Spotify's new Wear OS app delivers connection features and better controls

Spotify announced today the launch of a new Wear OS app next week. The standalone Wear OS application is a significant improvement over the previous Spotify application for Android Wear, which left so much to be desired that users relied on third-party applications to play their music through the streaming service. The new Spotify for Wear operating system offers better controls for playing music and browsing playlists. More importantly, it adds Spotify Connect features that let you play music from connected speakers.

The user interface remains relatively small, with options for pausing or skipping tracks and going back 15 seconds if you listen to a podcast. You can access recently played tracks. A small heart-shaped icon lets you save tracks to playlists. The application works with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and LTE. You can listen to music and podcasts from your phone, laptop, Sonos speakers, or any other device you have set up with Spotify Connect. Unlike the Spotify app for Samsung Gear, however, offline playback is not yet available.

With this news, Spotify has also announced a partnership with Fossil to pre-install the application on the Fossil Gen 4 smartwatches and Michael Kors Access Runway from November. You can download Spotify on Google Play here.