Quick Hands-On: Wahoo Adds Music Controls to Rival Watch, Plans for TrainingPeaks Workout Support

Over the last week Wahoo has quietly rolled out a firmware update that adds music controls to their Wahoo Rival multisport GPS watch, enabling it to changes songs on your iOS device. For those on Android, Wahoo says music control there "will be part of a future firmware update". So for this post I'll quickly cover how it works. It's not too complex, so this won't take too long.

However, Wahoo also announced that its "next planned firmware update will incorporate planned workouts from TrainingPeaks" - marking the first time the RIVAL has structured workout support of any type. This functionality will largely mirror that found on their ELEMNT series cycling units (ELEMNT/BOLT/ROAM), but of course now supporting more than just cycling workouts. While there's no specific date for that yet, I don't expect it to be too far off. Wahoo has noted recently they wanted to get into a higher cadence of smaller updates for RIVAL, and you'll remember just a few weeks ago we got the running track mode update.

Music Controls Overview:

As far as the music controls go, it's actually a slightly unique take on things. First of course you'll update your watch, if you haven't already. Simply crack open the Wahoo ELEMNT app so it'll tell the watch to get the latest version. You'll need firmware version 1.39.72 (or later) on the watch - and you'll need the Wahoo ELEMNT app updated and in the background somewhere.

Next, open any iOS supported music app. In other words, any app that also shows music controls from the lock screen. My guess is that's every app you'd probably ever use. In my case, that's Spotify. When you open Spotify and start playing, it'll automatically add (and open) a new controls page on the RIVAL:

You'll see the app name up top, followed by the artist name, track title, and then the time remaining + time progress bar.

You can use the top right button to skip tracks, and the middle right button to pause music. Meanwhile, if you press the bottom two buttons together, it'll open up the volume controls to increase/decrease volume:

This page is then accessible like any other data page, so it's accessible from within a workout by just tapping the bottom buttons to iterate forward/backward through the data pages, including getting back to the watch page.

And...that's it. Simple and straightforward.

With that, looking forward to digging into the TrainingPeaks structured (and scheduled) workout implementation once it's ready. Thanks for reading!

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