Apple Watch Series 9 complications are not working after the watchOS 11 update

Complication just always says “music and podcasts you play will appear here.” Regardless of what is actually playing (or not). Doesn’t display what is actually playing. Tap through and it will go to the correct and functional now playing controls, but the watch face complication is pointless.

Just finished two hour call with senior advisor at AppleCare. TLDR: if it doesn’t appear at all, it’s apparently some installation bug; recommend rebooting, both watch and phone. If it appears BUT shows just message “music will appear here, blah blah blah“ (WHICH IS WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME.), turns out this is supposedly a feature, not a bug.

Longer story: I was experiencing the same issue with iPhone 15 and watch 9 do not disturb. Already had restarted the phone and watch, and in fact, wiped them both to factory settings and set up as new device, and saw no change with problem. The advisor, after running lots of diagnostics, screen sharing, etc., was about to escalate to engineering, but decided to try things out on his own watch. Saw exactly the same issue. On the basis of that testing, plus the fact that in the complications list under “now playing“ the only option is that weird “suggestions“ thing,he decided that this is an actual change to how the complication functions. He said something about it’s now operating more like a widget, so you have to actually press it to open up the NowPlaying app to see what’s now playing. I’ve never bothered with widgets on the watch, so I have no idea what he meant by that, but I told him that in any eventI that was a really stupid change, and he told me to put in feedback.

Moreover, we discovered that if you load some music onto your watch and play it from the watch, the complication still will not show what’s actually playing while it’s playing (like that stupid message in the complication says), but the complications appearance will change to show instead of that message, little pictures of album covers with your three most recently played songs. You still have to click on the complication to open the actual nail playing app to see what’s playing, but the message about “music will appear here…“ no longer appears.

Anyhow, I’m still convinced that this is a a design bug, where Apple was trying to add a complication under now playing for “suggestions,” but in the process deleted the regular now playing complication that shows what’s now playing the most useful part of the complication).

Apologies for any weird typos or bizarre structure. I can’t see much, so I’m dictating, and you know all about AutoCorrect…

I find the music app hard locks shortly after opening it. I did a clean install of WatchOS 11 and did not restore from backup. Serious bug to have been missed by Apple QA team. Very poor.

I’m replying to myself because I can’t figure out how to edit my previous post, but I just discovered that the “now playing“ complication no longer is even listed as available for most watch faces (including the module or watch face) on Apple support list of watch faces and their features:Apple Watch faces and their features - Apple Support

So, seems to me that they actually killed the feature

Maybe my problem is slightly different. I had my complication as Shazam. It worked great. But after updating to WatchOS11 got a message that that it had moved and it no longer worked. After seeing this discussion, I removed the Shazam complication and added the Music Recognition complication. It now works recognizing music that’s played.

I’m having similar issues, but with the temperature and my daily schedule, no longer showing on the watch face. When I go to customize the complication, temperature or weather is not even an option. Then out of nowhere, the weather will come back, only to leave again. This is extremely frustrating