Apple Watch says it has 4.2gb

Here is some info. Also "other" takes up a huge amount of space and I have Unpair and erase your Apple Watch to clear the other when I thought it was to big. Not necessary just a personal quirk.

To view overall available storage:

On your iPhone, in the Watch app, go to: My Watch (tab) > General > About - see under Available.

To view storage usage by app:

On your iPhone, in the Watch app, go to: My Watch (tab) > General > Usage

To remove apps:

Use apps on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

To view and manage Photos storage:

Choose your album and manage storage

To manage Music that is synced to your Apple Watch:

Add music to Apple Watch

To delete Messages conversations from your Apple Watch:

Read messages

I'm having the exact same issue. Should have 8 GB of capacity and showing 4.2 GB. I've been on the phone with apple support for several hours and have tried erasing the entire watch several times. He is having me send screenshots to his engineers. Fingers crossed.

This is a known issue, according to watchOS 7 developer release notes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchos-release-notes/watchos-7-release-notes

"Workaround: Unpair your watch, then pair it again with your phone. Set it up as a new watch rather than restoring from a backup. Use General > Software Update in the Watch app to update to watchOS 7. If you want to restore your watch from its latest backup after the update is complete, repeat these steps while choosing to restore from a backup rather than setting up as new."

Same case here. I see two issues:

• Misreporting the watch capacity
• Update experience

1)

Strictly talking about TOTAL capacity, If the watch has 8GB capacity it should show that, but it shows 4.2GB.

If I got to Settings-> Genera -> Usage and add up all space used by a handful of apps shown the it adds up to less than 40MB and yet it reports it only has 2.3GB available. In my watch where I have not installed third party apps and sync only a handful of things, I have not enough capacity for a major OS update, which leads me to the second point.

2)

To update to watchOS 7 I had no option but reset the watch to factory settings which allowed it have just enough capacity to allow the update. I went through a similar situation when updating to watchOS 6. It was not a nice experience specially re-adding all my cards to the Wallet app (one my fav features).

I feel it would improve the experience if the iPhone would backup up whatever it needs to backup to be able to make room for the update and the restore it back, all automatically as part of the update process.

You are violating the Seed beta non-disclosure agreement you made to join the seed program!

Stop talking about the beta in these forums.

ASC - Late 2012 Mac mini, macOS 10.14.6; Watch, series 5 GPS/cellular, watchOS 6.2.8; iPad Air 2, ipadOS 13.6.1; iPhone 8+, iOS 13.6.1; TV 4th Gen, tvOS 13.4.8;  HomePods, audioOS 13.4.8 and Airport Express w/ Airplay 2

Very interested to see if anyone figures this one out. I unpaired, erased, then repaired and set up as new, and still only have 4.2 GB capacity. Songs: 0, Photos: 17 even though there is actually only 1 photo synced, Applications: 3, Capacity: 4.2 GB, Available: 3.5 GB. (No Podcasts or anything else synced either, but those aren't listed in my About section of General Settings.) Hoping watchOS 7 doesn't take up that much storage, and someone figures out how fix it. Thanks for asking this question!

For those saying that the 4.2GB of Capacity shown is the total available data left for the user user, it might be accurate, but it is misleading and not consistent with how Capacity is reported in other Apple devices.

For example, in iPhone if you follow kind of the same path, Settings -> General -> About, you can see its Capacity info. The reported Capacity is the advertised device capacity, i.e. 128GB, 256GB, etc. whereas in the Watch, it shows only 4.2GB for Capacity, it should be 8GB (in the case of Series 3 GPS).

Prior to Watch OS 7 and 6 thus same Series 3 showed 5.8GB before any apps were installed .. There certainly some misreporting going on or usage somewhere . On my new Series 6 32GB is shows 26.5GB with not many apps installed at all

Yeah, I think the expectation (again, based on how this same information is shown in iPhone) is that Capacity should be the total, advertised capacity, regardless of how much is used by either the user or the system. Then Available should show the amount available for the user ... just like the iPhone does.

Now it’s reduced to 4.1GB and to run any software updates you have to strip every single application to get 2.4GB free . Got to be something going on the series 3 before Watch 6 it used to show 5.8GB free after system

Having the exact same issue with the 4.2gb total storage on a series 3. Spent about 4 hours with apple tech support and finally convinced them to have me send it into them for a fix. Will update if they are able to successfully fix/replace the unit.

Im with you, I’ve been with Apple for quiet awhile (almost 2hrs) and they are not interested or they don’t have a clue...they were even offering for me to send the watch to them to do a diagnostic because they wanted me to give them access to my phone to do so, and I said ....hellll no.

I’m having this issue as well, however my series 3 gps says capacity: 2.2gb.. I have about 47mb of content actually on the watch itself plus 2.6gb for the software update.. it has a constant message that covers everything including time, saying there is no more storage. I only have one app installed for sleep.. has anyone found a solution? It would be greatly appreciated..

I have the same issue too, then I do the factory settings and managed to update it to watchOS 7.2. Now it’s not 4.2GB anymore!

After updated, it now reduced to 4.1GB. I thought the issue was addressed by updating the firmware. Oh God, Apple. 😓

Do someone here managed to resolve the issue? If yes, how?

I spent 1.5h on chat with apple. They are aware of this "issue" and it was actually this thread that lead the advisor to find the answer.

WatchOS reports "Capacity" different than iOS/ipadOS. Reported capacity on watch is actually capacity minus OS. So for us Apple Watch bottom dweller with 8gb, it is reporting 8gb minus OS (about 3.5gb) and probably system files also. This is confusing as can be but makes sense. I checked on a friend's Apple Watch 5 (32gb) and it showed similar behaviour of not reporting 32gb capacity.

Advisor submitted a feedback request to engineers about this behaviour so possibly we'll see a change in a future version (not that I want to do the 4h unpair, update, re-pair procedure again)