Apple Watch on iPhone is stuck on "preparing the update"

I’m having the same issue with my 2 day old Ultra 2, it will not update after many attempts, restarts, unpairing, etc. Plus I get no audio from Siri. My first Apple Watch and not making a very good first impression.

First time I have had an issue updating my Ultra. At first the update wouldn’t download. After turning the watch and phone on an off several times, it downloaded but is caught in a “verifying” loop for hours. The watch gets extremely hot during this extended verifying process. I then turned the watch and phone off several times and again the same problem. No VPN, iphone is up to date. It’s very frustrating. Is there a solution?

Same problem, but I was offered the opportunity to cancel on my Ultra 2 watch face. I cancelled the update and will be waiting quite a while before attempting again. So tired of buggy Apple releases and updates.

Apple watch Series 7 is my first apple watch purchased 2 days back but trying pair with my iphone 11 and update ios 10.2 its not working getting stuck on "preparing ".Any suggestions to fix this issue?

Same issue on my Apple Watch SE. Been stuck on ‘preparing’ for over a month. Restarted / reset phone, not on a VPN, nothing helps. Useless POS….. I’ll be moving permanently back to a Fitbit soon. Ridiculous

I’m literally having the same exact issue on my 15 pro max and Apple Watch Ultra 1st gen. It’s stuck on preparing update and so I had turned off my hotspot I was using from my iPad and it didn’t even fix that issue either just to use LTE to update :(

Done a hard reboot on both devices, connected back to my iPads hotspot since that’s usually how I download all of my watchOS updates without having any issues. For some reason I don’t know why watchOS 10.4 is being stuck on prepare update after deleting the software update through the Apple Watch settings page on the app and downloading the whole update again.

Apple Watch on iPhone is stuck on “preparing the update”.

I had my Apple Watch on the charger while it was preparing the update when there was a power outage that lasted an hour. Now it is stuck. What can I do because it is frozen now on the Watch app? I can still use my Apple Watch like normal. Is there a fix?

Similar issue. Phone's plugged in, watch is fully charged and on it's charging pad but the update seems stuck. It's been saying "Preparing" for the last 2 hrs or so. Any fix? Thanks.

thanks for answering, it didn't seem to make a difference, tho.

still no luck.

I wanted to avoid that but I guess that’s the way to go. Thanks.

Thank you. This worked!!

Still can’t update 10.2 and I’ve done all of the fixes mentioned. And since I’ve unpaired my watch, I can’t use it at all because it won’t reset without being updated. Has anyone had success?

My series 7 watch is facing the issue of downloading the 10.2 os download ,I plugged in the charger and full signal of Internet, but it is not working