How to pair Bluetooth headphones with a Samsung Galaxy Watch

How to pair Bluetooth headphones with a Galaxy Watch
(Image credit: Tshaka Armstrong)

Samsung’s Galaxy Watches are wonderfully robust wrist wearables packed with a plethora of features like their top-tier Galaxy smartphone counterparts. You can do everything from basic step counting to tracking your sleep, monitoring your heart for irregular heartbeats, and measuring and analyzing your body fat — a feat rarely found in a smartwatch. 

One of my favorite uses of the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic is to track my workouts and outdoor adventures without needing to take my phone along, which also means connecting my favorite pair of Bluetooth earbuds directly to my watch. So, let's go ahead and answer the question:  how do you pair Bluetooth headphones with a Galaxy Watch?

How to pair Bluetooth headphones with a Galaxy Watch

1. Put your earbuds in pairing mode. This will vary depending on the model that you are using. 

2. From your Galaxy Watch, swipe down from the top of the watch face to reveal the Quick Panel.

3. Tap the Settings (cog) icon.

4. Tap Connections

5. Select Bluetooth

(Image credit: Tshaka Armstrong)

6. Tap the Scan button.

7. Select your earbuds from the list of available devices.

8. Tap the Checkmark button to confirm the earbuds you want to pair.

(Image credit: Tshaka Armstrong)

Wait a beat, and before you know it you’ll see that your earbuds are connected to your Samsung Galaxy Watch and ready for you to tackle whatever’s next!

The benefits of pairing your headphones to your watch

Maybe you’re going to the gym, or maybe it’s a hike, but you can leave the phone at home (or in the car, hidden) and use that 16GB of onboard storage to transfer music files to your Galaxy Watch and jam out to Beyonce’s new Cowboy Carter album while you get your sweat on!

You did do that ahead of time, didn’t you? If you subscribe to Spotify or YouTube Music, you can also use those services to get some motivational tunes, or podcasts onto the watch for those workouts as well. It's all good now that you know how to pair Bluetooth headphones with a Galaxy Watch!

With the LTE version of the watch, you don’t even have to worry about downloading content directly to it, you can stream on the go to your heart’s content. Provided you have a strong enough signal and an app that supports standalone streaming from your Galaxy Watch. Personally, I’d rather have the music downloaded. Ain’t nobody got time for buffering in the wilderness!

I used one of the best wireless earbuds on the market, Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 4, but these directions work with any Bluetooth wireless earbuds or headphones. If you really want to get the most out of that Bluetooth connection, pair your Galaxy Watch to Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, and you’ll be able to use the Buds app on the watch to control features like adaptive noise canceling right from the watch.

Tshaka Armstrong
Contributor

Tshaka Armstrong is a nerd. Co-Founder of the non-profit digital literacy organization, Digital Shepherds, he’s also been a broadcast technology reporter, writer and producer. In addition to being an award-winning broadcast storyteller, he’s also covered tech online and in print for everything from paintball gear technology, to parenting gadgets, and film industry tech for Rotten Tomatoes. In addition to writing for Android Central, he’s a video contributor for Android Central and posts everything else to his own YouTube channel and socials. He blathers on about his many curiosities on social media everywhere as @tshakaarmstrong.