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

I had exact same issue last night (February 4th), freaked me out. I did a chat with Apple today, they ran a diagnostic test and found it was fine. The only thing I could do was unpair it then re-pair it. The really crazy thing, same exact thing started happening to my iPhone 13 Pro! Phone much easier to reboot than the watch. I really hope Apple gets this fixed! Everyone with this issue NEEDS to contact Apple ASAP!

This happened to my S9 (ios 10.2) watch yesterday (2/6/2024). It was as if someone was physically pressing the buttons as well as the touch screen. It turned on airplane mode, set timers, opened menus, and even changed settings. When I tried to power it off, it tried to call 911. I finally took it off my wrist which caused it to enter an incorrect passcode enough to lock itself for a min. While on the "locked for 1 minute" screen I was able to force a hard restart on it. Upon turning it back on, I had to wait the 1 minute to enter my passcode - but then everything was fine. I had to change back everything that was changed before (turn off water lock, turn off airplane mode, etc). But just now, it opened up a menu that I did not press a button for... but stopped after that. I know I have an update waiting (ios 10.3), but sounds like folks on 10.3 are having this issue too....

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!

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]

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.

Same thing happened to my Series 9 Apple Watch. It called 911 not once but twice. Finally unpaired it from phone and reinstalled. Had to update phone in order to update watch. Did anyone experience their watch becoming extremely hot during this update? Mine did. Not happy about the whole situation and having to tell our state police when they called to make sure everything was okay. Embarrassing!!!

iPhone 13 with iOS 17.4.1. Apple Watch Series 9 with OS 10.4. Problem still there. Per Apple support over the phone. I unpaired and re-paired the watch to the phone and recommended turning all SOS features off. So much for the nice features. I’ll try turning it back on again in a few months after a few more software updates.

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.

I did a hard reboot by pressing the crown and power button together then once the screen went dark I immediately placed the watch on its charger. For me it wouldn’t get past the wrong passcode screen asking me to wait 8 hours. Prior to this it was one hour. It never allowed me the opportunity to put my passcode in. I was at the gym and prior to that when the watch went crazy I was at work. Someone in this forum replied and explained to hard reboot. They also said to wipe abs reset the watch as if it was bee but I would need information from it to get it back. The post was long and you may find it in here. I did not wipe the phone and start from scratch (I was not sure if what I needed to get the watch watch back) but I did upload to the newest versions available for the phone, watch and iPad. Also the next day the watch seemed fine. I still uploaded the newest version later the next day. All day prior to before uploading the watch was fine.

Oh my god! This literaly happened to me today while I was at the airport! The plane was about to board and it was such bad timing. I got my Series 9 just a few months ago and this was the first time it happened to me. It was switching apps rapidly, setting timers, and tried to call 911 but luckily I didn't buy the watch with cellular so the call didn't even go through. I was scared it would delete things and ruin everything but luckily it just focused on switching apps and setting timers. I was terrified. I didn't know how to hard reset it. I tried powering it off by holding down the control center button and then clicking the power off button but the screen was completely unresponsive and it wouldn't work. After struggling for over 3 minutes my wrist being violently buzzed the entire time from the timers going off, I finaly managed to reset it by holding the crown and control center button at the same time. I was so relieved to see the apple logo and for it to be working when it turned back in. They need to fix this issue as it's pretty big but at least I'm prepared for the next time it happens.😂😳

watch series 9. bought in November 2023. Same thing, SOS, 911 calling, passcode input like someone is playing in casino. locking up, not being able to hard re-boot, apps flashing, xmas light show. Started April 8th. updated to 10.4 yesterday. today SOS and 911 again, called apple support, no resolution but they are aware. they run diagnostics, and while re-booting the watch, came back to siren and SOS again. "Hoping" to have another software update, no ETA. This cannot possibly go on! watch is useless. Apple please take it seriously! this can result in injury. my wife and daughter both dispatched first responders thinking i was having a serious medical problem while away from home.

My Apple Watch went crazy like that today. It was like it was possessed or hacked- opening and closing apps, deleting notifications, opening Apple Pay (that was particularly concerning), entering passcode numbers incessantly. Causing music to play loudly. It finally ended up calling 911 and when I apologized to the operator and explained it was my Apple Watch, she was so nice and acted as if she was familiar with the problem. I was finally able to do a hard reset but it wasn’t at all easy- I had to try multiple times - it did help to put it on the charger for a while first. After I did the reset, it notified me there was an update available. Also hours before this happened I had updated my iPhone to 17.4.1 and had not restarted my watch after that so that might have been part of the issue. It was a very stressful experience. Why hasn’t Apple fixed this?

Lunglover wrote:

Agree 10.4 did not fix the issue. Mine just went crazy.

If 10.4 did not fix it then suspect a damaged digitiser.

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