Google Play Music now lets you choose what you sync to your Wear watch

Spotted by a Redditor in /r/AndroidWear, we’ve learned that a recent update that we reported on to Google Play Music brought with it a nice new feature for owners of Android Wear smartwatches…

Up until now, syncing music to your Wear watch to play when out of range of your Android phone meant toggling on a setting that would simply transfer all the music you’ve download on your phone to your watch. You couldn’t, for instance, just sync your running playlist to the watch. This can be frustrating for runners who’d prefer to run with just their watch and a pair of Bluetooth headphones. Many Wear watches are waterproof, for example, so whenever I run in the rain I continue to wear my ZenWatch but leave my Nexus 5 at home. Now, however, you can manage what gets synced to your watch.

As you can see in the images above, there’s a new setting in Play Music on the smartphone app called “Manage Wear downloads,” which is the screen on the right. From there you can see how much available space you have on your watch as well as what’s being synced to it, and then you can tap the watch icon to the right of any playlist to toggle syncing on and off.

It’s unfortunate that you still have to download any music you want on your watch to your phone first, but it’s progress nonetheless.

Looking to buy an Android Wear smartwatch? Check out our comparison and buying guide.