Play previous song” to have Siri play the previously played song.
Pairing a Bluetooth Device with Apple Watch
You can load up your watch with music (see the “Syncing and Playing Music from Your Apple Watch” section) and take it to go — but there’s one catch. You can’t listen to music through the Apple Watch’s tiny speaker (nor would you want to), and there’s no headphone jack to plug in headphones. Instead, you need to pair Bluetooth headphones (or a speaker) to Apple Watch to hear music.
To clarify, this isn’t necessary if your iPhone is nearby because you should hear music coming from the iPhone’s speakers or from headphones connected to the iPhone. Pairing a Bluetooth device with Apple Watch directly is only required if your iPhone isn’t around.
To connect a Bluetooth device to your Apple Watch, follow these steps:
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Put your Bluetooth headphones or speaker in pairing mode.
You might see a flashing light on the device to confirm it’s awaiting a connection. It’s different for all products, but pairing usually involves pressing and holding the Home button until you see a flashing light.
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On Apple Watch, locate the Settings app — which looks like a gray gear — and tap it.
Alternatively, you can lift your wrist and say “Hey Siri, Settings.”
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Inside Settings, twist the Digital Crown button until you locate Bluetooth and then tap this option.
Wait a moment and your Bluetooth headphones or speakers should appear in this list.
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Select the Bluetooth device you want to pair it with by tapping its name with your fingertip.
Figure 9-7 shows Apple Watch searching for a device.
FIGURE 9-7: Pair a Bluetooth device to hear synced music on your Apple Watch if no iPhone is nearby.
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When a device appears, you can tap it.
You’ve successfully paired the device! However, you still need to change the music source from iPhone to Apple Watch to hear music come from your Bluetooth-enabled headphones, which you can find out about in the “Syncing and Playing Music from Your Apple Watch” section.
Streaming Apple Music to Your Apple Watch
As you may or may not know, Apple Music is a monthly subscription service from Apple that lets you listen to more than 70 million songs. Unlike paying for and downloading individual songs or albums from iTunes, Apple Music is a streaming service, so all the songs are stored on Apple’s servers in the “cloud” for you to access from your device (as if they were stored locally). Neat, huh? Instead of “owning” the music, you’re essentially renting the songs, if you will, with your monthly fee.
In other words, it’s not an “a la carte” model, but rather a buffet-style “all-you-can-eat” approach, giving you unlimited access to many songs, with your one monthly fee. To use this feature, you must have an Internet connection. There is an option to download Apple Music tracks to an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC in the event you know you’ll be without the Internet for a while.
Another part of Apple Music is an Apple Radio feature, which might introduce you to new songs through curated playlists you can stream on-demand.
Simply open the Music app on your Apple Watch and scroll up, and then tap Library. You can also use Siri to play any song in the Apple Music catalog and listen to custom stations.
Syncing and Playing Music from Your Apple Watch
Not all smartwatches let you store music on your wrist, so you do need a nearby smartphone, but Apple Watch does indeed offer this feature. After all, sometimes, you might not have or want your phone with you, such as when you go out for a jog for a few minutes. If that’s the case, why shouldn’t you listen to your favorite high-energy music to keep you pumped up?
This convenience comes with two limitations:
- Sound: As stated before, Apple Watch has no headphone jack. You need a pair of Bluetooth headphones wirelessly paired with your smartwatch if you want hear anything stored on it. See the section “Pairing a Bluetooth Device with Apple Watch” for more on this.
- Space: Although you have some storage allocated for many songs, this space is considerably smaller than what your iPhone, iPad, and computer have. Specifically, you’ve got up to 2 gigabytes of internal storage on Apple Watch dedicated to music and podcasts, which is the equivalent of about 500 songs (at roughly 4 megabytes each).
If you accept these caveats, follow these steps to transfer music to your Apple Watch from an iPhone:
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Connect your Apple Watch to your PC or Mac via its USB charger.
Use the special magnetic charger that shipped with your Apple Watch.
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On your iPhone, open the Apple Watch app.
While you’re at it, make sure Bluetooth is turned on. To double-check, go to Settings ⇒ Bluetooth on your iPhone.
- Under My Watch, scroll down and tap Music.
You have to scroll down a bit after the Music screen opens because of its many settings, shown in Figure 9-8, along with apps installed on your Apple Watch.
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Tap the Heavy Rotation option listed under the Automatically Add section.
This synchronizes the playlists and albums you’re listening to with Apple Watch.
- To add new albums and playlists, press the orange + icon, next to Add Music.
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Search through music on your iPhone using the search window or by browsing through sections.
The sections include Artists, Albums, Genres, and Compilations. You should also see custom-made playlists you’ve already created on your iPhone or iTunes (such as “Awesome Driving Tunes,” or “Reggae Mix”).
