My Apple Watch 9 is acting weird - Is this a bug?

This exact same thing happened to me last night (March 14). I shut down my phone and tried to shut down my watch, but it wouldn't. When I put it on the charger, it finally rebooted and seems fine now. It was as if a mad hacker was trying to get into my watch. Yikes. I hope Apple is doing something about this!

Same thing just happened to me. Spent a good 30 seconds fighting my watch to keep it from dialing emergency services when I tried to shut it down politely.

Hard reset, crown+power, seemed to resolve the issue at the moment, but looking down to see your watch flashing through all your apps, contacts, health info, trying to enter your passcode after being removed, etc., and not being able to stop it is a little stressful.

SocoAppleUser wrote:

I had the same experience early this morning (3-13-2024). A person on this thread described it as the watch was “having a seizure.” That is the perfect way to describe it. I had to do a hard reset but not before an SOS was sent to my emergency contacts. Luckily I was only locked out of the watch for 4 minutes before it would allow me to enter my passcode. I’m updating to watchOS 10.4 right now since it looks like there may be a fix included in that version. I know that at least one of my settings have been changed, this should be a lot of fun finding out all that was messed with. Not!

Last Fall (late 2023) mine called all the people on my SOS list as well as 911.

I had to tell the lady on the 911 line that my watch was acting up and apologized.

Just saw this and possibly it was "fall detection" acting up?

Anyways, you're not crazy. I saw this once, and luckily it hasn't happed again.

[Edited by Moderator]

Rgfeaster wrote:

Just happened to me (3/15/24). Screens flying all over the place, emergency contacts notified. Don’t think 911 was called, though. Hard boot seems to have corrected it. Fingers crossed.

I was freaked out thinking I was going to see cops coming to my house.

My kids all called me asking if I was OK...at least it works :)

Sadly, when I did take a nasty fall last October, fall detection did not work. That's when I needed it!

Per apple support this is what you do:

Force Apple Watch to restart

If you can’t turn off your Apple Watch or if the problem continues, you may need to force your Apple Watch to restart. Do this only if you’re unable to restart your Apple Watch.

To force restart, hold down the side button and the Digital Crown at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

Update: after hard boot, Emergency Contact alerts continued to go out every time I changed locations. Rebooted my watch again and phone, disabled emergency contacts and it seems to have stopped. Will do watchOS update tonight to 10.4.

My Apple Watch 9 (purchased in Dec. 2023) also started acting bizarre at 12:30 am on 3/17/23. My watch was doing things on its own and constantly trying to put in multiple passcodes and my apps were moving all around. Mine did call 911 and did Not allow me to cancel the call! I missed out on a lot of sleep because I was worried the police would show up! Fortunately the 911 operator was very nice & understanding. I was unable to shut down the watch on my own. I am glad I read all these comments and will try a hard restart/put on charger and do update. Fingers crossed this works and it doesn't happen again.

This happened to me Friday night with my series 9. It even called 911 which was quite the ordeal, especially since it also hung up. I updated both my phone and watch to the latest OS on Saturday as that was supposed to fix it. Today on my run, nothing touching the watch, it started calling out segments every 2-3 seconds, then it cancelled run mode and started walk mode half way through, all on it own. It also triggered Siri, which is not enabled on the watch without pushing the side button and besides, I never said Siri or Hey Siri. They say this is fixed in 10.4 watch OS, but I am thinking it is not fixed yet.

I am on with Apple Support and it does appear to be a known issue...my

instructions are to un-pair and re-pair the watch to the phone. There

is also an iOS update (17.4) that includes a fix for this bug...

I have an older version of the watch (5 years old). Two weeks ago at 4:30 in the morning it brought me out of a deep sleep making a terrible warning sound and called 911. This morning it did the same, at 2 am, but I rebooted it before 911 was called and placed it on the charger. Pushing the crown brought me to the Health screen and the 911 emergency screen. Operating system is up to date. Apple, let’s get this fixed!

VRBe wrote:

It should be APPLE POLICY to immediately post on streams like this to clarify:

This is a user-to-user technical support forum. It is Apple's explicit policy that they don't provide support here.

80sLad wrote:

My Apple Watch was acting bonkers just today on the way home from work. I thought for a moment, I was going to have to call a young priest and an old priest.

As long as it doesn't mention your mother... :)

Same it happened to me today. I bought my series 9 last december 2023. It just randomly clicking anything and I got locked out. I hard reset it and it's working fine now. I hope an update is fixed or else I want them to replace this.

Fixed in OS10.4

watchOS 10.4 includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes, including:

● Tap to Show Full Notification setting now allows you to double tap to expand the notification

● Using Apple Pay with Confirm with AssistiveTouch will require a passcode for additional security and will not support double clicking the side button

● Resolves an issue that causes some users to experience false touches on the display

● Fixes an issue that prevents contacts from syncing to Apple Watch for some users

OS10.4 fixed this for Series 9 and Ultra 2.

IOS is not relevant, neither of the 17.4.1 variants affect this but 17.4.1 has a patch for a vulnerability that has been deployed in real life.

That’s it. Anyone outside those parameters may have a sticky button. Not a hack.