Watch app on iPhone won’t open??

My iPhone SE2020 was completely ok , just got the watch a couple of days ago.

I successfully paired them, it was ok for 1h, 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.

restart my phone, the apple watch, updated my phone (cant update the watch because it requires the Permission from Phone and therefore the application that cant be opened) , i also removed the Watch from my devices in iCloud

Don't know what to do :(

any advices ?

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.

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

On the up left side, select all watches

then click on your device,

on the right side there’s a tiny x which allows you to remove the watch

you’ve got 3 seconds with A13 Bionic (iphone SE and Iphone 11)

Thank you!!! I have been trying to fix this for days and like you, was reluctant to do a factory reset! Your steps are amazing, getting the watch app open and unpairing quickly was tricky (like you said) but after a few attempts I got there! Seems to be fixed :o) thank you!

Thank you!!! This is the only thing that seems to be working. We literally had to restart about 20 times and and every time I thought we were close it would crash. Then finally got it (even though it still crashed) but I felt like maybe it worked and it did. Thank you thank you. I’ve only had it fixed for about 20 minutes but it’s finally working since a few days after Christmas again.

wow - well done apple for such an almighty cock up - I have a 12 running 14.3 and the watch bricked this morning - read the comments and the fix above - unfortunately I am not superman and hence every time I get the app open on restart, the app crashes before I can complete the unpair - for gods sake its like some gameshow for a prize with crap odds

absolutely f$$$$$$ off

Update, have a call with the engineers on Monday to most likely get no where other than to restore my iPhone. If any engineer or customer service rep reads this, I just want you to understand how unprofessional continuing to not patch this bug is. According to this thread it’s impacted 1000+ people. It virtually renders the Apple Watch useless unless you nuke your entire phone. If one cannot afford iCloud and uses different services to backup their phone then it’s hours of work to POTENTIALLY get the app to work. Keep in mind, this watch app isn’t a critical piece of software to the phone itself!!!! Your phone will always work as is. When speaking to the support folks (who were very nice), their last trouble shooting step is too nuke your phone. I worked in support for 3 years, that’s unacceptable, and not troubleshooting. That’s a band aid for the real problem. Keep in mind, this bug has been present since October and 1000+ people have complained since. One of Apple’s best features is the seamless connectivity between their products, this is the complete anthesis of what the company stands for. It’s a bad bug. Patch this or come up with an actual workaround or troubleshooting steps. Nuking someone’s phone is a cop out. This thread is unresolved.

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!!!!!!!

TYSM Rach_01 - I had this exact same problem of the watch app crashing on my iPhone 8. I followed these steps and now the app is working, hallelujah! It was a little tricky between steps 6+ 7 to get the watch to unpair before the app crashed! I wonder why this is such a problem for so many watch users. Thanks again, Rach_01 for restoring my watch app and my sanity.

Even i have the same problem with my IPhone X paired with series 6 watch

now unable to open watch app in my phone after successful pairing

crashing my app after a second.

please can someone help on this.

Thank you so much for this tutorial. Worked great so far. Definitely have to be fast on Step 6. When we did click unpair, it kicked us out but I clicked on the app again and it showed it was unpairing. Definitely use this to fix this bug since Apple won't!

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

Rach_01,

This issue has been plaguing me with my iPhone XR and watch series 6 since early December. I have called apple numerous times, done full resets no less than a dozen times and still nothing. I want to give your instructions a go, however I am concerned that once I do a reset on my watch, if I cannot get this to work I will be stuck with a useless watch again. (This happened before when apple had me reset both my watch and phone, only way to make the watch useable as at least a watch again was to setup the phone as new, repair the watch, then restore my backup. This allowed the watch to at least function as a watch, but still have no communication between it and the phone)

Do you know if you should still be able to get into the watch app following your instructions without doing the reset first, just to see if this might work for me? Needless to say I am a bit gun shy about resetting at the moment, but I would love to have a working watch again.

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!

Thanks Rach_01,

I have been trying all morning, probably 15-20 tries. I turned off find my iphone, deleted all watch backups, turned off my passcode so I can just swipe up and get to the home screen really quick, but every single time I open the watch app, the screen stays black for a few seconds, then crashes. Usually it crashes instantly, so it gives me hope for a short period of time but doesn't work. I may keep trying a few more times, but shy of trying the reset on the watch, which I am not sure I want to do again yet, I may just keep fingers crossed apple decides to finally fix this. I have a 90 day return policy on the watch which expires here in a few weeks, if its not fixed by then I will take the watch back and find a new company who actually cares.