Reminders - phone app & watch

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Level 1

21 points

Reminders - phone app & watch

I recently got my first Apple Watch, a series 5. All available phone apps were copied to the watch. Everything is working as it should. Reminders are showing up & alerting on both phone and watch as expected.

However, I have a reminder - which I deleted from my phone almost two years ago - that keeps showing up on the watch, and only on the watch (the reminder does not alert on my phone) every night at 8:30. The first time, I deleted the repeat setting on the reminder, and marked the reminder as completed. The second time, I searched the reminders app on my phone for this specific reminder. I found it in the completed reminders, where I individually deleted every.single.occurance. related to this reminder, where it had repeated every night when I originally set it up. It now appears NO WHERE on my reminders app when I search for it, but it is STILL alerting me on my watch every night at 8:30. The reminder no longer exists - yet I still get an alert on my watch. What's going on?? How do I fix this?? Please do not tell me to delete the reminders app and re-install. That's not going to happen - I rely on this list way too much to take the chance on losing the reminders saved in the app. There has to be some other place this reminder is hiding, that somehow has only become active when I got the watch a week ago.

Apple Watch Series 5, watchOS 7

Posted on Mar 14, 2021 5:51 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

javaliga

Level 10

120,179 points

Mar 14, 2021 5:57 PM in response to michelleb19

The first (and simplest) thing to try if something isn’t working right is to restart your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone. If necessary (device not responding), try a forced restart. Both methods can be found here:

How to restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

If that doesn't help, the next steps would be to unpair and pair your watch again and restore from the backup just created. This should result in no loss of data. It deletes all temp and corrupted files and re-indexes the file system.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

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Answer 2

javaliga

Level 10

120,179 points

Mar 16, 2021 1:14 PM in response to michelleb19

Do you have Reminders set to use iCloud?

Settings > iCloud

and look under 'APPS USING ICLOUD"

Whether or not, you could try toggling that setting and restart your iPhone in-between toggles.

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Answer 3

javaliga

Level 10

120,179 points

Mar 20, 2021 7:53 PM in response to michelleb19

OK, let's try this: On your iPhone, tap

Watch > My Watch > Notifications > Reminders > Custom > Notifications Off

Then (just to be sure) restart your watch & iPhone. And see if the annoying reminder goes away. If it does (after a day or two) set the remainder settings however you want and see if its returns.

Good Luck.

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Answer 4

michelleb19 Author

Level 1

21 points

Mar 16, 2021 12:34 PM in response to javaliga

I have tried both of these options multiple times, and neither one has eliminated the daily ghost reminder.

The reminder does not show up anywhere in my iPhone reminders lists.

I cannot delete or otherwise edit the reminder when it pops up on my Apple Watch. I can only mark as completed (which means it repeats daily, as it was originally setup to do almost 2 years ago. However, I ended/removed that repeater within a couple months of setting it up, and then deleted the reminder completely. It no longer shows up in a search of reminders on my phone, yet it still alerts on my watch every evening.

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Answer 5

michelleb19 Author

Level 1

21 points

Mar 20, 2021 6:01 PM in response to javaliga

That did not work either.

I have also since then manually deleted every. single. completed. reminder (hundreds!!) in my phone’s reminders app. I cannot do it on the watch or in iCloud. I have again tried to search for this reminder on my phone app and it’s no where to be found. Doesn’t pop up on the phone, but pops up on the watch every night at 8:30.

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Answer 6

michelleb19 Author

Level 1

21 points

Mar 30, 2021 8:26 AM in response to javaliga

So I’ve waited a few days to reply in order to keep testing the daily 8:30 pm reminder. It seems to be gone. <knock on wood>

I have no idea why, but one day the reminder suddenly show up on my phone. It has not been there before. Since it was on my phone, I was able to remove the repeat option, and then mark the reminder as completed. Since then, it has not returned.

However, now a second issue has manifested. If I have a reminder set, but decide to change either the date or time of the reminder (which obviously has to be done on the phone), the watch still alerts at the original day/time instead of the new day/time.

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Reminders - phone app & watch

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