Watch app on iPhone won’t open??

Chances are that you have two iPhones working at the same time. Simply try and pair your apple watch with the iPhone that hasn't been used for the apple watch. When you begin to pair your device on another iPhone, you will immediately be able to delete the apple watch app on the other iPhone. Once you delete it, you can stop pairing on the other device and redownload the apple watch app on the device you wanted it on.

Really irritating but worked for me.

Yep.

Both things. No success! I’m not resetting my iPhone ‘cause of my bank apps and other things that might get messed. They MUST do something. I don’t expect a real fix, but they could at least allow us to delete the stupid app crashing!

iPhone PRO11 with iwatch 6 and having the same issues, app flashes and disappears. I cannot remove app from iPhone or update it. The watch wants to re-pair with phone but I cannot get the watch app to work so cannot pair.

I’m having the same issue with a brand new Apple Watch and the iPhone 8. Every time I click on the watch app it takes me to the Home Screen. Can’t delete the app because I can’t unpair the watch. I’ve done all the troubleshooting mentioned and it still doesn’t work.

Sad to find out a backup and restore was the only way, hopefully Apple is more than aware and comes out with a fix soon, especially with the holidays near. First real major disappointment with Apple I am sorry to say.

I consider myself tech savvy and would not expect my Mom to be able to backup and restore, a very lengthy process and very possible to lose all your data if not very careful and methodical.

Hello guys I have an iPhone X and a few days back I bought the Apple Watch SE. 6 days until today everything was fine. Suddenly the watch app on IPhone didn’t work. I tried everything but the only thing that worked was to reset to factory settings the iPhone and then the Apple Watch. IMPORTANT DELETE THE APP AFTER THE RESET TO IPHONE. If you try anything else is just a waste of time.

Please note that the iOS 14.3 didn’t fix the problem.

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.

Thank you Rach_01.....this worked for me!! I was not willing to do a factory reset, but I was trying everything else that was suggested! Fortunately, I went through all the comments and found this last post! I followed the exact steps as they were written and it fixed the issue!!! A couple comments about specific steps.....

Step 5 - I went ahead and removed the watch backup. To be honest, I am not even sure it had been backed up, but only having the watch for a couple days, there wasn’t much info to lose.

Step 6....”These next steps have to be done kind of quickly.”....For me, it had to be done very quickly!! It took me 5+ times to get into the app fast enough, but once I did, everything went exactly as listed in the steps above!

Again, thank you Rach_01 for taking the time to write all the steps. Hope it works for others also!

Hi Rach,

It worked for me! Thank you very much!

Just additional inputs on:

6. My phone asked for a passcode at startup. It probably burned some extra time (I tried to disable the passcode in the phone settings, but wasn't able due to device management of my phone).

7. The Watch app additionally asked for confirmation after I clicked "Unpair Apple Watch". I actually had no time to read a message, was able to only see Cancel and another option. It was really challenging to do all these steps on time. I put my phone on a table and used several fingers. It took me about an hour of trying to unpair my phone.

iPhone 11, Software Version 14.3.

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

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!

Same thing happened to me. I took it to the Apple store and the Genius couldn’t find any other fix for me except going back to factory settings. The watch app reappeared and I was able to pair it to my SE.

You are an Apple product wizard omg. I really thought I was going to be up all night backing up phone to icloud, downloading more storage to make sure it went through etc. This saved me wow. Wish there was a pin option to the front of the comments instead of basically the last page. THANK YOU

Yay! I’m glad this worked for you! I’ve been trying to directly reply to people that have this issue so they get a notification, but yeah it would be nice if it could be pinned up closer so more people see it!!

Trying your suggestion tonight. My daughters got me the SE watch for Xmas, worked great until New Years Day when it would not let me open the app and it would not pair up with my phone 🤦🏼‍♀️.... very upsetting because I do not want to reset my phone!!