Tidal Releases Apple Watch App With Offline Playback and More

Tidal this week released an Apple Watch app, allowing subscribers to stream music and control playback directly on their wrist, without an iPhone nearby. The app is available through the App Store on watchOS.

apple watch tidal
Tidal on the Apple Watch provides access to tracks, albums, playlists, and downloaded content that can be listened to offline from anywhere without internet connectivity. Apple Music also offers offline playback on the Apple Watch, as does Spotify starting last week, so this feature is consistent with other streaming music services.

Launched in 2014, Tidal has a catalog of over 70 million songs. One of the platform's unique advantages was high-fidelity audio, but Apple Music will start offering lossless audio to subscribers in June at no additional cost.

Related Roundup: Apple Watch 10
Tag: Tidal
Buyer's Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Coming Soon With These 14 New Features

Monday June 30, 2025 1:08 pm PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are less than three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max in September this year. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an...
Apple Watch Ultra Night Mode Screen

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Launching Later This Year With Two Key Upgrades

Wednesday July 2, 2025 1:13 pm PDT by
The long wait for an Apple Watch Ultra 3 appears to be nearly over, and it is rumored to feature both satellite connectivity and 5G support. Apple Watch Ultra's existing Night Mode In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is on track to launch this year with "significant" new features, including satellite connectivity, which would let you...
iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Magsafe

iPhone 17 Pro's New MagSafe Design Revealed in Leaked Photo

Wednesday July 2, 2025 8:37 am PDT by
The upcoming iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are rumored to have a slightly different MagSafe magnet layout compared to existing iPhone models, and a leaked photo has offered a closer look at the supposed new design. The leaker Majin Bu today shared a photo of alleged MagSafe magnet arrays for third-party iPhone 17 Pro cases. On existing iPhone models with MagSafe, the magnets form a...
Wi Fi WiFi General Feature

iOS 26 Adds a Useful New Wi-Fi Feature to Your iPhone

Wednesday July 2, 2025 6:36 am PDT by
iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 add a smaller yet useful Wi-Fi feature to iPhones and iPads. As spotted by Creative Strategies analyst Max Weinbach, sign-in details for captive Wi-Fi networks are now synced across iPhones and iPads running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. For example, while Weinbach was staying at a Hilton hotel, his iPhone prompted him to fill in Wi-Fi details from his iPad that was already...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro Max Battery Capacity Leaked

Thursday July 3, 2025 5:40 am PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature the biggest ever battery in an iPhone, according to the Weibo leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post, the leaker listed the battery capacities of the iPhone 11 Pro Max through to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and added that the iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature a battery capacity of 5,000mAh: iPhone 11 Pro Max: 3,969mAh iPhone 12 Pro Max: 3,687mAh...
iOS 18

Apple Releases Second iOS 18.6 Public Beta

Tuesday July 1, 2025 10:19 am PDT by
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 updates to public beta testers, with the betas coming just a day after Apple provided the betas to developers. Apple has also released a second beta of macOS Sequoia 15.6. Testers who have signed up for beta updates through Apple's beta site can download iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 from the Settings app on a compatible...
maxresdefault

New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip Spotted in Apple Code

Monday June 30, 2025 8:05 am PDT by
Apple is developing a MacBook with the A18 Pro chip, according to findings in backend code uncovered by MacRumors. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Earlier today, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to launch a low-cost MacBook powered by an iPhone chip. The machine is expected to feature a 13-inch display, the A18 Pro chip, and color options...

Top Rated Comments

dasmb Avatar
54 months ago
We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MauiPa Avatar
54 months ago

Cool so you can hold how many lossless tracks on the Apple Watch, 5?
None. It connects via Bluetooth silly
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dannyyankou Avatar
54 months ago
Cool so you can hold how many lossless tracks on the Apple Watch, 5?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nutmac Avatar
54 months ago

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.
Nice write up but I suspect that's essentially what Apple is doing with Hi-Res Lossless. They are probably based on "High-Resolution Masters" from Apple Digital Masters ('https://www.apple.com/itunes/docs/apple-digital-masters.pdf') program. This program does not mandate 24-bit 192 kHz, however. But with about 70% of the songs in Apple's 70 million+ songs created with Apple Digital Masters, I suspect Apple will quickly surpass Tidal's Master Quality Audio (MQA)'s library of about 30,000 songs.

Edit: MQA is very controversial. 3 key points: (1) MQA is not lossless, (2) MQA adds distortion, and (3) MQA does not always use high sample master. It's essentially a scam ('//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc').
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kenni417 Avatar
54 months ago
tidal?? what's that????
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
christojean Avatar
54 months ago
Apple Music Hi-Fi got the competitors shook lol
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)