How do you switch to a new podcast or music track on your Forerunner during a run?

Thank you - the issue is I can't seem to use the music controls to do things like pick a whole new podcast. You can skip to the next track in a playlist etc, but choosing a new podcast from the ones you synced to your watch doesn't seem to be available.

Yes (I listen to podcasts not albums but I think it's the same issue). You can get to the controls to skip forward and back etc but not to choose whole new podcast. 

1) Hold DOWN for the music controls

2) Press UP (3 dots menu) for more controls

3a) Select My Music icon (looks like a "library" or icon with 3 books) -- will be first icon the list. You should see a list of all your playlists and podcasts, along with the options to add music, update/edit downloads and view settings

As 4931975 mentioned, sometimes the My Music icon isn't present (classic Garmin). As they pointed out, the workaround here is:

3b) Hold UP for settings

4) Select Music Providers

5) Choose your music provider (e.g. Spotify). Now you should get the same list playlists and podcasts that you'd see in 3a)

so to be clear you can switch podcasts during an activity (I'm thinking of buying a Garmin with music/podcast spotify option)?

PaulMiller said:

Yes (I listen to podcasts not albums but I think it's the same issue). You can get to the controls to skip forward and back etc but not to choose whole new podcast. 

Oh sorry, now I realize my answer totally glossed over your actual problem. Sorry for the useless reply :/. See the end of this comment for a better answer (I’m on the 7.07 beta if it makes a difference). TL;DR if you sync podcast episodes using the Podcast option (not via a playlist), then you’re able to choose any podcast or podcast episode you want (unlike music tracks).

Yeah, music has a similar problem on Garmin’s spotify app too: you can’t pick an individual song, you have to pick a playlist and use the skip back/forward controls to change songs (which is a terrible experience for long playlists.)

The weird thing is the app for playing locally stored music (like MP3s you manually copy to the watch) doesn’t have the same problem. You can select a track to play with no problems. Too bad this won’t help 99.99999% of people. (I download a handful of songs and mixes off of youtube which aren’t available on spotify.)

Honestly, the overall Spotify experience with Garmin is not great. For example, when you add playlists to your watch, you can only add them one at a time - you have to wait for each one to finish syncing before adding the next one, instead of being able to queue up a whole bunch at once. This is super annoying for long playlists, because adding a playlist causes all the songs to be synced for offline play. Same issue when adding individual podcast episodes (rather than adding a playlist of podcast episodes, which you shouldn’t do because then you don’t get the podcast-specific controls.)

Also, when adding playlists or individual podcast episodes, it takes forever to scroll to older items (you have to wait a few seconds for every 5 items to load.)

Then there’s the random crashes, controls not working at all, etc. (The fix is usually to quit the spotify app, which isn’t obvious to do - you have to switch your music provider to something other than spotify, then back to spotify again.)

9239903 said:

so to be clear you can switch podcasts during an activity (I'm thinking of buying a Garmin with music/podcast spotify option)?

TL;DR For Spotify: yes, and it works differently than music

So I don’t listen to podcasts on my Garmin, but in my quest to properly answer OP’s question, I gave it a shot.

1) If you sync a *playlist* that contains Spotify podcast episodes, they’re treated just like playlists that contain music: you select a playlist and it plays the first podcast episode (or a random one if you have shuffle enabled) — you can’t select an individual episode. The UI gives you buttons to skip tracks back and forward, but there’s no way to seek within a given episode (so it’s basically useless for podcasts.) If you use the skip back/forward controls on your earbuds, it also causes the track to change.

2) If you sync podcast episodes by selecting Podcast in the Add music & Podcasts menu, they’re treated differently than music. You get a menu entry for each podcast on the watch; when you click on a podcast, you are given the option to select any episode you want (unlike music). Also unlike music, the back/forward controls in the UI actually seek back and forward 15 seconds within the current episode. Same goes for your earbuds’ back/forward controls. 

Unfortunately when you sync podcast episodes this way, you have to sync them one at a time, which means you have to wait for each episode to fully download before adding the next one. The user experience is also really bad when scrolling through episodes to add - only 5 episodes are listed at a time, and you have to wait a few seconds to load the list of the next 5 episodes (*). So good luck if you want to sync older episodes of a popular podcast. What I *would* have suggested would be to make a playlist on your phone and sync them that way, but then you lose the benefits of the podcast-specific controls I mentioned above.

(* The same issue exists when selecting a playlist to sync, btw. That’s why I never try to add older playlists to my watch, I always create a new playlist just for my Garmin so it appears at the top of the list.)