Apple Watch Series 4 Stuck in Boot Loop After Reset

I can assure everyone that this is definitely an apple issue and they are well aware of the problem. This happened to my series 4 watch while still covered under apple care+. I have been dealing with apple over this issue for the past 4 months. I had my original watch replaced only to have the same issue happening within days. I have spent hours talking to apple text support, chat support, and 10+ hours on the phone w half a dozen senior support advisors and numerous emails and phone calls with a senior watch support specialist. I've sent over half a dozen pictures and videos of my watch stuck in a bootloop all of which was forwarded to the engineering team ( neither you nor the support specialist speak to the Engineering team directly, they only communicate w support via email) only to be told in the end that they are well aware of the issue and the numerous people are having the same issue and they hope to fix it with an update at some point ( no idea as to when that will happen) my watch has gotten so bad I can't even check for updates in the watch app on my phone.

Force restarts, unpairing from phone, setting up as a new watch, or letting the watch sit dead for days on end does nothing to fix this issue. This issue has been going on well before watch os7 was even released. Our watches are just expensive paperweights until apple decides to get their acts together and fix it.

Has anyone made any progress with their watches? Mine is a series 5 and I’m currently in the process of sending it in for the second time in a month. I’m not confident it will be the last time, but worried it will happen again when the warranty has expired (if they fix / put a plaster on it)

No, it seems the 7.0.3 update is only available for s3. It's telling me my s4 is up to date w 7.0.2. No need to send your watch back, they won't be able to fix it. You'll have to wait for them to put out a software update for the rest of us. I'm going to email my senior watch support advisor and see what she says.

I agree. My watch just quit working and has gone to the cycling of the apple logo. I went to the Genius Bar and the suggestion is since your watch is outside of the warranty period it would be $375 dollars for a replacement. It seems that this is the way Apple force people to upgrade or pay for another device. Even my daughter's iPhone 8 is starting to glitch; she predicted that within a few months close to the iPhone 12 it would happen and low and behold if it hasn't. I'm disgusted with the Apple business model. My wife has refused to go over to Apple from Google Pixel and I should have done the same thing. I'm not happy.

I sent my watch back three weeks ago. The rest it somehow and sent it back working. This was just before warranty expires so I was lucky. I’m guessing they will do the same again, rather then resolving the issue. I’ll keep sending it in while I have the option. This is crazy!!! I guess many of us have learnt to delay updating no matter how nice the new OS looks. For iPhones and iPads too.

So I just found this discussion and would love to add to this. My wife and I (both have Series 4 Stainless steel watches, and iPhone 11’s) have been experiencing this issue on and off for months as well. We have tried dozens of things, and even got replacement watches sent to us as our watches have Apple Care+. There is something going on with software on the watch, or the phone, maybe both. I also have talked with people (not Apple) that work with development kits etc, and they think it could be health data that gets corrupted and causes the watch to power cycle. My wife’s watch never gets as bad as mine. Her’s will power cycle a few times throughout the day, sometimes it will power cycle 5-8 times in a row, but then stabilize. Mine does that too, but then I have days where the watch will get into a boot loop which it can never get out of. It will go OVER AND OVER AND OVER. When I call Apple, they can’t run a diagnostic or anything because the watch doesn’t stay on. There is seriously something wrong with the software that is causing this issue and it needs to be RESOLVED NOW!

I am currently working with a senior advisor and we are working with collecting data and getting data points of when this is happening so they can access logs within the software to see what the watch does that causes the boot loop. Luckily my wife’s has been stable enough that I was able to load the profile information required to do this, but mine has been in an infinite boot cycle today. I was FINALLY able to get the watch unpaired from my phone (you can usually brute force it) and I am going to see if that helps me stabilize for a while. This is just actually insane, and isn’t fully related to iOS 14 or Watch OS 7. I have had this on and off from before the release of both of those updates. It just seems to have gotten worse with 7 and 14.

I will keep you guys posted if I hear more or learn of any fixes. I am hoping we can all fix these issues, because like you have all said, it is NOT a user created issue. This is software, and this is BAD. I have had it on both my original and replacement watch. So even if I were to go out and buy myself a brand spanking new watch, I would still have this issue. Sometime is seriously flawed.

You are going down the exact same road as I did. They wanted me to note down 3-5 times the reboot happened after installing the profiles. They wanted times down to the second if possible, I gave them 15 times so they could look exactly when in the logs it was happening. After 4 months of going thru this issue well before iOS 14 and watchOS 7. My advisor, after discussing w the engineers only could come back and tell me they were well aware of the issue which is a software issue and there was nothing more we could do other then wait for apple to come out and update watchOS with a fix. So far they have only come out w a fix for series 3. It’s been going on 2 months now I’ve been waiting for an update to fix this issue and 6 months I have not been able to use my watch at all.

