Apple Watch says it has 4.2gb

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."

I learned that the watch won't show the full 8GB capacity but what GB is available. The problem lies that with the updates. You can only use 1.5 GB for extra applications on the watch or you will not have enough space for updates. You will need to remove extra applications from the watch before updating.

We learned that the watch only shows the gb that are not in use; so you do have the 8 gb. However, it's not enough to handle new updates, unless you strip your watch down to minimal applications. Last month, they were offering rebates on the iwatch 3 for upgrades... not sure what they are offering this month.

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 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)

Apple has chosen to not show you the total capacity. It is showing you the remaining storage capacity after the OS is loaded. This does not leave much for apps and upgrades. The OS 7.2 needed 2.5G free to update and uses 3.9G. That leaves only 1.6G for apps now and future OS updates.

Just an update, I received my Apple Watch SE and am sending in my series 3. Brand new, booted up, the SE says 26.5 gigs capacity (it’s a 32 gb watch). Safe to say this is across all OS’s. With the OS taking up 4 gigs right off the bat, I would say an 8 gig watch is pretty much useless. Trade it, sell it as fast as you can. Good luck.

I had this . After you have removed all applications do a hard rest and that will gain more back . If the update has tried to install and failed it will be in the usage list at about 2GB Ana’s you can remove it and try update again

I talked to several levels of Apple Support from chat to phone. I got a helpful support person who confirmed they understood the issue I was describing and that many others had this issue. She said

"The engineers have stated that this is expected behavior and I am completely understanding the concept of the capacity and storage. As of now, the engineers are stating it is expected behavior. Please feel free to leave apple some feedback on this issue at apple.com/feedback. We do really them and take our customers opinions seriously. "

I left some feedback about how confusing this is and asking for a change to be the same as other Apple products. Please do the same.

I'm glad this isn't just me, but saddened that it is such a near-universal issue. At least understanding it we can jump through these hoops, but the user experience is terrible enough that I wouldn't recommend the Series 3 they are still selling at all. Someday this will force me to upgrade my Watch, likely this upcoming Fall when a new model arrives. But, also, I cannot in good conscience give my current Apple Watch Series 3 GPS to anyone as a hand-me-down, so may also stick it out until Apple no longer supports it with OS updates. That, though, is likely to be beyond just watchOS 7, because, again, they are still selling it. I guess that I'll be redoing things like Apple Pay with each watchOS update for a while...

I can shed some light on what I think is happening further, as someone who pays close attention to the inner workings of Apple devices as a software developer... All Apple devices, since they transitioned to APFS a couple years ago update in a slightly different way than they did before, as I understand it. I've observed some of this since Big Sur brought the same update process from iOS/watchOS to the Mac where you can watch it if desired. In essence, the "preparing" stage is not merely "unpacking" the update archive that gets downloaded. It seems that what it really is doing is close to the full install, using the APFS feature to have space-shared separate volumes to build an entirely new system volume. On the Mac, this is now shown in the "sealed snapshot" that gets booted from, not the actual drive, if you look in Disk Utility. The same is happening on iOS and watchOS, and has for a lot longer. The issue us Series 3 users have is that this process requires the same amount of space for the update that the system itself takes up. The additional 2-something GB that is part of what the difference between 4.1 GB (capacity on my Watch) and the 7-something actual capacity is. The rest is, indeed, temporary system-generated files. With 2 copies of watchOS, our Watches have nearly nothing left. But, this is just my educated guess at what is going on, it may well not be accurate.

One way Apple may be able to "improve" this is to set aside that space ahead of time. But, Number 1: That again would reduce the visible capacity of our Watches to an undesirably puny amount. Number 2: That isn't always feasible, because Apple won't really know how big a new version of watchOS will be ahead of time, especially for the major updates each Fall. Extremely crappy user experience. I am starting to expect that Series 3 will not support watchOS 8 at all, largely due to this. But we'll have to see in June with the WWDC announcements. If it doesn't, then the poor folks who are buying these Watches today will be potentially quite upset.

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

I have a 3.... you are correct. Brand new it’s fine, but if you need to install update, you have to impair, reset to factory settings, install update, then pair it and rest all apps again. Ridiculous.

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).

Apple will give you a trade-in for the 3, in good condition, for $85. I am going to upgrade and count my losses. I will leave feedback. I recommend you take advantage of this trade-in while you can. T-Mobile also has a special on the SE at a discounted price.

I too am having this case and am faced with the lack of storage necessitating an unpair/repair process to install WatchOS 7.0.1. This doesn't seem to be the best upgrade experience.