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

Happened to me too last night.. kept going crazy and putting in random numbers for my passcode meaning I was eventually locked out for 4 hours. I let it run down battery wise the recharged it and now fine. I noticed that an update was halfway through happening when it went crazy so I think it was probably down to the update … seems fine now fingers crossed

I am good to go now and here is my update. After my watch went haywire I placed it on the charger as someone recommended and that got the watch stable. What I then noticed was that my phone was showing WatchOS 10.1.1 in a "Preparing" state. That went on for a few days. I finally checked in the watch and saw the same thing. I powered the watch off and on then checked again and it showed that it was ready to update to WatchOS 10.3. I let that all download and update followed by reboot and now it seems I am good until the next time Apple lets something wonky loose on me.

This happened to me as well -- Apple Watch 9 -- on Feb. 9th. I ended up turning the apple watch off, as well as my phone that it's attached to, and it seems to have resolved the malfunction (for now).

Has anyone had this happen more than once on their watch? Or was it just the one time?

This just happened to my watch today 2/13/24. I was listening to music and it started stopping and changing stations and once I realized it was my watch the screen was flashing different apps and trying to enter passwords which locked me out of my watch for hours. I did a hard reset but still is locked for the next 3 hours. Hopefully that does the trick. If not, not sure what to do.

Same - Apple Watch 9 did same thing on Feb 13. Sent an alert to my emergency contacts (good to know that works) and only stopped after updating the watchOS firmware to v10.3.1 last night (I wasn’t able to turn the phone off however as it kept doing things on the screen)

But then this morning it did the same thing. I was able to turn off my watch for an hour or so which did the trick this time. Obviously not fully fixed (?) in latest firmware.

Apple Watch 9 same issues--going crazy, entering its own PIN, not responding, could not update to 10.3. Waiting 3 hours is pointless, PIN screen does its own thing.

The fix was:

Unpair from phone

Hard restart, press & hold both buttons until logo appears

Release both buttons and immediately press & HOLD the power button until RESET appears

Hard reset watch

Then pair again with iPhone and update to 10.3 iOS

So far, it works

Mine just did this nonsense today. It was flipping around apps, typing in random passcodes... I did the hard reset and all seems well. It wants to do the 10.3.1 update from 10.2 current OS and will do that tonight. I hope that is the end of it!

This is happening to me. Started after update. No workout view anymore and constantly puts me in race or splits when I am in Outdoor Running workout. Spend gobs of time with Apple Support and still not resolved. Also, a green flashing light randomly comes on on the back of the watch. Has also slid into SOS mode without prompt or fall. This thing is glitzier than all get out. I will not be updating this watch anymore. Time to park it.

Mine JUST flipped out on me right now (not sure if it has the update or not). It was going through a bunch of apps, then turned on my phone camera and recorded a few short videos from my phone. I took it off my wrist and then it started going through random keys on the its passcode screen until it timed itself out. When the timer ran out, it kept going through random numbers on the watch screen. I was trying to reset it for some time, but it was not letting me--it was sliding the SOS button halfway, almost like it was taunting me. :/ It finally shut off, but now I am afraid to turn it back on...

Happened to me today, watch ultra 2, watchOS 10.3

like it’s tapping things on itself, nothing I can do until I force restart by press and hold the crown button and side button at the same time.

apple please fix this

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!

This happened with my wife’s Apple Watch series 9. I honestly thought her phone and watch had been hacked. The PIN code screen was up and numbers were randomly entering themselves then a time delay appeared triggered by the random pin entries. Couldn’t do anything the watch so reset it with the watch app and restored it to factory setting also updated her phone to latest version of iOS. Apple what is going on ?

Mine did the same thing tonight. It didn't call 911, but it did send a message to my 2 emergency contacts. At least I know that that feature works. Did the hard reset by holding down the crown and the button under it. Now updating phone and then will update the watch. Hopefully this won't happen again.

My Apple Watch 9 is acting erratically as others said on this forum. I did a hard reset and it is back to normal. I noticed it was in the middle of an update when I took it off of the charger.

I wanted Apple to be aware.

This just happened to me. My Apple Watch 9, purchased Dec 2023, just started acting possessed. It also called my local emergency services, which was awful. Then it locked me out. I have forced reset and put it on charge. This is really not cool and needs sorting out asap.