WatchOS 26.0 update and activity will not work or connect

After completing the latest watch update to 26, my activity and fitness apps will not work. The only way to get them to work is completely resetting my watch. This happened with my old watch and to avoid resetting daily, I had to force restart to watch every night before bed. I finally upgraded to an Ultra to avoid this issue; I’ve had my Ultra for almost a year and no issues. Now I do this update two days ago and I’m back to the same issue. What is most frustrating is Apple’s ONLY response is “unpair and repair”. I don’t want to do that every single day. That is not a proper fix. Anyone have any real fixes?

Apple Watch Ultra, watchOS 26

Posted on Sep 20, 2025 6:09 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 11, 2025 11:13 AM

Did you set up the watch as a new device, without using the latest backup, in case the backup data is corrupt, causing this issue?

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

25 replies

Nov 20, 2025 11:27 AM in response to krene727

I have an apple watch ultra and started having his issue after updating to iOS26 and OS26. I have tried to unpair / pair option, factory reset, etc. Still continues to happen. When the fitness tracker app is frozen, it also causes my Peloton watch app to crash when it is trying to read my heart rate. It seems to eventually sync up after a couple of hours (some days), but its an issue when I try to work out first thing in the morning and can't monitor my heart rate because of this issue. Its pretty frustrating.


One interesting note, if I charge my watch is short spurts (like 30 min or so at a time) it doesn't happen. If I leave the watch on the charger for an hour it causes the fitness / activity tracker to lock up.

Sep 26, 2025 3:22 PM in response to krene727

In my case, I was two updates behind on my iPhone (because the "automatic updates" setting neither updates automatically nor provides notifications to check for updates...it's only because my watch stopped tracking activity that I even thought to check). After two updates to the iPhone and one update to the Apple Watch, I unpaired and re-paired, and it STILL is not tracking my activity. I can see it graphed in the fitness app on my phone, but the graphs of my activity don't translate to numbers either in the app or on my watch face. For example, the time graph for standing hours shows I earned those standing hours at 1:00 AM and 6:00 AM-12:00 PM. However, my standing hours both in the app and on my watch, continue to read 0. Same for the calories burned per hour: 0 calories for the day on both app and watch face, but my calorie burn on the graph in the app shows I'm burning calories each hour. And I should have four exercise minutes according to the graph that shows I earned one minute during four separate hours in the morning. The watch is monitoring my heart rate, and apparently it's monitoring the other things as well, because my phone wouldn't have an estimate for calorie burn, know when I'm standing, or track that I've taken about 2000 steps so far today (I'm not keeping it with me, so I don't think it's tracking my distance itself without the watch's help). I'm going to post my issue separately if I don't find any other solutions in the forums, but this has been the worst update yet. I'm used to having issues with my wake-up alarm that need to be worked out in different ways after each update, and I was like fine, whatever, I'll get an alarm clock, but this one has cost me most of today so far and has lost me the reasons I got this watch in the first place.

Nov 18, 2025 6:10 AM in response to LD150

Definitely an OS problem. I have had this happen four times since updating.


I’ll wake up some days and everything works fine, I wake up other days and no tracking works at all. No steps, no heart rate, no stand hours, no calories burned, nothing. It won’t let me start a workout either.


I have a Series 10 Apple Watch, GPS, 46mm and a new iPhone 17 Pro Max.


The first time I went through every troubleshooting step I could find online. Resetting the watch completely is the only thing that fixes the problem, but only for a few days. It randomly happens some other morning and I have to do it all again.

Oct 29, 2025 9:44 AM in response to BrentWolfe

BrentWolfe wrote:

I have been having the same issues with my Apple Watch Ultra since installing iOS26. It is incredibly frustrating and there doesn't appear to be any fix other than unpair and re-pair, which isn't a fix. …

YES it IS a fix, the standard everyday fix for getting your Watch straight. Why the resistance?

Nov 18, 2025 7:01 AM in response to krene727

I’m also having issues on my Apple Watch 10 since the update. I just switched to Apple a month ago. Anyone have a fix for activity app? I love keeping track of my steps. Thanks


I’ve been a Samsung user previously and never had this issue on my Samsung watch (had the watch for over 6 years). One thing I miss from this watch is that Samsung gathers both watch and phone steps together. So I can see the combined on my watch and phone. Apple Watch doesn’t combine.



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WatchOS 26.0 update and activity will not work or connect

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