This is very concerning. I am so glad I found this community post. It really bums me out to see people having the exact same issue, because I know how frustrating it has been for me.

The part that doesn’t make sense when you try to think about it all is why are there days when its worse than others? Some days I will have it do the power cycle zero times (that I am aware of), some days I have it happen a few times. Then there are days like today where its basically been in a boot loop for the last 7 hours. If I kept it on a charger I imagine it would happen forever.

Like I said, I was able to brute force the watch to unpair from the phone, and I reset the watch and set up as a new watch (only allowing it to pull health data and such as needed). When you do that, it seems to fix the watch. Mine hasn’t done it again since. But I know it will start doing it over the next few days or week etc.

I don’t know what else we can do, it just doesn’t seem fair that we have to wait for an update when this is there problem. They should honestly give us all brand new series 6 watches that obviously aren’t having these issues, or at least give us series 6 watches to use until they solve this issue with the series 4.

Yup as of 2 days ago ran into this issue on my series 4 as well have tried everything posted in forums to try and fix the issue but still stuck in an Endless Apple logo boot up screen when connected to charger never stops shows logo for about 4 seconds turns black then does cycle again have yet to have it power all the way up even after battery draining it. Can call Apple but will know it will be pointless cause they won’t solve any issue cause they’ll just tell me to try what I’ve already tried haha

Hey everyone on here that is probably still experiencing issues. I had the chance to talk with an Apple engineer tonight. They are supposedly “aware” of something that might be causing this and are looking into it. Supposedly based on all the logs and data people like us have been supplying them with.

I do have a question for any of you. Do you guys happen to have Wyze cameras and are using the Wyze app? I was told that app sending notifications to my watch might be part of the problem. Basically, any notification that sends larger images to the watch.

This sounds off to me since the power cycles don’t seem related to receiving notifications, its very random and I definitely get notifications with pictures fine most of the time. I was just curious if we somehow all did have Wyze cams and the Wyze app maybe this was something we would single out.

I have no idea......I am just pulling my hair out at this point. I hope that maybe it is something stupid and easy as this, but I still want Apple to fix it obviously. There solution is to stop using the watch how I want to use it? How it was intended to be used? Unacceptable.

Yes I think you are onto something there. I saw another thread here about the same issue. That person turned off all 3rd party app notifications and the issue had stopped, they came back after a week or two and their watch was still working correctly.

I have had my watch up and running for the past 4 days with no rebooting at all with most of my 3rd party apps turned off after dealing with this for 5-6 months.

I was told 2 months ago the engineers were aware of an issue but still have yet to come out with a fix for other series other then the 3.

The person in the other thread did say they had a security camera and the notifications were off for it on the watch and experienced no issues. They did not say what brand.

I also have wyze cameras and my notifications are off for it on my watch. So maybe the wyze camera notifications are causing the problem after all. But I also agree, the notifications did not seem to be related to the power cycling.

I'm going to turn on one other app notification every couple days and leave the wyze to last and see how it goes.

I guess that is what I am going to do as well. The thing is, I do not have the Wyze app or anything on my watch specifically, it was just the Wyze app on my iPhone and the notifications were being mirrored. I have ALL notifications from my iPhone to watch off as of now. The only thing that I will get on my watch right now is like messages, phone calls, etc ( I would think)....stand notifications etc. If I get a power cycle with everything off then obviously this is a bunch of non sense.

I will keep reporting back with anything as it happens. If people want to do the same that would be great. 👍🏻

Yes that's exactly what I have. I don't think wyze has an app for the watch, just mirror notifications. Right now I just have Gmail, discord, PoGo and PoGo home turned on for mirror notifications and has been fine last 3 days. Today (day 4) was first day for discord and I got tons of notifications thru it and no rebooting.

Definitely could be related. I also had the Wyze cam notifications coming in. Now that I recall it was definitely having issues with those. Idk if the watch couldn’t handle the notification and crashed the “springboard” and caused an infinite boot loop.

Thank for pointing out that coincidence. I removed the notifications after I recovered my watch from that state and my watch has not had those same issues ever since.

I appreciate everybody continuing to share their experiences. I personally don’t have the Wyse app but do have Nest do same type of thing. If I can get my watch up and running, I’ll turn that off and see if it makes a difference.