Apple Watch Stuck in "Preparing" during watchOS 9.6 update

On your iPhone, open the Watch App, go to General>Storage>select the watchOS update, and delete it.

Restart, and force restart your iPhone. Restart, and force restart your Watch, dance around the room a couple of times and try again.🙃

I had the same problem trying to update to 10.4. I restarted my Apple Watch Series 8. On my phone, I opened the Apple Watch app > general > storage, and deleted the update file as recommended. Restarted my phone. Went back to the Apple Watch app on my phone and tried the update again and it worked. The update was done in 15 minutes.

i tried all of these steps about 20 times and didn’t get it to work, until finally I deleted the update file, restarted both the watch and phone again, started the update from my phone, and this time I put BOTH my watch and phone on the chargers. Every other time I only had the watch on the charger. I don’t know if that last step had anything to do with it, but it’s the only thing I did differently and it worked.

My watch had been stuck in Preparing Update for about 2 weeks. I had done everything I could think of to get it to finish. I finally went into General>Storage and found the update and deleted it. It is no longer in the Preparing Update any longer. I plan to retry the update tonight.

The only thing that worked for me was to unpair my watch from my phone and reinstall that watch. Then, the software worked. I tried deleting the software update and then restarting both the watch and my phone several times and it didn't work. Once I unpaired them and paired them back up again - it worked perfectly.

As yourself, I didn't find an update...at first. After restarting phone and watch, then Watch → General → Storage showed the update file, which can be selected and then a Delete button is offered.

So now I've got a retry on the update going, which it claims is going to take 7 hours. I am on a Gbit Xfinity link. I should be able to download 700Mbytes in moments.

We'll see. This is psychotic.

I was able to get the update going by turning off auto update and powering off both the phone a watch. When I powered up the phone reverted to saying it was up to date with the previous update then asked about updating to the current one.

I am replying to my own comment above! After several attempts and following Apples Support how to get this working I did get my watch update to work. The trick was to manually turn off both the phone and then the watch. Prior to that I did end up deleting the old update and restart the update only to get stuck in the same place. I am very happy now that everything worked out. I am very happy with my Apple devices and their support.

Battery issue and installation of update seem to be interrelated hence reposting this response I shared on battery issue- So I had the same issue since the last 5 days. Turns out it was an update pending. The problem was that the update was not installing and was stuck at preparing which was probably what was draining the battery. I tried everything from restarts to deleting update file from storage and re installing it, but it was still stuck on preparing. Finally I left the watch on charge for 2 days and wore it sparingly. I also unselected the auto update option so the watch being connected to Wi-Fi and charger ended up completing the ‘preparing update’ mode. Post this it showed install update mode. So now my watch battery is back to normal and running the usual 18-24 hours of my usual wear time. So again let it move from preparing to install now mode and that should fix the problem hopefully.

Will update you all on battery life after the 10.4 update is installed and running on my watch. Hope this helps!

Yes, I followed the instructions offered by “Ferd II”. The sequential combination of deleting the update file from within the Watch app and then powercycling my iPhone and watch worked for me. Then, the update continued as expected and completed within 5 mins. The customary elapsed timer (e.g., “3 minutes remaining”) presented as well; I had

not noticed that it did not present when it was stalling before.

Happened to me as well. Then I noticed that I still had Express VPN toggled on. When I turned that off. It slowly finished preparing. Maybe the VPN was interfering or maybe it was just really really slow in doing its thing. I have a 15 pro and ultra 2. I wouldn’t expect their bleeding edge tech to take more than 20 min to update.

Don’t miss the important steps of restarting (actually powering down and turning back on, should see the  reboot screen) BOTH the phone and the watch after deleting the file.

Since doing this my watch updated and is has had no other issues related to OS updates, even updated itself again last night with no trouble

[Edited by Moderator]

I really just want to point out that if restarting your phone and restarting your watch doesn't work, you must unpair your watch from your phone and go through re-pairing it. I deleted the file, restarted my phone, restarted my watch and it would not work. I kept getting "preparing". It was ONLY AFTER I unpaired and re-paired my watch and phone that the update worked.

1. delete the downloaded update
2. restart phone and watch
3. start update from the watch

worked for me YMMV

I was having this problem for about a week... Last night I forced a restart on both devices and when both were back on I opened my watch app and went to the update again and went to sleep. This morning I saw that it was asking me to agree to the terms of service and the update started. Maybe just luck but it finally worked. Good luck!