Q: I can send Digital Touch, but can't receive. Any ideas?

FYI for everyone having this issue. I am an Apple Watch nerd and have been testing every little thing with another equally as big Apple Watch nerd. I could get her sketches and was notified of them - taps and heartbeat too - but when I sent her something she never saw it or knew about it.

Just as mentioned in here, the recipient's iCloud email was not in the contact card. As soon as I added it and she added mine, it worked fine between us with notifications and all.

So it's definitely the iCloud email address that does it. You might use the phone number to initiate the contact and that's fine, but you need that iCloud address in the card to match because that's clearly what's being used for the digital touch and not the phone number. And that makes perfect sense since digital touch isn't a text message.

Here is EXACTLY what I did to fix the problem.

1. Go to the contact card of the person you want to exchange Digital Touch with on your iPhone.

2. Click edit and add the person's iCloud email address as a new email address.

3. Make sure you hit save.

4. Make sure the other person you are trading with also adds your iCloud address.

4. Reset/reboot your watch by holding in the crown and the button below until the apple logo appears. (not 100 percent sure this step is needed, but it definitely can't hurt)

5. Go to the Watch app on your phone and click on friends. Verify that the new iCloud email is showing on the card when you click the little letter i next to the name.

6. Try again.

Hope that works. Worked like a charm for me. Thanks to the kind folks in this thread who started the ball rolling. Hopefully writing it out in step-by-step form will make the process smoother.

Upgraded to 1.0.1.  Same problem, still.

Setup:

1. Our 2 iPhones 5s (do share the same Apple ID for everything.

2. iMessage is configured for our phone numbers respectively.

3. We do use iTunes Match and have 200Gb iCould -- and these are the reasons why we don't use different Apple ID.

4. Two Apple Watches are paired with respective iPhones

Problems with Phones:

1. Siri gets messed up all the time calling me by my wife's name and refusing to understand husband/wife relationship between our contact records.

2. In Contacts -- it has "Me" in front of my wife's name. Why? Nowhere in her record does she have my e-mail or phone number, and phone certainly knows it phone number.

Problems with Watches:

1. I can send Digital Touch to my wife -- no problem, but when she sends it -- it comes back to her Watch in a second.

2. Worse: her phone calls now ring both phones sometimes, even if it is me who is calling.

I am seriously considering just getting her another account and paying double for all iCloud services.  But when does this end? - my kids are almost of age when they would want their own phones and I have three kids!!!

I Have similar issue. Her message teaches me digital touch. But mine comes back to me in a second . However, it also teaches her !!! Man!

I tried everything. My taps etc. come back to me in seconds . I have done all steps described by anybody and even sent feedback to apple. The only thing that worked was if I used by wife's apple id as the main iCloud account... but then the price is too high ... the storage plan etc all gets reset to 5GB. You cannot share it if you use your spouse or children's apple id as the main icloud account on the device. Even the photo stream become different. So I can't afford to do that. I am so frustrated !

1. we use same iCloud account in settings iCloud

2. in the contacts, she has her iCloud email, and I have mine

3. in messages, she has hers and I have mine

4. In face time, she has hers and I have mine

She has paired her watch with her phone and me with mine obviously

At this point, I think its a bug with os. It seems to use the main iCloud account rather than using iMessage or FT.

Anybody? (please prove me wrong...please...)

I'm jumping in the middle here..."I can tell you what's going on if you answer yes." OK, SHolshey didn't answer yes, but I will. I'm guessing this is the issue my wife and I are having getting digital touch to work (we seem to work one direction but not the other)? We've shared an AppleID for years, and it's going to be a pretty big hassle to use separate IDs, so we've never done it. I'll brace myself for your feedback

Obviously it's not going to work if you use the same Apple ID on both watches.

Try to send a letter to your addres, you'll receive it if you are at home when the postman comes and if it's your wife that is at home she is going to receive it but at the end the letter will arrive at the same address, the address of the sender.

Try to do it with iMessage, you will receive your message back.

It is the same with DT and it is not a bug. You need to use 2 separate Apple ID.

Not true. Watch could use the ID used for iMessage or FT for digital touch. Infact, thats what Apple Rep told me to try (change iMessage and FT apple ids to be distinct). But watch is not using that today, its using apple id from iCloud account. Hence, ...

Remember, if they are supporting family share, this has to work.

Thanks.  However, this also hasn't fixed my issue.  I can't wrap my head around this as I've literally tried 50 different solves, repairings, rebootings, contact deletes, edits, adds.....

Me too. 

> Try to do it with iMessage, you will receive your message back.

Are you kidding? That always worked just fine, regardless of Apple ID, because there are settings in iMessage and in Face Time for the phone-number/e-mail to use as your address vs. just Apple ID.

And how do you explain me receiving my wife's calls when we are both at home?  They are calling her phone number, not mine!

I will be running a test today with my friend whose ids etc are all different. If that works fine, then I am convinced it is the issue... shared ID. I did that with my wifes watch and it did work, but I had to switch back to shared ID for same obvious reasons as everybody. I am praying apple fixes it with next update. My feedback to apple did not yield any response from them yet. Not sure if they even would. I am just glad everybody is facing this issue (if not all).

Handoff. I noticed the same too. On same wifi, when I get a call on my iPhone, her iPhone rings as well.

DarKOrange -- Please, no need to be nasty with your reply. This is not an "obviously" situation at all. My wife and I have shared an AppleID since 2010 when we got our first iPad 1. We now share the ID across two iPad Minis, two iPhones, a Mac and now two Apple Watches. As long as we keep the "Send & Receive" set up on each device to match what we want that device to receive, we don't have a problem. Even now with the Watches, we don't receive each other's text messages, etc. The only feature that is not working as expected is Digital Touch. If this is not a bug on Apple's part, then it is the advent of new designed software behavior that is not easy (at least for me) to differentiate from other Apple ID related behaviors.

@richardj311:

Just to note: Digital Touch is not the only thing that has a bug, the other buggy thing is receiving other persons phone calls when close (not sure if this has to do with same WiFi network or being in each other BlueTooth range).  This one bothers me more than Digital Touch.

Looks like you did not understand my attempt to demonstrate that it is not going to work if you use the SAME Apple ID on BOTH watches. Sorry.