YouTube Music’s Wear OS app is rolling out to a handful of older Wear OS 2 smartwatches from the likes of Fossil, Michael Kors, and Mobvoi starting this week, after previously launching exclusively on Samsung’s new Wear OS 3-powered Galaxy Watch 4 smartwatch. The app lets YouTube Music Premium subscribers download songs to compatible smartwatches and listen to music offline without needing a paired phone.
The new app was first detailed when Google and Samsung announced they were merging their Wear OS and Tizen smartwatch operating systems to create Wear OS 3, and initial reports suggested it wouldn’t be coming to devices running the older Wear OS 2 operating system. However, like Spotify’s offline support on Wear OS, the new YouTube Music app will now be available for a broader selection of devices.
The app will be downloadable from the Google Play Store on compatible devices and supports Google’s Smart Downloads feature, which automatically refreshes the songs downloaded for local playback when connected to Wi-Fi.
Google says the app will be available this week for Fossil and Michael Kors’ Gen 6 lineup of smartwatches, as well as Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 Cellular / LTE, and TicWatch E3. More Wear OS 2 smartwatches are getting the app later this year, Google says.
