AppleWatch?

[Chris Smart (ve3rwj)]

Someone on the Absolute Tech Net is asking how Repeaterphone works on the Apple Watch.

 

I don’t own one, so … how does this work? Do you tether the watch to the phone and use the app on the phone?

[Weston Bustraan]

The Apple Watch primarily functions as a remote PTT for the app on the phone.

You can:

- Scroll through your favorites

- Start a connection

- Hangup a connection

- Push to talk

Apple does not permit streaming audio to and from the watch, so you can't use it as a speaker mic.

- Wes W8WJB

On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 8:35 PM Chris Smart (ve3rwj) <ve3...@winsystem.org> wrote:

Someone on the Absolute Tech Net is asking how Repeaterphone works on the Apple Watch.

 

I don’t own one, so … how does this work? Do you tether the watch to the phone and use the app on the phone?

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[Patrick Perdue]

Related to this:

If you use Voiceover on Apple Watch, the state of PTT is not at all obvious. It just announces "Push to Talk" regardless if you are transmitting or not.

Just FYI.

It just says 

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[Jessica Dail]

Hi,

I'm slightly confused now.

If Apple doesn't allow streaming audio, then how can Apple Music & podcasts, as well as certain other apps make use of the watch's speaker?

My Ultra 2 does this & it's quite nice.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 6, 2025, at 12:51 PM, Patrick Perdue <borris...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Weston Bustraan]

The keyword is "streaming". Music and Podcasts are generally all pre-recorded and can be transferred as a file, or chunks of files.

Imagine being on a AllStarLink net and having to wait for it to buffer even a few seconds worth of data before transferring it to your watch. It would be a painful experience.

Even the "Walkie-Talkie" app on the watch does this. You press the PTT button, it starts recording to a file, transmits this file to your phone, uploads it to the cloud, and then the recipient downloads it from the cloud, transfers it to the watch, where it plays.

- Wes W8WJB

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[Weston Bustraan]

I may be out of date on recent changes to the WatchOS platform, so I will check and see if they have expanded the allowed functionality.

What I would be interested in, though, is what the usage profile would look like? Would people be using the Watch app where it has its own WiFi or cellular connection? Or do you typically rely on the phone for the Internet connection?

- Wes W8WJB

[Jessica Dail]

Hi Wes & all,

The Apple watch ultra comes with cellular data automatically.

I hope that helps.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 7, 2025, at 8:40 AM, Weston Bustraan <wbus...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Weston Bustraan]

Yes, but cellular data isn't free, so I assume that it has to be connected with a cellular plan. I think that not everyone activates that feature.

I get the feeling that there are some people that want to speak into their watches like a modern-day Dick Tracy. But the question is, does it connect to the remote AllStar node directly, using its own networking facilities, or does it use the phone to do so. I feel like if it connected directly on its own, there is a very small group of users that would want that. When you take the subset of all RepeaterPhone users that own an Apple Watch and then the further subset of users that have a watch that has its own connectivity and then finally the group of people that want to speak into the watch. For example, my wife and I both have Apple Watches, but neither of them have cellular or WiFi capabilities, so the only option would be to transmit data to the host phone via Bluetooth,

- Wes W8WJB