Watch app (iOS) crashes on launch

for me the update to 14.5 public beta solves the problem but i need to repair the watch. 100+ days of data lost 😭 at least i can use the watch again. please make a backup before updating and if you are not sure regarding betas, don’t touch it!

Back up your phone on iCloud. Erase your phone completely. Restore your phone using the back up from today ... delete the watch app... reinstall the watch app... it should work. You just have to reset your watch and then pair it as new.

I backup to iCloud, then reset iPhone and restore from iCloud. After that I could delete and reinstall the watch app. However, I loss the data so I did a restore from local image on top of that. This time I could still delete the watch app after restore, so eventually my watch app works.

It worked for me. Restauration on iOS 14.2 RC, delete the app, reinstall from AppStore.

I did the reset to the phone and its all working! Thanks for the help :)

before you do your back up on your iPhone,

1. go to settings>General>iPhone storage and remove backups from the watch app.
2. going to iCloud back up and unselect the watch app from the iCloud back-up. you don’t want the watch app backed up. Then back up your phone to iCloud.

now when you restore your phone fro back-up after disassociating it from the watch, you should be able to delete the Watch app from your phone easily, at least I did.

then reinstall the app, and it should work. I did this four days ago, and it still working for me.

Once you did the back up, did you delete the Watch app from the app library? For some reason, even after taking the watch app from the restore on the cloud, the watch app will still be on your phone, it was at this point that the phone finally let me delete the watch app.

I called apple support this morning and ended up talking to a Sr. Advisor. She had me reset my phone again but not login to my apple ID account and basically set it up as new. Once it got to the main screen I was able to open the watch app and pair without issue (not too surprised). She then had me login to my iCloud account and told me everything would update back to my phone...turns out that was not the case at all. My photos showed up but I lost everything else, app data, messages, email, etc. I had hung up with her as it was going to take some time but this is not an acceptable answer to get the watch to work. I ended up resetting and restoring from my most recent iCloud backup again to get all my data back but as expected, the watch app still does not work. I may call them back and see if we have any other options, but starting from a basically fresh start isn't going to work for me.

This worked 100% back up first, restore your phone, delete watch app, re-download watch app!!!! Thank you !!

You should reset the phone

I have the same issue!

I followed the steps:

1. Full backup to local disk
2. erase all in my iPhone SE2
3. reset the watch SE
4. restore from backup

the watch app can’t be deleted even I have not paired the watch yet

i did another way:

1. full backup to local disk
2. erase all in my iPhone se2
3. setup as new phone
4. reset the watch
5. pair the watch with the clean phone
6. the watch app works up to this step
7. restore the backup

now the watch app crashes again!

the third way:

1. full backup the phone
2. erase all data and settings of the phone
3. dont setup as a new phone, just restore from the backup
4. the watch app crashes, and I was failed to pair with the watch

i am using the latest iOS version 14.1 and watch OS 7.02

The "Bug" here is that, the deletion of the Watch App (the "App" for short) is not working because in some cases it is locked by a already paired Apple Watch and somehow it still locked up with the non-exist watch even it has already been unpaired. I want to emphasis that the locking not always happen but in most of the case as we report in here, it does locked by the Watch.

What Apple should fix is to allow uninstallation of the App without consideration of pairing of watch. IMHO, it should be the Watch that depends on the App but not the App that relies on the Watch, so if the App is uninstalled, it force unpair the watch until user re-install the App to pair again.

iOS 14.3 RC (18C65) still doesn't fix the problem. There are reasons why this phone cannot be reset. Apple needs to fix this problem or give users a way to reset the corrupt data that's causing this problem.

This solution did not work, at least for me. Did the exact same steps and I am still unable to remove the Watch app.

After that, I had the Apple Support over the phone and this is unbelievable: at the beginning she said they are not aware of such problem and at the end she confessed that engineers are aware of it and working on it. Not sure which answer is correct regarding this issue is going since September 2020.

The solution I was offered, with no garantee she said, is to do a backup and restore the phone to be able to delete the app and then reinstalling it. This solution is not an option for me, considering what could happen when erasing a phone and restoring it.

Other alternative she said: wait til they fix the problem.. either by sending back the watch to Apple and buying a new one when the problem will be fixed (with this solution I keep the guarantee intact) or by putting the watch in a drawer and wait (guarantee will pass).

Truly unbelievable for one of the most important company in the world. My watch is unusable since Christmas and will stay until they fix the soft, this can take weeks or months she said .. what a shame.

iOS 14.4 was out officially 9 days ago and it does not fix the problem. I have tested it and app still crashing and of course not being able to delete the app due to a paired watch that cannot be unpaired.

The next iOS (14.5) would be out in 1.5 month, so around March 15th. Let’s hope it will fix the problem as indicated by petrolhead_ch.

That would only be 3 months with a crashing app and an unusable watch..