Audible

Why Is It So Difficult to Listen to Audiobooks on the Apple Watch?

I listen to audiobooks often, and sometimes I would like to be able to listen to them on my Apple Watch, via AirPods, rather than have to have my iPhone with me when I go walking. Audible’s app for the Apple Watch is pathetically bad; not only is it nearly impossible to sync audiobooks to the device (I discuss that in this article), but if do you manage to do so, it doesn’t correctly sync its position, so if you go back to another device to listen, you lose your place. (See this Reddit thread.)

In watchOS 6, which will be released on September 19, and for which the golden master (the final version released to developers) is now available, there is a new Audiobooks app. But this app can only play audiobooks you’ve purchased from Apple. Even if you sync audiobooks from Audible or audiobooks you may have ripped from CDs, you cannot sync them to the Apple Watch.

I would think that most regular audiobook listeners are Audible subscribers, since their subscription model makes books much cheaper than what Apple charges. Since you can sync them to the Books app on the iPhone, it’s odd that you cannot put them on the Apple Watch. This might have something to do with the different DRM that is used for Audible content, but if Apple can play these books in their app on iOS, it shouldn’t be any different on watchOS. It’s worth noting that the Audible app on iOS can see and play books in the Books app, if they are from Audible.

The new Audiobooks app says it syncs up to five hours of a book to the Apple Watch, which is problematic. I understand that most people won’t be listening to, say, an eight-hour audiobook on their watch, but some might want to, such as if they’re on a long flight. Since the new Apple Watch contains 32 GB storage, it should be able to hold more than this. (The Series 4 which I have currently has 16 GB.)

Audiobooks are just audio content, and should be easy enough to sync to the Apple Watch. Apple has had a long relationship with Audible; not only is the company the only one – other than Apple – whose DRM-protected content is playable in iTunes, but Audible also provides Apple with the audiobooks that the latter company sells. Granted, Apple wants people to buy audiobooks from them rather than Audible, if possible, but preventing people from listening to audiobooks they haven’t purchased from Apple seems unfair.

Audible’s Apple Watch App Highlights One of the Device’s Biggest Flaws

Audible has updated their iOS app, and now includes an Apple Watch app, so you can sync audiobooks from your iPhone to the Apple Watch. This allows you to listen to audiobooks on the go, using Bluetooth headphones, even if you don’t have your iPhone handy.

In theory.

In practice, this highlights one of the biggest flaws of the Apple Watch. While Apple’s wrist computer has storage that can hold its operating system, apps, music, and more, it’s extremely difficult to get anything onto the device. You’ll have seen this when you wait for an update to get copied to the Apple Watch, or if you have ever tried to put music on the device. It is slow. Glacially slow. If you want, for example, to copy a couple of gigabytes to the Apple Watch – after all, it comes with either 8 or 16 GB storage – the cellular Apple Watch 3 offered 16 GB, the GPS-only had 8, and the Series 4 comes with 16 GB for all models – you were best off doing it overnight. Copies to the Apple Watch seem to only go over Bluetooth, even though the device uses wifi for connectivity.

The Audible Apple Watch app explains what you need to do:

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So I went ahead and tried.

First, the Audible app says that it is “preparing your content.” It’s not clear what this is doing, but it might be downsampling the file so it takes up less space. I hope not; standard Audible files are 32 kbps, which is adequate for spoken word, but if shrinks them to 16 kbps, that’s not great.

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Then it begins syncing. After about 10 minutes, I checked, and this was its progress:

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17 minutes later – note the time on my iPhone in the screenshot – it had made more progress.

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And when I checked back about 50 minutes later, it said it had finished syncing.

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Alas, it hadn’t actually synced anything. When I checked on my Apple Watch, there was nothing. (You can’t get a screenshot of the playback screen showing that there is no content, because the bit on the bottom below, explaining how to transfer audiobooks, slides up as soon as you open it.)

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The app does note that the transfer will be quicker if you put your watch on the “Magnetic Charger;” that really makes no difference.

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However, when it’s not on the charger, nothing syncs, and the Audible app informs you of this.

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This (most likely) is not Audible’s fault. Syncing content to the Apple Watch, as I said above, is a very slow process.

Marco Arment, developer of the Overcast podcast player, added syncing to the Apple Watch in the latest version of his app has. He says:

Sending podcasts to the Watch is slow. Overcast shrinks them to reduce the transfer time, but when (and how quickly) podcasts transfer is tightly controlled by watchOS to preserve battery life. Transfers still sometimes wait forever or silently fail.

So it seems like this is an Apple problem. If the Apple Watch contains storage for audio files, then Apple needs to make this process work. What’s the point of shipping the new Apple Watch with 16 GB storage if you can’t put anything on it? There aren’t enough apps for the Apple Watch to fill up all that space.