If you can't add specific albums or playlists, download them to your iPhone before you sync with your watch.
FIGURE 9-8: Sync music between your iPhone and Apple Watch.
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Select what you want to transfer.
Based on which selection you make by tapping on what music to sync, the relevant songs are transferred to your Apple Watch. You should see the words Sync Pending and then Synced. Keep in mind that the more songs you synchronize, the longer it takes to copy them to Apple Watch.
Don’t worry about transferring too many tunes over to Apple Watch because Apple won’t let you go over your allotted storage for music, 2 gigabytes (or about 400 to 450 songs).
Have songs stored on your Apple Watch? To listen to music on your Apple Watch rather than your iPhone, follow these steps:
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Open the Music app on your Apple Watch.
Here you see options on where to play your music from (iPhone, Library, and so on), as shown in Figure 9-9.
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Scroll to where it says Listen Now.
Here you can view a curated feed of playlists and albums, based on your tastes, as provided by Apple Music.
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Add content to your Library, create a playlist, and more, as shown in Figure 9-9.
Plus, if you tap a station, it plays in the Radio app on Apple Watch.
FIGURE 9-9: Listen to music on your Apple Watch without an iPhone.
Removing Music from Your Apple Watch
If you’ve grown tired of some songs on your Apple Watch, here’s how to remove them:
- On your iPhone, open the Apple Watch app, and then tap the My Watch tab at the bottom left of the screen.
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Scroll to Music and tap it, and then tap Edit in the upper-right corner.
You only see Edit if you have music synced to your watch.
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Under Playlists & Albums, tap the red minus icon next to any music that you want to remove, and then tap Delete (see Figure 9-10).
You can also turn off any automatically added playlists that you don’t want on your watch from this screen.
FIGURE 9-10: It’s just as easy to take songs off your Apple Watch as it is to add them, but both require your iPhone.
Playing Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Radio Plays
Your Apple Watch can also be used to enjoy other kinds of audio entertainment — not just music — including podcasts, audiobooks, and radio plays.
This part of the chapter shows how to pull it all off.
Podcasts
Podcasts (a word that fuses iPod with broadcasting) are free downloadable programs from the Internet. These include comedy routines, news reports, political rants, cooking instructions, tech advice, gardening tips, religious sermons, or the latest music remix from a popular DJ. Many podcasts have video, but in this section, I’m referring only to the audio-based ones.
Unlike your favorite local radio station, podcasts let you to choose when the program starts (called time shifting) and where you want to listen to it — even in another country (called place shifting). Anyone can publish a podcast — be it a 16-year-old video game fan or huge media corporations, such as ABC/Disney, CNN, or HBO. Thousands of radio stations have podcasts of their popular programs.
Best of all, they’re free.
You can download podcasts to your computer (via Apple Podcasts on Mac or iTunes on a Windows PC), onto an iPhone or iPad, and even onto your Apple Watch.
To download a podcast to your iPhone, follow these steps:
Tap the Podcasts icon.
You’ll see Top Episodes, Top Podcasts, Editor’s Choice, and New & Noteworthy.
- Click a category to choose a specific theme, or click to play a podcast right in iTunes.
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If you hear a podcast you like, you can subscribe with a simple click of the mouse.
Every time a new show is available, you can have it automatically download to your computer’s hard drive (or phone’s internal memory).
Now it’s time to sync podcasts to your Apple Watch!
Syncing podcasts to your Apple Watch
This is really easy stuff, folks. In fact, all your Apple Podcast subscriptions sync to your Apple Watch when it’s charging! It may take a few minutes to transfer over a few podcasts, so be patient.
When you want to hear a podcast, tap the Podcast app on your Apple Watch Home screen.
This icon is purple with a white symbol inside, and you can see all your subscribed podcasts. You can twist the Digital Crown if you have many of them, and the images for each one don’t all fit on the screen. See Figure 9-11 for an example of what a podcast looks like on Apple Watch.
Alternatively, raise your wrist and ask Siri to open a particular podcast.
FIGURE 9-11: Apple Watch makes it super easy to play podcasts. Just tap the Podcast icon on the Apple Watch Home screen (or use Siri to open the app) to hear your podcasts.
While inside the Podcast app, you can do the following:
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Move among your podcasts: Flick the screen to navigate between your podcasts.
If you swipe down, you see an option to play podcasts stored on your iPhone or the Library tab, which opens individual podcasts on your Apple Watch (see Figure 9-12).
FIGURE 9-12: Once you’re inside the Podcast app on Apple Watch (left), swipe up to access the library stored on your Apple Watch or on a nearby iPhone (right).
- Play a podcast through a compatible speaker or TV: Press and hold on the screen (Force Touch) and choose AirPlay.
