Watch app on iPhone won’t open??

Try out my suggestion which doesn’t require a factory reset like others are suggesting. It is doable, you just have to be quick. This has worked for many other people. See instructions below:

1. On the watch go to settings > general > reset > Erase All Content and Settings
2. Go to your Bluetooth settings on your phone and if you see your Apple Watch, click on the 'i' and click "Forget this device"
3. Go to "appleid.apple.com", scroll down to devices and you should see your apple watch. Click your apple watch and select "Remove from account".
4. Next you will need to turn off "Find my iPhone", which should turn off activation lock on the watch. On your phone go to settings > click your name > Find My > Find My iPhone > toggle this off
5. Next step is to go go settings > general > iPhone storage > scroll to the Watch app and "Remove all backups". I saw someone do this somewhere else, saying that there might be corrupt files in the backups, so removing them might be a good idea. If you do have a backup and want to try without this step, it might still work, just wanted to mention this.
6. These next steps have to be done quickly. Do a Hard reset of your phone (quickly press volume up > quickly press volume down > press and hold side button until Apple logo appears and then release side button). Once the phone turns back on, you should have enough time to be able to get into the app and then unpair the watch, but you have to do this super quickly before the app kicks you out. Make sure your app is on the first screen once you unlock your phone, because you don't have much time from when the phone turns on from the hard reset to when the app will crash. I also recommend disabling your passcode if you have one to get into your phone quicker. 
7. Next, go into the app, and once loaded, quickly press "All Watches" in top left screen > Click the 'i' next to your watch > then click "Unpair Apple Watch".
8. After you click "Unpair Apple Watch", a pop up at the bottom appears where you have to click “Unpair Apple Watch” again. After you have done this, you should see a screen where it shows it is unpairing your watch. Because you turned off Find my iPhone in the previous step, this should have turned off the activation lock, so you shouldn't have to type in your Apple ID password. Once I got to this point, the app didn't kick me out and I was successfully able to unpair my watch.
9. After the unpair is completed, go back to your apps and you should have the ability to completely delete the Watch app. First remove the app from your home screen and then completely delete the app from the app library.
10. After you have deleted the app, go back to the app store and download the watch app again and you will be able to get into the app with no issues and start over with your watch.

Since I did this, my watch has been working perfectly. Let me know if this works for you!

One other thing to try is to Remove the Watch app and then reinstall it again.

You can delete/remove the app from your iPhone. Then perform a Force ReStart as shown in my previous response. Once that is completed then you can download the Watch app from the App Store and try setting up your Apple watch again.

Axel F.

What didn’t work for me was deleting the app, or resetting the phone to default and restoring.

What did work was removing my watch from list of approved devices, (I had also removed watch app so all data was lost), and resetting the watch back to factory, then setup from scratch.

I had this same issue and could not find an appropriate solution until today. Unfortunately, it was quite time-consuming and not a simplistic process.

Background: I had just gotten my Apple Watch a few days prior to the Watch app crashing, so I was not worried about losing the data currently on it. That being said, I erased all of the content from the watch in the hopes that I would finally be able to delete the Watch app from my iPhone and start over with the process. When this did not work and I was left with a Watch app that wouldn't open and a watch that could no longer be paired, I contacted Apple Support.

Solution: After trying a number of small fixes (ex. resetting the devices, updating my iPhone), I ended up having to back up my iPhone to iCloud, erase all content and settings, and then restore my iPhone using that latest iCloud backup. Once the phone was restored, I was able to delete the Watch app, restore the Watch app, pair my watch with my phone, and update the watch to the latest version of iOS. This resolved all of my issues, including with the Activity app.

Hope this helps!

Hi VeeDubbinJetta,

I think my instructions would still work if you don’t want to reset the watch from step #1. So try skipping that first step and and doing the rest. Another note, for step #6, what I mean by “hard reset” is actually just a “hard reboot” of your phone which just reboots your phone’s apps and is supposed to fix them if they are not working. I’ve had some people getting confused thinking I mean the reset where it erases all of your phones data, but what I’m referring to is just a reboot and it doesn’t erase data. After the phone turns on again from this “reboot” it generally allows people enough time to get into the watch app to unpair so they can delete the app and then re download it again fresh. Let me know if you need any more advice/help!

Hi Niko, 

I was having the same issue and didn't want to factory reset my phone either. So, I kept trying out different things and actually managed to get the app completely erased and then redownloaded successfully, without doing a complete erase and reset of my phone!! I'll share with you the steps that I took and hopefully this works for you too! I'm thinking the issue might be what lam_serge said below.. not having my phone updated to the latest IOS software 14.3 when I paired my watch. If that is the cause, then hopefully Apple fixes the issue because that is ridiculous! Hope they fix it permanently either way. Anyway, see what I did below.

