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

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.

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.

Mine just did the same thing tonight. I noticed the screen had changed on its own and it started glitching. I tried turning it off and it sent a text to my emergency contacts and called emergency services. I did a hard reset and finally got it updated.

I noticed a couple of times this week, my watch was on odd screens/apps that I generally don't use.

Tonight, however, it did like several other folks and just went nuts...cycling through screens really fast and then sirens and then calling 911. I finally got it to hard reset.

I've updated iOS and WatchOS to the latest revs so hopefully that'll stop it. This is my 3rd Apple Watch and never had anything like it happen before.

10.4 did no fix the issue. I experience this issue in January and Apple replaced the watch. Little did the geniuses at the Apple Store knew. My knee watch on OS 10.4 did the same thing again and called 911 twice. I put it in the charger, then rebooted. So far so good.

My Apple Watch 9 has done this twice now. A month or so ago, it went crazy and locked me out. I did a reboot and it has been fine until today. Today it went crazy again, but also sounded the siren, called 911, and contacted my emergency contacts. I reached out to Apple Support and they ran a diagnostic, which didn't turn anything up. I am updating to 10.4 with the hopes that it will resolve the issue. I've had 2 previous models, with no issues. Scary and frustrating!

Just had this happen to my Series 9. Hard restart worked. But I had to wait a minute to enter my passcode because it “tried” the passcode so many times before. I’m on 10.3.1. So I’m going to update my watch.

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...

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.

My watch did the exact same thing yesterday. Called 911 and all my SOS contacts. Screen flashing and going berserk. I made an appt at the Apple Store this morning. The associate acted like he had no idea what I was talking about and that there was nothing they could do bc I didn’t have evidence of the problem. When I said I was scared to wear the watch, he acted like it was no big deal and said “why”…. Ummm bc I just told you it called 911! Not a good experience with Apple on this one at all. This is a 9 bought at the Apple Store last Fall, up to date on software. He said I could not trade or return it, ran no diagnostic test. Feels like a scam when a few months in, an expensive watch has this issue and the manufacturer won’t acknowledge it.

My Ultra II purchased in December, did the same thing tonight. I never had trouble before. Earlier in the day it dialed a number (not the last number I called). I tried to enter my password and couldn't, the screen went a bit crazy and then it seemed to work okay.

Tonight, it again dialed the number it had dialed earlier and then tried to enter 77777 for the password. The screen was unresponsive and appeared to be going crazy. The siren went off (thankfully not super loud) and wouldn't stop. I couldn't do anything and it kept telling me to try the password in 5 min, 10 min, 15 minutes...all the while the siren was going off.

Finally, someone told me how to do a hard reboot and it seems fixed. Concerned...

I just did a hard reboot and charged the watch. Now I am waiting to put in my passcode....which it initially deemed incorrect. But all of a sudden my watch is back to normal w/o passcode. Apparently my iPhone did not do an auto update which I am doing now and then I'll update iWatch which must be huge as it is taking forever! That better fix the crazy behavior as calling emergency for nothing is not good.

The same just happened to me today (11 Apr 24) on my Apple watch series 9 purchased Oct/23. It's back to normal after I did the hard reboot others suggested in this forum, but the bug is definitely very much there.

skeeterAA wrote:

Yes I did read the thread. Don’t be rude. I am an Apple advocate for a long time. If Apple had done better by notifying us of the issue sooner I would have updated as soon as possible. Now every time I turn on my watch hoping to update it sends a SOS.

You chose to wait a month.

If the forced restart and reset procedures quoted many times don't free it off for updating then contact Apple Support.