Spotify offline streaming on Wear OS: What's the story (yawning) glory?

When Spotify first went live on Wear OS in 2018 we wouldn't have imagined that, over two years later, we'd still be waiting for offline streaming to be supported.

Especially when you consider that Wear OS - or, rather, Android Wear as it was known then - actually enabled local music storage way back in 2014.

For years, Wear OS users have pestered Spotify devs on the community forum and, at long last, this week they finally got a definitive answer - offline playlists were being implemented... hallelujah.

This was the word from 'Goodman', a community manager over on the forum:

"Hi folks. I'm setting this to Implemented and let me try to explain why.

The ability to go offline with Wear OS has been implemented. You'll find our own, specific support page on that here. Currently, that page also provides this link, which can be of help."

Woo-hoo!

Except it seems that Goodman made a boo-boo. After being questioned by users it become clear that there is not one single Wear OS watch that boasts such functionality.

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In fact, Tizen remains the only smartwatch platform where offline Spotify streaming is possible - even the Apple Watch misses out. (It is also available on the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music Edition, as well).

Spotify has since tried to set the record straight with a statement:

"Hi again everyone,

We got this one wrong. As you well know, offline playback for Spotify on Wear OS is currently not supported. Sorry about our mistake with the recent update here in Community.

Your feedback is reaching the teams here at Spotify - and we’re changing this Idea to ‘Under Consideration’.

Please keep the votes coming and watch this space for further updates."

What a kick in the nuts. It's never going to happen, is it?

Kudos to the guys at Android Central for doing the digging on this.