- Manually sync your podcast: Podcast episodes are automatically removed from your Apple Watch after you listen to them, and shows that you subscribe to refresh automatically whenever new episodes are available. If you want to manually choose podcasts to sync, however:
- Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
- Go to My Watch ⇒ Podcasts, and tap Custom.
- Choose shows with episodes in your Podcasts Library to sync to your Apple Watch. Figure 9-13 shows what this looks like.
FIGURE 9-13: If you don’t want all podcasts automatically synced to your Apple Watch, go into the Apple Watch app and under the Podcast settings, manually choose what you’d like.
Audiobooks
Call audiobooks today’s answer to books on tape — if you’re old enough to remember those! As you might expect, audiobooks are usually spoken versions of books read by a narrator as if you were being read a bedtime story. This differs from a radio play, which I discuss in the “Radio plays” section, where a cast acts out a performance, often with sound effects and music.
You can download millions of audiobooks from the Internet, but unlike podcasts and radio plays, they’re usually not free. Still, they’re a great way to have a book read to you — if you’re visually impaired, if you want to make a long commute in the car (or on the bus or train) a more enjoyable one, or if you have trouble reading and would simply rather hear someone read to you.
Audiobooks are available for new books (including New York Times bestsellers) as well as slightly older and even classic titles. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or nonfiction; chances are, you can find an audiobook version of a paperback or hardcover book and many electronic books (ebooks) too.
There are also audiobook services such as Audible (owned by Amazon) that support Apple Watch, so you can download and listen to these straight from your wrist-mounted companion. Figure 9-14 shows you the Apple Watch Audible option. You can also find more information about this on Audible.com.
FIGURE 9-14: The easiest way to play an audiobook on Apple Watch is to use an app such as Apple’s own Books (on iPhone) or a service such as Audible.
Okay, here’s how to download or stream audiobooks on Apple Watch.
You need to first purchase audiobooks with your iPhone before you can listen to them on your Apple Watch, but beginning with the watchOS 6 operating system, you no longer need to start the audiobook on your iPhone to continue listening on Apple Watch.
Here’s the easiest way to play an audiobook on your Apple Watch:
- Launch the Books app on your iPhone and tap the Explore Audiobooks tab.
- Scroll to see what’s New & Trending, peruse the Top Charts, search by keyword, and more.
- Download an audiobook you want to listen to.
Tap the Audiobooks icon on Apple Watch.
You see all available audiobooks listed here. See Figure 9-15.
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Choose how to listen.
Inside the app are On iPhone and Library options. Choose Library if you’d like to play Apple Books audiobooks directly from your Apple Watch.
FIGURE 9-15: Compared to a couple of years ago, it’s now easier to play audiobooks on Apple Watch.
You have other ways to play audiobooks on your wrist; just remember that copying a downloaded audiobook to a music folder in iTunes makes it easier to control and play on an Apple Watch, but might be a bit more difficult to do if the audiobook has digital rights management (DRM) encryption on the file. DRM might limit or prevent the file from copying to another device. (DRM protects the copyright owner to help reduce piracy, which is the unauthorized distribution and/or duplication of copyrighted material.)
There’s another way you can access audiobooks on Apple Watch. Many thousands of human-read or computer-generated audiobooks based on classic works are freely available in the public domain that you can copy over to Apple Watch. While it’s a little more work than the aforementioned instructions, you can copy these freely (and legitimately) available audiobooks to your Apple Watch from such websites as Loyal Books, LibriVox, and Project Gutenberg.
After you’ve downloaded the audio files — usually MP3s — to your Windows PC hard drive, follow these steps to sync them to your Apple Watch:
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Launch iTunes and click the Music tab.
In the top-left corner, you should see a little icon with an arrow.
- Click this icon to display some options, including New.
- Click New, followed by New Playlist.
- Name your audiobooks playlist, such as “Audiobooks.”
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Wherever you downloaded the DRM-free audiobooks to your computer — maybe your desktop or a Downloads directory — drag and drop them into this newly created playlist.
Now you’re ready to sync your new playlist to Apple Watch so you can hear your audiobook(s) without a nearby iPhone.
Radio plays
If you’re listening to only music on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, you’re missing out on many thousands of downloadable and free dramas and comedies to help keep you entertained while on the go.
Popularized in the 1940s before TV took off, radio plays — or old-time radio (OTR) shows, as they’re often referred to today — are enjoying a 21st-century revival thanks to the Internet and MP3s. A whole new generation of listeners can now experience these wonderfully written and performed “theater of the mind” episodes.
Recommended shows include the creepy Inner Sanctum and The Price of Fear (with Vincent Price) mysteries; nail-biting adventures from Suspense and Escape; the hilarious antics of Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, and sci-fi classics, such as Journey Into Space and X Minus One (featuring many Ray Bradbury yarns).
