Music Transfer: iTunes Playlists

I have only managed to transfer over podcasts (although most of them appear as songs in the 645 section, and not podcasts which really annoys me, even though it makes little difference!) You have to click on the +folder in Garmin Express, and then make sure you have the itunes folder selected in the music part of you C Drive. I am at work at the moment, so don't have any way of screen - shotting!! I am really hoping Garmin make the process much easier by being able to stream podcasts through WiFi, rather than have to connect the watch to the computer every time I want to transfer something new. Also, it would be great if there was an option to delete a certain podcast from the watch once it was finished with!!

So I've solved my own question...

Forgot Garmin Express and use Windows Media Player. Add iTunes folder to the Library and create playlist etc in WMP. Then once your FR645M is plugged in it is recognised as a media player by WMP and you can drag into the sync list on the right of the app and off you go.... Much better than the Garmin Express interface.:D

If I want to continue to work from a Mac OS environment with Garmin Express, has anyone figured out how to transfer playlists effectively to Garmin 645 with Music?

As with most issues with Garmin sports watches, there's a certain amount of frustration, glitches and lack of clear directions that actually work. I've found that playlists and songs which appear listed as loaded on the watch in the Garmin Express app on my MacBook, don't appear on the watch itself. Eg. Garmin Express will show 6 playlists on the 645M; however only 4 of the playlists will actually be viewable on the watch. Another anomaly: playlists containing numerous songs will suddenly show only a handful, with many missing.

As usual, Garmin's response to these issues is slow to non-existent. There seems to be a couple of problems that cause this:

1. DRM-protected songs in iTunes may or may not transfer and/or play on the 645M. You must convert the song to a non-DRM protected format before loading it onto the watch. To check that, you select the song in iTunes, and either selecting "Get Info" or under the column "Kind", if the song type is "Purchased AAC Audio File", you must convert it. To convert, select the song, and under the File drop-down menu select "Convert - Create AAC Version". A copy of the song with the non-DRM content will be created in iTunes and you must use that version to load onto the 645M.

2. You often can't update or add a playlist to an existing set of playlists on the 645M, without causing other playlists or songs to disappear. Frustrating. When adding or modifying a playlist, it appears that you must delete ALL of the music on your 645M first. And then add or re-add, all of the music you want to appear on the 645M at once. Click the playlists in iTunes - that appear in Garmin Express - that you want on the watch and then click transfer. You should see a logic box showing the progress. If you have 150 files to transfer and it skips over a large number of them, then the issue is either #1 above, or you haven't deleted all of the music on the 645M before reloading back all of what you want on it. I've found trying to add a single playlist to your existing playlists on the watch to be impossible.

The music upload from Garmin Connect is terrible. They must have not had time to test it because if they had, I can't imagine they would have released the 645 as is. I have a Mac so I use Garmin Connect to access my playlists. The first time I imported music, I only imported 2-3 playlists and it worked great. However, there is no way to sync the playlists, for example, if you add or remove songs from the list. If you try to re-import the playlist again, it will mess it up and either delete from the 645 or say there are only a few songs available. I had figured out that I could remove all music and playlists off my 645 and re-import them if I wanted to resend. This is time consuming and inelegant but it worked. No longer. I tried 2-3 times last night. I removed everything from the watch and then imported only two playlists at a time. I only have like 10 playlists I wanted to put on the 645, with a total of about 1gb of music. Many of the songs overlap on different lists. It correctly imported 1-2 of the playlists and the rest only got some portion of the songs. I thought maybe the playlist count was off and the artists/songs were really there but nope, when you go into the playlist, you only see 1-2 songs. Then I tried (again) to reimport the playlists but that just removed them completely from the 645, even though Garmin Connect said all the playlists and songs were there.

Why is Garmin Connect saying there are songs and playlists on the 645 that I can't access? Two times now I've carefully loaded my playlists and then found out at the gym that they aren't there or only 2-3 songs made it on. This is ridiculous and frustrating.

Also, I saw some posts saying it won't upload DRM songs or songs that aren't on your computer. All of these songs on my playlists have been previously uploaded to the 645 and worked. They all exist on my computer.

The 645 MUSIC Effing sucks! Everyone is complaining about all these issues like they think Garmin isn't aware of them. They knew it wouldn't work when they released it! It is a joke. So much frustration. I paid extra for the music version of this watch and find it totally unusable. Cant get garmin express to transfer music. Garmin express itself is the ugliest clunkiest OLD app I am forced to use. Airpods won't work. With other headphones, the 645's Bluetooth is so weak that it actually matters what wrist you wear the watch on? I mean come on! Junk.

I suggest you return it.

The 645 MUSIC Effing sucks! Airpods won't work. With other headphones, the 645's Bluetooth is so weak that it actually matters what wrist you wear the watch on? I mean come on! Junk.

Airpods aren't the end all of earbuds. My $30 Anker earbuds work just fine. The limitations of Bluetooth aren't on Garmin. I presume that they chose to use a lower power Bluetooth chip to keep the battery life better than if they'd used a higher power one.

Garmin,
will someone work with Apple or Google Android to have the music transferred seamlessly from Music App to the Connect App??? Pleaaaaseee. The perfect flow will be 1. Make Playlist 2. Edit/Add 3. pick Library 4. Click (+) sign to add. All from the Connect App.

I know you guys are competing with the Apple Watch 3. But the AW3 sucks as a running watch but great as a music to Bluetooth watch. Maybe as a trade, u write an app for AW3. Garmin get the music access? I dream of the day we can finally run with a watch and bt headsets. No belts. No arm bands.

please work on it. thanks