Does Garmin Forerunner 945 have music?

Yes, Garmin Forerunner 945 has music. In fact, it has the ability to play your Spotify lists, play the music stored on your phone or play the audio content stored locally on the Forerunner 945’s device storage. Forerunner 945 provides full music compatibility and availability on the smartwatch. And, it covers all the possible music sources that could serve audio content for you.

Forerunner 945 has close to 15 GB of internal storage. Out of this, you would have around 4-5 GB available storage space for storing audio content or topo maps. The Forerunner 945 could easily store up to 1000 songs on the device. This means that you could listen to music right off your smartwatch, without the need to carry the paired smartphone at all times. To listen to music right off your smartwatch, you will need to make use of Bluetooth speakers. These speakers will connect to the Forerunner 945 smartwatch to play the music files stored locally on the watch storage volume.

Below we look at how you could play music through the Forerunner 945 smartwatch from different audio sources.

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How to play music from Forerunner 945 smartwatch?

We consider a situation when you have stored audio content on your Forerunner 945’s storage space. Remember, Forerunner 945 has an internal storage of around 15 GB. And, you could use 4-5 GB of this storage for storing songs, audio content, or topo maps. Assuming we decide to store audio content on the Forerunner 945 smartwatch, we lay out the steps needed to copy the music content to Forerunner 945. We also discuss the ways in which you can play music through a Bluetooth speaker that is paired with your watch.

How to download personal music on your Forerunner 945 smartwatch?

To store music on your Forerunner 945 smartwatch, we will need to bring up the Garmin Express software on your computer. We follow the steps below:

Connect the Garmin Forerunner 945 to the computer using the USB cable provided with the watch.
Open the Garmin Express application on your computer.
Bring up the Music option on your computer.
From within the Music option, load the ‘My Music’ or ‘iTunes’ library folder on your computer.
Browse the ‘My Music’ folder or ‘iTunes’ library to select the songs or playlists that you want copied over to the Forerunner 945 smartwatch.
After selecting the audio content through check marks, click on ‘Send to device’ to copy the audio content to the Forerunner 945 smartwatch.
You can also delete audio content from Forerunner 945 by deleting the audio files from the Forerunner 945 folder on the Garmin Express application. To delete audio content from the Forerunner 945, select the audio that you wish to delete in the Forerunner list. Choose the option, ‘Remove from Device’ to delete audio content from your Forerunner 945 smartwatch.

This simple approach allows you to download personal audio content from your computer to the Forerunner 945. We make use of the Garmin Express application for performing this activity.

How to play music stored on the smartphone through Forerunner 945?

Forerunner 945 allows you to play music through the paired smartphone. In this case, we are assuming that the audio content is stored on the paired smartphone. We use the Garmin Forerunner 945 options to control the phone and play music out of it.

Press the DOWN button to bring up the music controls option on the Garmin Forerunner 945 smartwatch.
Bring the paired smartphone in close proximity with the Forerunner 945 smartwatch.
Hold the 3 lines option (hamburger menu) to bring up the list of ‘Music Providers’ on your smartwatch.
From the available options in ‘Music Providers’, select the option to ‘Control Phone’. This will allow you to control playback controls of music content stored on your paired smartphone.
Use the 3 dots menu to bring up the playback controls on your Forerunner 945 watch. You can use the playback controls to manage music stored on the paired smartphone.

You could connect the Bluetooth speakers to your smartwatch for listening to music. These steps would allow you to play and control music content stored on the paired smartphone.

How to play music from the Spotify playlist?

You can play music from a third-party music provider through your Forerunner 945. Spotify is one of the supported music content providers. Before you can play music from a third party provider, you need to connect the service provider to your smartwatch. Forerunner 945 provides connectivity to a few music providers through the Connect IQ app. It also allows you to download music from a third party content provider. The steps below will allow you to connect to a third party music service provider.

Press DOWN from any screen on the Forerunner 945 smartwatch. This will bring up the music controls on your watch.
Bring up the Connect IQ to select from one of the pre-built music providers on the watch.
If your provider is not on the list, hold the 3 lines menu (hamburger menu) to bring up the ‘Music Providers’.
Choose ‘Add Provider’ to add the third party music provider as a source of your playlists or audio content.
Download the playlist from the music provider.
Press the three dots menu to bring up music controls and manage the audio content.

These steps allow you to download your playlists and manage playback controls from a third party service provider.

Summary

We have seen that the Garmin Forerunner 945 allows you to play music in multiple ways. The device can be used to store music files locally and stream the music through playback controls on the watch. Or, you could download your playlist from a music provider like Spotify. Finally, you could also play music and control music on the paired smartphone.

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Helen Kurt

Helen Kurt is a geeky nerd who loves to cover the wearables space. She has over 5 years of experience in the smartwatch domain. You can reach her on email at [email protected].