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

My Watch Ultra 2 just started doing this. A forced reboot seems to have fixed it for now.

I am updating it from 10.3.1 as I type this. Hopefully that’ll fix this. But it’s worrying. If it’s a known bug why is it only now faulting like this? Have had the watch for 3 months now with no problems.

This happened to me tonight. Could not stop the 911 call and calls to familly. Apple chat no help. Pressing (and press and hold) the side button and crown only created another 911 call. Just wanted you to know you are not alone. I am also afraid to do anything. Has Apple responded to anyone?

Woke up this morning (01 April) to mine doing many of the same things. I thought it was some cruel April Fool's joke. I could not access any apps; it would not let me set the passcode and kept timing me out. I put it on the charger and did a hard reset on the phone. I had to update both the phone (17.4.1) and the watch (10.4.) in order for the watch changes to take effect. All seems well with it now. The total time to make updates and pair the watch with the iPhone was about 30 minutes.

march 31 2024 My Apple Watch series 9 started scrolling . Screen was all over . Unable to stop or turn it off. Watch dialed 911 and sent out SOS alert to medical contact people . I had to turn off the 911 feature and emergency contact list 911 was not shocked .

1 April. My watch started to do the same as you described. Out of the blue. Unfortunately it called Emergency Services and sent a SOS message to my emergency contacts.

Impossible to stop it pressing both buttons. I put it in the charger and left the room to breathe and get recover from the shock.

I have unpaired it and restarted it again. Hope it never happens again. I will contact Apple though…

Oh, its a brand new Series 9.

I never ever had an issue with the Series 3.

After hard reboot and software update my watch kept sending SOS messages to my ICE. A call to support led to repairing my watch to my phone. I just finished that so we shall see if that fixes the problem.

My Apple Watch 9 did the same out of the blue. Siren screaming,numbers scrolling ,Called 911 it was so nerve racking. It also texted my children an sos and after rebooting and leaving on charge it notified my children twice today of an sos without calling 911. I also am afraid to wear again. Just purchased in Dec2023

I have a 9 and this just happened to me. I hard started 3 times… it’s still locked. It’s on the charger. I even tried shutting it down while on the charger, nothing.

I can’t even get into the watch on the app to download the 10.4 update.

I’m on the 10.3 version.

I have the craziest story regarding this issue. I am glad I came across this because I was about to poop my pants. So I ordered a red 1980s phone off ebay. It has issues and I was troubleshooting the phone. I had taken the phone apart and was holding the plastic red case of the phone (the top half of the phone where the dial buttons are) on my left hand. Same hand I wear my watch. With my other hand I am trying to remove some components from another phone. All of a sudden, I hear a soft ringing, as if a phone is ringing. I could not figure out what was going on. I then hold the empty red phone case to my ear and sure enough I hear some faint ringing. This wasn't the same ringing sound my watch makes when someone calls me, it was a different ringing. Since the red phone was not connected to anything, it creeped me out! I glanced at my iPhone and it is texting on its own!! I see a bunch of weird characters flash on the screen, the screen flickers, then texts my wife, tells her "I am bored" followed by "just kidding". At this point I don't know what's going on, the watch does not respond to anything, not the crown button, not the screen, nothing. In a panic I take the watch off my wrist, then it seems like it is trying to guess my passcode. That really did it for me, i was about to poop my pants. Anyway, I am going to go with it was just a weird coincidence that this happend as I was working on that old phone, but I've had my watch for over a year, has never done anything like this...

Mine just did this tonight. I went to charge it and it when I picked it up it was going crazy on the lock screen until it locked me out for 15 minutes. I did the hard reset but still locked out.

Series 9 I got for Christmas.

Just had this happen now as well - did a hard reset holding crown and right button down together for 10 seconds. Also called someone, may have been 911 not sure? Booted back up doing the same thing… is this a virus or a known bug?

My Apple Watch was doing the same thing. It was jumping from app to app and entering in all kinds of passcodes. I keep trying to shut it down but it won’t turn off.

I would think Apple knows about this and would a recall. This is so frustrating, I just bought the watch last year. 2023.

What the ****? Mine just went crazy like just now I woke up earlier than expected because my apple music played on my phone on full volume and I was confused why music was playing on my

phone when I checked my watch it was going crazy switching on and off, going to notifications switching between apps. Is this a bug?

Mine went haywire yesterday while on golf course, it called 911 dispatch, and everyone in my emergency contacts list, the watch kept trying to input my password on watch and when I tried to shutdown it went into siren mode, had my wife and daughters going crazy blowing up my iPhone talking about what happened to you, are you alright and then finally this isn’t a cool April fools joke, 911 operator forced me to identify myself and location!

I would like to know why and what caused this?, I’ve had an Apple Watch for 5-6 years and never had any issues whatsoever!

This is happening to me with my Apple Watch Series 9, too. It started yesterday with the screen flickering through all the apps like a ghost was controlling it. I received a notification on my iPhone 15 ProMax that it's paired with that I should use the keyboard on my Apple Watch to enter the passcode, as the wrong passcode was being entered over and over by this crazed ghostly takeover of my watch. I finally let it completely run out of battery, then put it on the charger overnight. It's still messed up this morning. I did a soft reset to my watch and my iPhone, too. Now it says I have to wait 3 hrs to enter the passcode into my watch because the wrong one was entered (not by me). I made an appt at the Genius Bar for 2 pm ET today so we'll see what they say. My watch is using WatchOS 10.3.1. I bought it in September 2023 and this is April 2024, so it's really annoying that I'm having problems. I never had any problem in the three years I had my Series 5 watch.