Unable to download apps on child’s Apple Watch

I had the same issue as him and spoke to 5 Apple technicians and the Genius Bar, spending many hours trying to resolve it. Finally, I found the answer.

To fix it, go to your iPhone settings > Screen Time > Under "Family," you should see your family member listed. Select them and disable Screen Time. It appears to be an Apple glitch, but this should work.

Also had exactly the same issues, was super frustrating as there was no feedback/error message. Thanks for sharing the fixes. I got it fixed by going to settings > screen time > family member name > under Restrictions > temporarily disable the Content & Privacy restriction.

That was it!

Oh my gosh, this worked for me! THANK YOU! I just wanted to download a simple notes type app on my child's watch, and it was very frustrating not being able to. I'm copying what I did of your steps above, and adding one other step from my own experience, but this is all thanks to your post!

You need to go to the iPhone>Settings, not the watch settings.

1. You will see 'Screen Time' below the 'Notifications, Sounds & Haptics, Focus' Click it.
2. Under the 'Family' section, you will see a list of your family. Click the person who has the watch.
3. Click "Turn Off App & Website Activity" and enter passcode
4. Click "Stop Managing [child's] Screen Time" and enter passcode
5. Go back to the Apple Watch and download apps from App Store. You should now see the "Get" button. Double click the side button and you should be able to download the apps
6. If you want to go back to managing screen time and app activity, you can turn that back on, and follow the process you did before to set it all up. You will just have to turn it back off if you need to download more apps

Same issue here. Daughter's new watch is unable to download apps. Spent over 2hrs on the phone with tech support -- reformatted the watch twice, toggled a million settings, EVEN created a new appleID and setup on a new phone -- still wouldn't download apps.

Disabled screen time completely and it worked first try. Pretty dangerous that in order for Apple devices to properly download you need to disable any protections for kids. Really poor QA here -- FIX THE BUG APPLE.

Yes, it worked right away. I was able to download the snake, ping pong and tic tac toe games.

You need to go to the iPhone settings, not the watch settings.

1. You will see 'Screen Time' below the 'Notifications, Sounds & Haptics, Focus' Click it.
2. Under a 'Family' section, you will see a list of your family. Click the person who has the watch and disable the screentime.
3. When I click the 'Get' button, it asks me to double click the side button and didn't take me to the settings to enter the password.

If this doesn't work, call tech support, ask them to log in to your iPhone screen, and then use the camera app to show the watch screen.

I was soooo frustrated so I know how you feel. I hope this works.

Very painful process because there's a silent failure there on the watch that only shows up when screentime is enabled.

Disabling screentime for this watch worked-around the bug.

With Family Setup, your family member who doesn't have their own iPhone can use their Apple Watch to do things like make phone calls, send messages, and share their location with you.

Note that some Apple Watch features depend on having a companion iPhone, and aren't available on an Apple Watch that you pair using Family Setup.

For more info, see:

Set up Apple Watch for a family member - Apple Support

Well we woke up this morning and the app was on his watch, so I guess we just needed to give it time! 🤷

Were you ever able to find an answer? I also checked and double checked that I would be able to download apps onto my daughter's watch. I have the iphone, she has the watch with its own cellular plan and phone number. It is also set-up through family sharing. I am stuck in the same loop of trying to download apps, press get, put in password, download, only to be sent back to "get" Please let me know if you figured anything out or if you just had to return the watch? Thanks

Same here! I'm stuck in the loop too. Every few years we get a new Apple Watch for a kid and it always seems to be so difficult to get it to function properly. Unlike the rest of the apple world.

Experts, please help.

Did you find any help? I am betting not, but hoping so. I am in the same boat. I think downloading apps is just not able to be done with the family watch setup and Apple is doing their best to keep this from being well known by NOT answering clearly. Maybe technically there is some app out there that can be downloaded in some work around so then it can still appear that apps can be used by a family member without a phone. I agree it is just ridiculous that the family member watch is so difficult to get clear answers in what it is capable of or not. Very disappointing to say the least.

I am having this same issue on my son’s watch! It’s so frustrating. He wants a simple pong game from the App Store and his watch will go through the motions of letting him request it, put in his password, then double-click to install and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t install and just kicks him back to the App Store screen. I’ve read multiple other forum threads on this and all of the Apple experts keep giving the same generic unhelpful responses. Meanwhile my 9 year old is disappointed in his watch.

Rats! this did not seem to change anything for me!

When you say to disable Screen Time, I think you mean Downtime as I do not see Screen Time listed (on the next menu screen) after selecting the specific family member? Did it work right away for you once you disabled it? I shutdown the watch and tried again to get the Ping Pong game but no luck just went back to the apple ID screen after it said it was processing.

I was sooo excited that someone responded with a fix, I hope others give it a try and find it works for them, and glad you found a fix for yours!

If I could buy all of you a beer, coffee, or whatever your current vice is I would happily do it right not. We just got my son an apple watch and I was about 2 minutes away from launching it out the window when I found this thread. Fixed!! Thank you all so much

I’ve been at this for 2 days now. Tried turning off Screentime & Downtime and still can’t get app downloads to share from my Apple account to my son’s new Watch SE. He can’t download anything from the App Store either. Just enters his password and nothing. I don’t get a notification when he attempts to purchase anything, my purchases aren’t sharing to his Watch, just nothing. This is ridiculous. Both my iPhone 13 Pro Max and his Watch SE are updated to IOS 15.1, we’re on the same WiFi network, his ATT Cellular is working just fine…. Glad to see the “fix” worked for some of you, but it’s not working for me…