Apple Watch showing green snake but not starting - fix for 'green snake of death'
This question was asked in these forums but never usefully answered. Just the usual 'golly, take it to Apple' — where the battery repair is $79 (about $95 with shipping and taxes). Here's a more useful answer:
The problem: Apple Watch shows a green snake ("charge me please") when on the charger but it doesn't charge or respond — except perhaps by getting very hot when sitting on the charger. People have had this happen to them after installing a new battery, or sometimes just randomly. It happened to me in June 2020 after installing a new battery bought from iFixit into my original ("series 0") Apple Watch.
The solution:
Leave the watch alone until the battery dies completely. That is, until nothing happens when you press the side button — no red snake, no green snake, just a black screen. It might take a day or two. Then start charging, and let it charge for a long time, such as the officially recommended 2.5 hours. Ta dah! Fixed!
One way to tell if this "cure" is working: When it’s NOT working, my watch and charger got really, really hot to the touch. Like REALLY hot — too hot to touch. But after I let the battery die completely and started charging, the temperature while charging was normal, not hot at all.
Note: This solution is findable if you spend a lot of time scratching all over the internet, and ignore all the suggestions that don't actually work, but I thought it should be here in the forums too.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Apple Watch, watchOS 4