1. On the watch go to settings > general > reset > Erase All Content and Settings
2. Go to your Bluetooth settings on your phone and if you see your Apple Watch, click on the 'i' and click "Forget this device"
3. Go to "appleid.apple.com", scroll down to devices and you should see your apple watch. Click your apple watch and select "Remove from account".
4. Next you will need to turn off "Find my iPhone", which should turn off activation lock on the watch. On your phone go to settings > click your name > Find My > Find My iPhone > toggle this off
5. Next step (not sure if necessary) is to go go settings > general > iPhone storage > scroll to the Watch app and "Remove all backups". I saw someone do this somewhere else, saying that there might be corrupt files in the backups, so removing them might be a good idea. If you do have a backup and want to try without this step, it might still work, just wanted to mention this.
6. These next steps have to be done kind of quickly. What I did next was do a Hard reset of my phone (quickly press volume up > quickly press volume down > press and hold side button until Apple logo appears and then release side button). Once the phone turns back on, you should have enough time to be able to get into the app and then unpair the watch, but you have to do this super quickly before the app kicks you out. Make sure your app is on the first screen once you unlock your phone, because you don't have much time from when the phone turns on from the hard reset to when the app will fail.
7. Next, go into the app, and once loaded, quickly press "All Watches" in top left screen > Click the 'i' next to your watch > then click "Unpair Apple Watch". Because you turned off Find my iPhone in the previous step, this should have turned off the activation lock, so you shouldn't have to type in your Apple ID password.
8. After you click "Unpair Apple Watch", you should see a screen where it shows it is unpairing your watch. Once I got to this point, the app didn't kick me out and I was successfully able to unpair my watch.
9. After the unpair is completed, go back to your apps and you should have the ability to completely delete the Watch app. First remove the app from your home screen and then completely delete the app from the app library.
10. After you have deleted the app, you can go back to the app store and download it again and you will be able to get into the app and start over with your watch.

So far my watch and the app seem to be working fine. It's only been about an hour, but so far so good. I really hope this works for you and others! I'd be curious to know if this works for you, or if I can explain anything better. I feel bad for all these people who are having this frustrating issue!

If it is saying to unpair your watch first, and you can’t open the app to unpair it, unfortunately you will have to factory reset your phone. Which is ridiculous. I had to do the following:

1. backup phone
2. factory reset phone
3. delete watch app
4. reinstall the watch app
5. pair your watch

this worked for me. All other suggestions from Apple did not work and I was on chat with them for over 3 hours.

You have not disclosed which iPhone you are using. I will have to make an assumption and my assumption is that you are using an iPhone X or newer. Based on this assumption, my recommended solution for your iPhone is to:

 Try and Force Restart your iPhone exactly as shown below and see whether that resolves the issue:

• Press and quickly release Volume UP button
• Press and quickly release Volume DOWN button
• Press and Hold the SIDE button until an Apple logo appears then release the Side button (Can take up to 20 seconds. DO NOT release Side Button when invited to Slide Power OFF). 

Axel F.

Here is a solution.

It is very possible that you paired your Watch to you phone prior to updating to the latest IOS software. It has been know to create an issue within the app if that’s the case.

Here's what you need to do.

1) Reset the watch to the manufactures setting.

2) on your phone delete the Apple Watch app and reinstall.

You will need to to delete the app from the location it’s in. Typically it’s in the utilities folder. If not, you can find it under the App Library. Delete and reinstall.

once you reinstall the app and your watch has been gone through the reset process pair them up.

if that doesn’t work (which it should) then do a manufacture reset also on your phone and repeat the steps.

Guys there is no need to factory reset the phone ,

i was reading the comments on this section, there was 1 guy who proposed a solution which was interesting and it worked !

i had to turn off "find my phone"

and then i removed the lock(passcode) of my phone,

then when you restart your phone, the application gives you an opening for like 3seconds,

you have to be fast AF,

go inside the application, and unpair the former apple watch, when you do this, you can delete the application and reinstall it!

But YOU HAVE TO BE FAST AF!

it took me 10tries

Thanks for all these suggestions but I was too slow for this to work for me. I have a new SE watch and a recent iphone SE 2020. They worked fine together for 2 days then this problem arose. Eventually I think I've solved it by resetting the watch back to factory settings, resetting the iphone and erasing all data, recovering the data from icloud to a date a week ago (before I had the watch), updating to IOS 14.3, then pairing and setting up the watch afresh. I lost a weeks worth of data on the iphone (not photos or emails though, they all survived), and everything I had on the watch. I think the critical thing was making sure 14.3 was installed before pairing.

Ridiculous problem. I hope you all find a way through

Mine did the same. You can’t delete the watch app because it says it still paired to your watch. The only thing I was able to do was to back up my phone and then do a factory reset of my phone. Then I was able to delete the watch app and reinstall it and it has worked ever cents. It sucks that I had to Factory reset my phone but it got my app working.

Had the same issue, the only thing that worked was to reset phone and watch, do not restore from previous backups. Set as new then manually add the apps back in from the store.

Rach, thank you so much! This worked! Two things I would add:

• make sure your passcode is off
• put your phone in low power mode. This gave me the extra second I needed on my 11 pro