Compass not working on Apple Watch S5

I had the same problem and i found a way to fix it.

FOLLOW THESE STEPS.

MAKE SHURE THAT YOUR WATCH IS CONNECTED TO YOUR IPHONE.

1- Go to settings on your iphone

2- Privacy

3-Location Services

4- Scroll down and click on System services

5- Turn on (Compass Calibration) and (Motion calibration & Distance )

Same problem. Watch was defective. If you got it recently through Verizon or another cell phone carrier then that’s why. There are many defective shipments. You’ll notice rebooting watch it freezes at Apple logo too. Get a replacement ASAP!

Weirdly it randomly will work. If I turn off the Apple Watch and then turn it back on it won't work for about 30mins. Then all the sudden it works fine. I get JetsamEvents in diagnostic logs every time it fails to load compass driver. I'm still doing some testing to see if it's physical hardware problem or if it is a software problem. I will be swapping mine out at an Apple Store next week. It suc*s that the quality of Apple's products has gone so far downhill.

Yes, the JetsamEvent was in the diagnostic logs in the watch app.

After replacing device I no longer have the problem. It was a faulty motherboard (says Apple technician).

I would recommend getting a replacement before the 14 day return policy expires. That way you get a new device without an issue.

I had physical problems with my watch where it wouldn't charge as well. Replacing it fixed that.

However I noticed that the compass still had issues even on the replacement. It was due to the restore from backup.

Basically before Apple patched an issue with restoring from backup with different software versions, I was able to restore from backup from when the software versions were different. Ever since then the backup has been messed up. Everything else seemed to work except the compass. After wiping and setting up as a new Watch then manually placing everything back to how I had it, it worked fine and has worked fine since.

If you notice, Apple has patched this from occurring now. So if you are running WatchOS 6.0.0 and your backup is from 6.0.1, the backup won't even show up as available to restore from whereas before it would come up and allow you to restore and mess up your watch. It appears to have only affected those who came from a previous Apple Watch series and had a software version mismatch at the time of switching.

Ok, the problem wasn’t the watch!

i had the sales person pair the watch to their phone and it worked

there are settings on the phone that need to be reenabled before it works

you can get a quick test on the watch by temporarily disabling “true north” in compass settings

Sounds like you have a bad model. When I first unboxed mine it gave me the snake of death and wouldn’t charge. After playing around with it for a bit I got it to work and boot up and charge, but the circuit board was reported bad after I had Apple check it out. My first one was indeed bad and caused issues with the compass as well. New replacement is working without issue.

Disabling true north is not a fix and having it enabled should not cause this problem. I’ve tried having it set with either option on my current replacement and I have no problems with compass. Sorry, but this isn’t the magic pill. If it fixed your problem it’s probably only temporary. Reboot your watch and then immediately try to get into compass, it should load up within 5-10 seconds.

Check your diagnostic logs for JetsamEvents, if they are there then you got a device with bad memory module, and that's more than likely causing not only a compass problem but many others.

My old one (before return) did the same thing. It would show up on lock screen even after the entire app was closed.

The new watch I have now does not do this at all.