Filling up your digital devices with these timeless tales is as easy as subscribing to one of the many dozen OTR podcasts (some with daily updates) or by bookmarking such websites as Archive.org, RelicRadio.com, and OTRCat.com — each of which has thousands of free downloadable episodes.
Because most of these older shows have copyrights that have long since expired (or didn’t have any to begin with), they’re now available for free through the public domain. Some are newer, such as many BBC radio plays and recently published radio dramas based on The Twilight Zone, and are still protected by copyrights that prohibit you from copying and distributing them. When in doubt, contact the website that houses these audio plays.
To sync radio plays to your Apple Watch, follow these steps:
- Launch the Music app and tap the Playlist tab.
- Tap the “+” sign, for New Playlist.
- Give a name to your Radio Shows Playlist, such as “Radio Shows” or “OTR,” or by name, such as “Inner Sanctum” or “Suspense.”
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Tap “Add Music,” followed by Library, and then select the folder that has the radio plays (such as a Download folder).
You’re ready to sync your new playlist over to Apple Watch so you can hear your radio plays without a nearby iPhone.
Now you can look forward to — rather than dread — your daily commute.
Controlling Apple TV and iTunes with Your Apple Watch
Your fancy schmancy new Apple Watch can control your iPhone wirelessly. It can play music or snap the shutter on your iPhone’s camera (see Chapter 12). More importantly, it can also manage the Apple TV box connected to your TV or the iTunes software installed on a Windows PC (on a Mac, it’s now called Apple Music).
With the latter, the Remote app lets you play back content on your computer as if it were a TV — as long as you have media in your iTunes library. So, put that mouse away and start controlling iTunes from your wrist! Or maybe you’re cooking in the other room and you want to change the music pumping from the speaker? No need to physically go to your laptop or desktop.
Before you can control iTunes or Apple TV, though, you first need to set up Home Sharing in iTunes and sign in with your Apple ID.
Setting up Home Sharing
To set up Home Sharing in iTunes on a Windows PC, follow these steps:
- Download the free Remote app from the App Store.
- On your computer, open iTunes and click the little rectangular icon in the very top-left corner of the screen.
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Click Preferences.
A number of tabs appear across the top of this Preferences window.
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Click the blue Sharing tab and select what media you’d like to share via Home Sharing.
Options include Music, Movies, Home Videos, TV Shows, Podcasts, iTunes U, Books, Purchased, and others.
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Connect your devices, such as an iPad and iPhone, to your home Wi-Fi network and then sign in to Home Sharing via the Remote app.
Home Sharing is now enabled on iTunes.
Controlling Apple TV remotely
To control Apple TV from your Apple Watch, follow these steps:
- Press the Digital Crown button to go to the Home screen.
- Tap the Remote app.
You can also raise your wrist and say “Hey, Siri, Remote.” Either action launches the Remote app. You’re presented with two options: Apple TV and iTunes.
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Select Apple TV if you own one of these media boxes and it’s attached to your TV.
As long as your iPhone and Apple TV box are joined to the same wireless (Wi-Fi) network at home or work, you can access your Apple TV as if your Apple Watch were that small remote control that comes with it. (You can also control Apple TV with the Remote app for iOS — for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad — if you’d like to.)
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Tap one of the four arrows on the watch — Up, Down, Right, or Left — to navigate Apple TV’s menus.
No more reaching for the hardware remote or phone or tablet; controlling your media can now be done with a tap on your wrist.
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Tap the center Play/Pause button to stop and start your media at your convenience.
You’re at home, with your feet up on the coffee table, and you’re enjoying a bit of Netflix on your big screen — until your dog brings you a leash in its mouth (and with those sad eyes). Tap the center of your Apple Watch to pause playback and then take your pup for a walk.
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Press the Digital Crown button to return to the Home screen.
And don’t forget to turn off your TV and Apple TV box if you’re done. Don’t waste power and money.
Controlling iTunes remotely
To control iTunes (on a Windows PC) from your Apple Watch, follow these steps:
- Tap the Digital Crown button to go to the Home screen.
- Tap the Remote app.
You can also raise your wrist and say “Hey, Siri, Remote.” Either action launches the Remote app.
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Inside the app, tap iTunes.
You’re prompted to enter a four-digit code to access your iTunes library. And remember, you need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Windows PC and be signed into Home Sharing in iTunes (as covered earlier in this section).
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Swipe around the Apple Watch screen to access the library of content on iTunes and then select something to play.
The Remote app lets you control your iTunes library from anywhere in your home. Fast-forward, pause, or skip back a track or two. Choose a song, shuffle an album, or select a custom playlist. And if your Mac or PC is sleeping, opening the Remote app wakes it up.