I frequently go for a walk. As I have to control my heart rate, my Garmin watch (Epic Gen2) is the core of my walk (time, distance, tempo and heart rate…). In the mean time I enjoy the lanscape and listening music with Roon Arc.
As my iPhone is in my backpack, it would be nice if I could see the name of the song on my watch, and use it to stop, play, skip, etc…).
I looked for an App (here on the forum and in Garmin Connect Store), but didn’t found one.
It would be nice if there was an App (or Widget) to do this, or am I missing something?
Or can Roon adapt Arc to accept this commands?
I know I can play music directly from the watch, but:
Quality is low
It’s burning battery life.
I’ve got the Garmin Instinct and can scroll through the screens on my watch and see the song info and control arc. I don’t have to have the Garmin app open on my phone to use these controls.
Thanks for your reply. Sadly this doesn’t work on a Garmin Epix. As this watch has internal storage for music, it forces me to listen to this (or an external provider as Spotify, not Qobuz or Tidal). No chance to choose music on my phone.
So, a more advanced watch is not always an advantage…
I’ve got a fenix 8 and am encountering similar issues. I can see what is currently playing and skip tracks or pause the music, but once the music is paused from the watch, I have no ability to restart the music that was playing. Not sure if this is considered a “privacy feature” but the behavior is irrational and frustrating - especially when it seems like the audio output should be handled similar to other apps. I tested with Audible and I am able to scrub the track, pause, and restart the audio stream after it has been paused via the watch interface.
It’s unfortunate because I like to run and listen to music - while my phone is in my running backpack, it is inconvenient to have to take the phone out to restart the music after it’s been paused. Hoping this issue can be resolved.
after all this time, nothing changed …
Even after several updates of the watch and Roon Arc. I can live with it partly because while walking it’s easer to pick up your phone, than while running. Perhaps I 'll buy a Garmin Venu X1, but probably everything will be the same.
I still believe There are differences between an iPhone (more restrictions) and an Android phone.
I am a little confused about what the issue is that you are experiencing.
I am on Epix Pro (2nd gen), but this works the same for pretty much all Garmin models going back for many years.
Long-pressing the bottom back button on the left side brings up music controls (which you can also access from the Controls screen that’s accessed by long-pressing the top left button).
From here, if music is playing on the phone from any app that uses standard iOS playback interface, including Roon Arc, you can see what’s playing, pause, fast-forward, etc. It works with Tidal, Spotify, Roon Arc, and pretty much every other audio app I’ve tried.
With Arc, it can be a little flaky, but most of the time it works fine, and I use this all the time (especially if I have gloves on).
Thank You very much for this interesting post.
My iPhone is on iOS 18.7.2 and my Garmin Epic Pro (2nd gen) is on version 13.48
Triggered by your post, I examined everything again (after more than 2 Years !).
In Music (in the watch) under Music Providers I had to select my telephone.
No it works as intended, also with Roon Arc !
One thing I don’t see is an image of the album playing, only an icon of a phone. But that’s no problem.
I have the same flakiness problem with roon ARC and my Android based Google Pixel 9 Pro.
It seems they got the bluetooth logic right in Roon REMOTE but not Roon ARC.
With Roon REMOTE: my Garmin Epic 2 watch can control, pause, and restart playback without issue. I have not observed issues with stopping and starting Roon REMOTE - EVEN when I start another app in foreground like YouTube. Sadly, this is not much use when away from my house unless I VPN into my house and set this appropriately for playback on my phone.
With Roon ARC pausing sometimes causes it to lose access to the app (e.g., the song data disappears). As a result, resuming generally fails with Roon ARC unless I hit play in the ARC app on my phone. It flaky though and sometimes works though. I suspect that there cannot be any other app running on my phone though.
Difference between Roon REMOTE and ARC
I observe that Roon ARC behaves differently from REMOTE: Starting another app like YouTube causes Roon ARC to yield control to the other app (like YouTube). It seems that there is a some kind of permission issue with Roon ARC that Roon REMOTE does not have. This is why I suspect there is some kind of permission issue and not a bluetooth issue.
Kudos to the Roon team in that I have not recently observed a problem stopping and resuming playback with Roon ARC when connected via bluetooth in my Toyota Camry XLE. This used to be an issue.
Great. Glad to hear you got it to work. I forgot about the part about setting the phone as the music provider since I did that so long ago.
Regarding album art, that has never been supported by Garmin for phone-based music (vs. files downloaded to the watch). It looks like the latest beta for Fenix 8 and other 2025 watches finally adds it (Big Garmin Public Beta Update Adds 25 New Features to 2025 Watches | DC Rainmaker), but our Epix Pro watches are not getting any of these updates. I can live without this.
I can’t remember how this works on Android, but on iOS lockscreen-based controls–and any bluetooth devices that can control music playback–switch to whatever player app is currently being used. So, if you were running Roon Arc and then switched to YouTube, it would pause Arc and switch control to YouTube. That behavior is expected, at least on iOS. That said, I do find that the music controls on my Garmin watch sometimes don’t seem to detect that Arc is playing, and will just show whatever was the last track that I played in Tidal or Spotify. I’ve not seen that issue with other music apps I’ve used, so there could be something that Arc is doing differently. It does work for me most of the time, though, when start playback on the phone.
This is exactly the same issue I’m encountering. When utilizing Roon Arc I can pause the song, but it’s as though the connection is lost with the app after audio is paused. As such, I’m unable to start the audio stream back up from my watch.
To your point, the functionality does seem to work with roon remote and I can start the audio back up after pausing a track.