Apples AirPods are pretty great, but theyre not perfect. While the initial one-tap pairing process with an iPhone works like magic [just by opening the AirPods charging case lid], weve experienced some issues with syncing to our Apple Watch.
The moment you pair your AirPods to your iPhone, it will also automatically pair to devices in your iCloud account, including Apple Watch and Mac.
Theoretically, to use AirPods for listening to music downloaded to your Apple Watch, you just launch the Music app on the watch, and tap the watch icon tab at the top. This will then show locally downloaded music and once you tap play, itll start streaming to your AirPods [or you can swipe up Control Center on Apple Watch, tap the AirPlay icon and connect to AirPods first].
While our Apple Watch showed our AirPods as Connected, every time we tried to connect, wed get the following error message [on the bottom right], which would say Connection Failed Make sure Garys AirPods is turned on and in range.even when we were within WiFi range for Handoff:
Seeing these connections errors are frustratingespecially when youve changed and are ready to step out on a run, only to discover you wont have tunes to listen to [#firstworldproblems].
The fix for this AirPods connection problem to Apple Watch? In our case, we had to nuke the connection altogether. By forgetting AirPods from Apple Watch, it also deletes them from iCloud [Settings > Bluetooth > tap the i icon and Forget Device].
To sync AirPods again, we had to follow the same process of opening the charging case with AirPods inside next to iPhonebut this time it asked us to hold down the button on the back of the case to enter pairing mode. Once that was done, the regular connect screen appeared and with one tap, we were back in the running.
When we tried to listen to music on Apple Watch with AirPods, the connection worked perfectly.
If you dont want to go nuclear on the AirPods connection, you can also try rebooting your Apple Watch as another possible fix. But since AirPods pair so quickly and easily, re-pairing is not a big deal.
Have you run into any connection issues with your AirPods?