Duplicate Apple Watch in the Sources devices list

I also have this problem.

I reset the phone using the side button and crown button and switched my phone off at the same time. Waited a few minutes and restarted phone.

data now transferring!

In settings, there are still 2 watches and still saying one with no data is paired and one with data not paired- but it is actually getting the data now. 🤯

Over the last two months, I had my phone and my series 4 watch replaced. One would think that with that the issue has been solved. Wrong! at the Apple Genius Bar (Apple Ingenious Bar, rather) they tried to explain to me this way. Explanations are in chronological order:

1. “there is no issue with your watch”. (Proved them wrong. Showed them the inconsistent data between health app and the duplicate device list)
2. “There COULD be an issue with the watch”. (They sent it off and email came back: We will be replacing your device.)
3. Since the issue was still there, they said “there could be an issue with your phone” so off they sent my phone. A week later message comes “We will be replacing your device” (At this point i was laughing my head off. Fine with me, new watch, new phone...they are absolute idiots.)
4. When I paired the new watch with the new phone, I used a different Apple ID, wiped clean, no health data...still two devices in Data Sources. What it also does, connection between the watch and the phone is slow and Siri often takes a minute to respond. At this point I could not be bothered. However, I did notice a difference: under watch OS 5 there was only ONE device listed. The moment I updated the watch OS, immediately 2 watches came up. And the very same thing happened with both Series 4 Apple Watches. So IT IS SOFTWARE RELATED ISSUE. My boss just got his new Apple Watch and new iPhone. He never had an Apple Watch ever. Paired the watch and he also has duplicate devices in the Health app data source/device source. 1 devices actively paired with the phone but does not receive any data. 2nd device, “no longer paired” with iPhone receives all data!

Lesson: Apple both employers and employees do not have the backbone to say: Yes, the operating system has a major bug. We don’t know how to fix it at this stage. We are sorry.” No, instead, they pretend there is no problem, no responsibility, no integrity. Only lies, lies, lies. At least when Steve Jobs was at the steering wheel, he had the guts to admit. Mr Cook is always cooking up something that people eat up and then get sick. But we are fed up. No more Cookies, please!

I set up a phone as new and repaired, that seemed to have solved the issue for me. Whenever updating iOS I turn the watch off, too. Everything is syncing correctly right now. But there's no peace of mind about the issue being actually resolved because of how annoyingly slow the repairing process is.

Also, did you pair it after updating to 13.1.2 and 6.0.1? If not have you tried unpairing and repairing afterwards?

I can confirm this is not just a comestic bug.

To replicate:

Setup iPhone (with iOS 13 and up, same as for iOS 13.3) as a new phone.

Setup Apple Watch (with WatchOS 6 and up, same as for 6.1.1) as a new Watch and pair it to iPhone.

There are 2 entries of data sources created in Health App.

Setup alarm (e.g. 07:00) using the built-in Clock App.

When alarm trigger, my iPhone and Apple Watch sound the the alert tone at the same time. You can snooze / stop the alarm on Apple Watch.

Then, change the default name of Apple Watch to something else.

After that, Apple Watch do not alert anymore. There is no popup to snooze / stop the alarm on Apple Watch as well.

This also happen when there is more than 1 Apple Watch paired to iPhone (including reset Apple Watch and pair with the same iPhone again).

Obviously, this is not a cosmetic issue. Same problem happen on iOS 13.3 and WatchOS 6.1.1

You (and everyone) should open a ticket there. I did this. It's all about prioritzation of this (known, the support guy directly found the issue) bug.

There's no way to say with certainty - but all signs point to it. You should contact apple support and complain. The more people raise the issue - the higher likelihood they'll bother to fix it.

Terbium wrote:

I really cant believe this isn't being fixed in 6.1 - not just two entries appearing in the health app but the inability to currently rename a device.

Does anyone know if this is just happening for people who set their watch up as new, or is it happening when restoring from backup too?

This happens both if you setup as new watch, as well as if you restore from a backup. It's a complete mess...

Yeah - once the 2 watches problem appears there's no way to get rid of it (even completely resetting both the phone and the watch and not from the backup doesn't fix it). My guess there' something set in the iCloud account that gets restored during the install (disabling health in iCloud doesn't help - so it must be something very core to the account state itself).

The bad part here is that you start seeing progressive battery life degradation and active energy sync delays after a while - and those are likely connected (you could go to Privacy/Analytics and observe increasing number of healthd errors complaining about CPU overuse stuck deep in sqlite stack - both from the phone and the watch).

Agreed.

I’ve also noticed what i think is another bug. When you browse data in the health app and then go “data sources and access,” if you change the priority order of devices in that list, things seem to revert back either immediately or after a random amount of time. As said, the fact i have two watches with the same name (because renaming doesn't work), combined with this, means i literally have to guess which device is which.

Same here!!!! I actually took my series 4 watch back to Apple. Told them about the health data inconsistencies and asked them to investigate. Then I got an email that I would get a replacement watch which I did. I was happy until I paired the new replacement watch with my phone and in the source the new watch also came up as two devices! I was mad! So I am taking this new watch back and will demand a new replacement until I found one that functions correctly. I also noticed that calls initiated from the watch sometimes (often) fail. Or, when I press for Siri she doesn’t finish the whole sentence but cuts out after the first word or two. I didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for this crap device! Apple’s new slogan: “It just doesn’t work.”

By the way, I just installed the latest iOS 13.3 beta, and WatchOS 6.1.1 beta (released yesterday), removed my watch, removed all devices from Apple Health, removed the watch from iCloud, restarted and paired it again. It still ended up as two devices in Apple Health. Seems Apple are not able to fix this within the iOS 13.x timeframe.

I had the exact thing happen to my Apple Watch 4, I unpaired and deleted the devices and paired it back. Still the same. I really can’t accept this. Watch not connected by with data. The other connected but no data. What the...

Same exact thing happened to me today when I wanted to check out my most recent run split times after downloading Nike Run Club. Data were going to a "no longer paired" Apple Watch with the currently paired one - same name as the first - displaying "no data". Nike Run Club app also didn't display the most recent data, because it wasn't on the currently paired Apple Watch. I've only ever had one Apple Watch. So, unpairs, repairs, resets of both phone and watch, restores of both, etc. Nothing works to fix this.

Phone was recently updated to 13.2.2, watch has been 6.1. I'm not sure when this fail first appeared but it's absolutely still an unfixable problem.

It's a complete mess and I'm massively annoyed by it. I bought this thing for the runs, without that it's useless.

For me doesn't matter - new or backup produces the same 2 watches, the same down the road battery issues and the same down the road activity sync lags. If you look under privacy / analytics there're many many many log files with healthd being stuck with sqlite stack trace on Core Data (which is the worst framework Apple put out ever - that so poorly thought of that it can't possibly work right by design and source of a million bugs btw)