Level 1

37 points

Watch app on iPhone won’t open??

can somebody help me with this? I recently acquired myself a series 5 Apple Watch from my cousin, it’s all good and nice for a day until all of sudden I can’t open my Watch app in my iPhone.

The watch itself is fine. I thought the problem lies with the watch so I unpaired the device with my phone. However when I wanna re-pair the devices, my Watch app keeps stubbornly crashing so I can’t use my watch for now. (As I need to pair it with my phone.. but the Watch app won’t open.) is there any solutions for this problem? I hope someone have an answer for this soon enough.

Apple Watch Series 5, watchOS 7

Posted on Oct 10, 2020 10:52 AM

Top-ranking reply

Rach_01

Level 1

23 points

Posted on Jan 7, 2021 5:27 AM

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:

On the watch go to settings > general > reset > Erase All Content and Settings
Go to your Bluetooth settings on your phone and if you see your Apple Watch, click on the 'i' and click "Forget this device"
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".
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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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!

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102 replies

Dec 1, 2020 2:50 PM in response to cdgtopper

thx! it's the only way that i can fix Watch app on my iphone 7 - use Settings > «General > Reset, Erase All Content and Settings. And when restored from icloud backup

https://support.apple.com/ru-ru/guide/icloud/mm7e756df7fd/icloud

Dec 27, 2020 12:06 PM in response to elixane

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.

Jan 5, 2021 3:39 PM in response to elixane

I had the same problem. Back up your phone, factory reset your phone which is very annoying, delete the watch app, reinstall the watch app and you should be good. It worked for me.

Nov 29, 2020 4:43 PM in response to Bowdy98

I managed to get it working by restoring my iPhoneX from a cloud backup, which unpaired the Apple Watch 6. While unpaired I was able to delete the app, erase / reset the watch and start over. A hassle for sure.

Dec 27, 2020 10:03 AM in response to elixane

This exact problem happened to be. I have an iphone 11 with IOS 14.3 and an apple watch SE. It would not let me delete the apple watch app because it was "paired" but it wasn't.

Heres what I did to fix the problem:

Erase apple watch / factory reset watch
Backup iphone to icloud or itunes
Factory reset Iphone
BEFORE restoring, Delete apple watch from phone
Restore iphone from backup
Delete apple watch and activity apps from phone
redownload from app store and then setup watch

I had to do this 3x in order for it to work. It didn't work the first two times but the third time I was able to delete the apple watch app. Apple support was NO help and told me it'd be fixed with an "update" but it was a month later.... and nothing.

Goodluck!

MLew2

Level 1

4 points

Jan 3, 2021 9:26 AM in response to DGC-199

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.

scottip

Level 1

4 points

Dec 8, 2020 5:45 AM in response to elixane

Reset both again but setup phone as new, don’t restore from a backup.

Feb 15, 2021 10:23 PM in response to VeeDubbinJetta

Try putting your phone in low power mode. It’ll give you an extra second or so

elixane Author

Level 1

37 points

Oct 14, 2020 10:04 PM in response to Axel Foley

I did try it. Yet I can’t seem to delete the Watch app from my phone, every time I tried to delete it, it says that I need to unpair the Watch to delete it.

because I can’t seem to unpair the Apple Watch from the Watch app, I tried to remove and erase the device from the “Find My” app.

I tried to re-pair it afterwards but the app is still crashing despite my effort to force restart my phone and the Apple Watch. Someone told me that it might be the OS I’m using now (OS 14.0.1) that acts as the problem?? They said the Watch app might not be optimized for the new OS? Is this might be a possibility for the cause of the crashing problem?

musa27

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2020 5:58 AM in response to elixane

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.

Jan 20, 2021 7:49 PM in response to Henejebebr

Also, to boot, one of the “troubleshooting” steps is to restore your watch. DONT DO THIS, it renders the watch useless as you can’t pair unless the watch app is working on your phone. So now there’s no choice, but to restore it apparently!!!!!!!

Apr 4, 2021 8:12 PM in response to Oonly

I solved this by upgrading to the iPhone 12, go figure. This bug is still awful and Apple should provide a fix for this ridiculous issue. This is absolute nonsense how people are still commenting on this thread and following this outrageous process as a workaround to restoring their entire iPhone. This is because of a software issue ......... @Apple be better and fix it!!! An Apple rep in Staten Island said that he’s even heard of two instances of this recently and restores of the folks iPhones worked for them.

Nov 25, 2020 6:21 AM in response to khyber289

Just started with the same issues & I do not have an old iPhone around for it to ‘pair to’ accidentally. Tried every other suggestion on this thread, hoping it is an update fix!?

elixane Author

Level 1

37 points

Oct 10, 2020 10:24 PM in response to Axel Foley

Hello, thank you for your reply, and sorry for not disclosing which iPhone I’m using, but yes, you’re exactly right. I’m using the iPhone X right now.

I tried doing what you’ve told me to, the app opens for a good second before crashing again. :(

Is there any other solution?

Gololo13

Level 1

4 points

Nov 25, 2020 2:57 PM in response to keithandela

Same issue for me. iPhone is an 8 and just got the watch a couple of months ago. Not sure what happened but I cannot open the app on my phone despite deleting and re-adding the app. It blinks a second and goes back to usual Home Screen. ☹️ And watch says it cannot find the phone.

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Watch app on iPhone won’t open??