Apple Watch "Always On" only shows time

Try simply holding the power button on your watch until the screen where you can emergency call/siren pops up. That fixed mine. Apparently whenever you do that it toggles Reserve Battery mode on and off and when that is on, only the digital clock shows.

I was seeing this exact same thing. I shut down the watch completely for a few minutes. booted it back up and it seems to be working as normal now. In wrist down mode, it just fades the regular clock face instead of the simple digital time face.

Solution: turn the watch off and on again. Got this annoying behavior a few days ago. I think after the watch was out of battery once and came back on when charging. I checked the discussions at the Apple Forums but so far people seem to just accept it or blaming it in “old” code of Complications. However, since Apple’s own complications were effected as well, I could not believe the reasoning. Just did what anyone should do first if an electronic device acts up. Turn it off an on again.

The screenshot that you provided rings a bell to me! It seems to do that to all of us.

You have an app open in the background. I can't tell what app it is but what's in the background is NOT your home screen.

The home screen is where you'd be seeing all of your complications.

From that screen that you're on in your screenshot, press the Digital Crown to return to your home screen.

You can change this setting and I believe that it will automatically take you back to your home screen when you're not actively using your watch:

From the paired iPhone, open the Watch app and click on General. Scroll down to and click on "Return to Clock". Change it to "Always" (you might have it set to "After 1 Hour" right now).

I followed first hint in this article (https://www.payetteforward.com/my-apple-watch-only-shows-the-time-heres-the-real-fix/) and it resolved issue with only showing time when wrist is down. Mentioned button is the one that you need to hold to get into sos or shutdown menu, not the crown. Once you are in the menu just press cancel and watch face starts behaving as expected again. Seems like something chashes on the watch and it gets stuck in power saving mode of some sort.

Hi Talywkr,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! Which complications are you using? As noted below:

Use the Always On feature with your Apple Watch

How app complications appear when your wrist is down

While your wrist is down, the time and complications on the watch face update once a minute, and information appears as follows:

Time complications, such as Stopwatch and Timer, round their displayed information to the minute.

Complications that show live data, such as Compass and Noise, are not active.

Other complications, such as Calendar, Weather, and third-party apps, refresh once per minute or as needed.

Hope this helps!

Have a great day.

Hello Talywkr,

Thanks for the update. If you haven't already, make sure both devices are running the latest software versions. This can sometimes sort out unexpected issues like the one you're experiencing:

Update your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Should the issue persist after that, or if you are already running the latest software, try unpairing your Apple Watch and setting it up again. When you unpair, a backup of your Apple Watch is automatically created.

You can find steps for unpairing your Apple Watch and setting it up again here:

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

We hope that helps.

Take care.

My watch does the same thing in black and white

08

:44

how do I get back to my screen

I had the same issue on my Ultra that started after a full restore. What I did that worked was to hard reset the watch: press and hold both the crown and right button for at least 10 seconds until the Apple logo appears, then release. I hope this works for you too! Cheers.

Thanks for getting back to us Talywkr, it’s appreciated.

Do you use your Apple Watch to track your sleep? Track your sleep with Apple Watch - Apple Support

If you do, on your Apple Watch go to Settings > Sleep, and make sure “Sleep Screen” isn’t on.

If your Apple Watch only shows the time after that, please reach out to Apple Support: Get Support

All the best.

You don't want it on one hour, I'm almost certain it will do what it's been doing if you set it there.

What to set it on is a great debate in the forums. Mine is set to "Always", others prefer that it gets set higher but I've never heard of anybody setting theirs on "1 hour".

I can probably do some digging in here and find a thread where the author reported it as a bug. In a way, it sort of is a bug because it will do that while you're actively reading a text message that you just started reading. You have to tap the screen to get the clock to go away so you can resume reading the text. The situation that was brought up by another user was actually for a different app and not messages. I used messages as an example.