Apple Watch App Not Working After iOS 14 Update

They are saying because it is past the 30 days cooling off period and it’s not a fault with the watch itself then i am not entitled to a refund. I bought it directly from Apple online. They are saying I need to go in to a store and the technicians there will have a look but we are on lock down in the UK so none of ate stores are open until 4th December (if they open up). Then you have to try and get an appointment with the store. I don’t have one where I live either. If I’d have known all this... I love my watch too. I waited weeks for it to arrive. Now it won’t even tell the time because they advised me to master reset it. This forum has helped a lot but I am not sure how Apple are getting away with this.😢

I have finally got mine to work.

I got through to a senior manager and sent a diagnostics report to them but they never got back to me after that - very unhelpful. So I decided to just go for it and backup my phone onto my computer then reset the phone. Then when I reinstalled the backup onto my phone I was able to delete the app and reinstall it. Now everything works perfectly.

The community was a million times more helpful than Apple itself

I was afraid of doing that. It seems to have worked for some people and not others. Not sure I have much choice but to try it. 😣 your right about Apples lack of support. I feel better knowing it isn’t just me struggling!

Yes when I restored it the backup the watch app was still crashing at first but I was able to delete and reinstall it and this worked so guess it just corrupted the app during an update at some point. I was hesitant to do the backup at first but it wasn’t too difficult.

I had this exact same problem today with my iPhone xs max and mi brand new watch series 6. It worked great for 2 days and then the watch app wouldn’t open and my watch wasn’t connecting to my iPhone. I read a lot about this issue and it seems it happens if you previously had an apple watch paired with you iPhone and pair a new one without erasing the old one.

I tried everything, shutting it off, hard reset and tried to erase the app with no success. Finally I did the factory reset and downloaded my backup from iCloud and it did not work (App still would not open). So I did a factory reset again, this time started as a new iPhone (sadly) and it worked just fine. Luckily i just cared about my passwords and photos so starting without the iPhone backup was not a problem.

TL’DR: The issue is on the iPhone, not on the watch. To fix it, factory reset your iPhone and start it as a new iPhone (without the iCloud backup)

This is my first ever Apple Watch (previously a fit bit wearer) so I haven’t had one paired before. I just have too much on my phone that I can’t lose so this wouldn’t be an option for me. You must be very patient because I think after the first attempt I would have given up!

No I didn’t have to do this I have never had a watch paired either.

Once you reset your phone and restore the backup the does not open without crashing like before. However, you are able to delete the app unlike before. So delete the app then redownload it from the App Store and it should work just fine

This has been so helpful. Apple should be paying a salary to you all! Can you tell me...

can I reset my phone using the phone itself or does it have to be plugged in to my laptop? - this is playing up also, so I worry it won’t restore everything!

I did an encrypted backup to my laptop then unplugged the phone (encrypted keeps more data such as saved passwords). Then reset the phone not plugged in. Went through all the steps but didn’t set up an Apple ID or anything with the reset phone.

then I deleted the watch app and redownloaded it (not sure I needed to as when I restored the backup it restored the old faulty app)

then I plugged my phone into the laptop and it came up with the option on I tunes to either set it up as a new iPhone or restore it from a backup. I restored it from the backup then when that had I completed I deleted the watch app and then redownloaded it and everything worked fine.

the only thing not saved on the backup was Face ID and I had to log back into a few apps such as Snapchat but all my app data was saved

@chloegilly1 I had to do the factory reset as well to be able to delete the watch app and it worked fine, I was able to back it all up to my iCloud account and reset and then everything loaded back onto my phone from iCloud after I logged into my Apple account. I didn’t lose anything u just have to make sure to backup ur phone first

Thankyou Jackiem87! I took the plunge. I am thrilled to say it worked and I now have both a fully functioning phone and watch. I didn’t need to use my laptop either. My watch is just downloading 7.1 so not out of the woods yet but so far so good. Just a pain I have to contact the banks to get all my cards verified again! I lost quite a bit of music which my mum had bought when I lived with her and because I didn’t put her apple password in it’s not put them on my phone! Other than that it went smoothly and was quicker than I thought it would be.

it’s a shame we have had to go to all this bother but there we go! Sums up this year really! Thank you for all your help. 🥰🥰🥰

Oh I should just add. The old dodgy watch app was put back on my phone automatically from the back up. I clicked it and it did that whole ‘flash up black and go off’ thing but I was able to delete it this time and down load it again. Works fine. 👍🏽

Chiming in to say I was having a similar problem, but I did finally fix it.

Shortly after getting a new Apple Watch SE, the Watch app would not open no matter what I did. I first did a factory reset of my iPhone and restored it from iCloud backup. I then went into the “Find My” app and deleted the watch, which turns off the Activation Lock. (Very important.) Then I factory reset my Watch SE. After this, the watch and Watch iOS app worked normally and I set up the watch as a new watch. I lost about a day’s worth of data but worth it now that everything is working normally.

I wish Apple would formally acknowledge this problem and provide a way to fix without the factory resets!

This helped a lot In particular the activation lock.

I did mine slightly different. I erased my watch first, then removed activation lock on phone, hoping I could then delete the watch app from the phone. Nope. I then made sure my phone backup was all up to date both on icloud and on my mac.

Reset phone.

Restore from mac.

Delete watch app while other apps are download, tail end of restore.

Download watch app from app store, it took a couple tries as I was downloading a lot of apps.

I am writing this as I am in the process of installing the watch.

All seems well at this point. Lost a week of excersize data

I have the iPhone 11 Max and a brand new iWatch 6 series. I updated to the 14.2 software and now my apple watch app will not open. I tried backing up and restarting my phone from factory and the watch. That did nothing. Now I can not even use my watch as a watch. It keeps asking to pair, which I can not, because the app will not open. I spoke with customer service and they tried to trouble shoot. They told me to reach out to the App Developer, which is Apple, so I am confused.