Apple Watch showing green snake but not starting - fix for 'green snake of death'

The suggested solution (wait until the battery dies completely) hasn't worked in my case, and I'd been fiddling with that snake of death for about a month, until I figured it our today. I found two new tricks that helped me.

First, believe it or not, but it matters into which wall outlet you plug the adapter. It must be related to the different surge protectors that change the wave shape of the current. I'm not sure if charging via laptop is better - i've tried that with my two MacBooks (Pro and Air) but eventually got the watch back to life via a wall adapter.

There’s also the second and important peculiarity. After you start charging, your green snake of death may eventually turn into red one (otherwise you are fine - just keep charging). At this point many people either leave it with the red snake on the charger with no result, or try removing the watch from the charger and putting it back again to restore the green snake. It won’t help. Instead you must unplug the charger from the wall adapter (or the laptop, if that's your choice) and wait for at least 10 seconds - this resets some sort of a charging error that the charger obviously registers.

So the procedure would be as follows:

1. unplug your Apple Watch adapter from the wall outlet, go to another one (preferably on another floor or even in another building) and plug it in there

2. put your Apple Watch on the charger. You should see the green snake, at least initially

3. check the status in about half an hour, by gently pushing the side button without removing the watch from the charger. If you see the red snake of death again (and the watch becomes really hot), you should basically go back to step 1). I.e. unplug the wall adapter, move to another outlet and plug it there

Sooner or later you you’ll get the green snake stay at your Apple watch, without turning into the red one again. At this point the watch should also become less hot, meaning that some trickle charge has now begun. Now don’t touch it at all. In 2 to 12 hours, the watch should switch into its normal mode and begin normal charging (which will last much longer the first time). After it’s fully charged and operational, I’d recommend doing full reset via its menu, to decrease the chances of getting that annoying error again.

if the above has helped you, feel free to donate some of the money you’ve just saved to a good cause of your choice :)

I just bought an Apple Watch from someone she said it was purchased a few months ago & when I received it it was working fine & then it died & I can’t get it to turn on. When it’s unplugged it’s showing the red snake when I plug it in it shows the green snake I tried to hold both buttons down for 10 seconds to restart it that isn’t working either. When I put it on the charger it gets a little hot as well. Any suggestions on what might help

I had the same problem called apple support the tech said never heard of it, he proceeds to set me up for mail in for my watch series 4. Total cost without Apple care was 380$ got my new/refurbished watch and it wouldn’t start up another charging over night so I went to my iPhone 6 and tried to sync the watch and it said it was incompatible with the iPhone 6. What! Yes it will not sync cause the watch they sent me had the new OS6 on it and it was incompatible with my iPhone 6. Now before the updated OS when I bought the watch they both worked together. So I think this snake of death is software issue if you have auto updates. So I went out and got a iPhone 11 now so I’m good for a couple of years huh?

Same problem help me