I’ve been an Android user almost from the beginning. It was the Nexus S in 2010 that first caught my fancy with it’s concave glass front. 2 years later I transitioned to the Nexus 4, with it’s glass back. It was those early smartphones that got me addicted to podcasts on my commute to and from work. If memory serves me correctly, I was using Google Reader to aggregate podcasts from RSS feeds. But when Google deprecated Reader in March of 2013, I was forced to find a proper podcast app, which led me to Pocketcasts.

I bought my first Android watch back in 2014. It was the original LG G Watch. Talk about an Inspector Gadget/Dick Tracy square thing on your wrist! Still, I loved it. From there I moved on to the original Huawei watch (what a beauty), followed by the Fossil Gen 5, and finally to the Samsung Galaxy 4 which sits on my wrist as I write this (yes I'm aware that's way too many time pieces to have owned over too few years).

Whenever I go out for a brisk walk (jogging is out for me due to spinal stenosis in my lower back), I start an exercise activity on the watch, put in earbuds, pull out my phone and start a podcast. But as the phones have enlarged over the years, I’ve always wanted to leave my phone at home instead of enduring the constant pocket jostling against my leg. Sure, I have kluged together a few different ways of making it work over the years, first using Google Music, then the @Wearcasts watch app, but I’ve been waiting with great hope for @Pocketcasts to put out an app for WearOS that allows those of us who have been loyal users for years to have an easy way to access our subscriptions and play a podcast on the watch disconnected from the phone. I’ve literally been waiting to do this for 10 years!

Well, I can now say that thanks to the recently released Pocketcasts Beta version, I can now do just that. I’ve installed the app on my Samsung Galaxy 4 watch and have now reached exercise nirvana with just the watch on my wrist and buds in the ears—phone stays home.

Important Note: you have to be a paid Pocketcasts Plus subscriber to install the WearOS app and you can only install it from the Play Store on the web.