New Apple Watch SE 3 is stuck on verifying for hours while trying to restore back up and update to iOS 26.3. Phone is running iOS 26.3.
The watch is also cellular and we do not want to lose the phone number associated with it. We have restarted both devices multiple times . This has been going on for days.
vav203 wrote:
New Apple Watch SE 3 is stuck on verifying for hours while trying to restore back up and update to iOS 26.3. Phone is running iOS 26.3.
The watch is also cellular and we do not want to lose the phone number associated with it. We have restarted both devices multiple times . This has been going on for days.
While you did not receive this specific error message, this article may contain useful things for you to try:
If you see 'Unable to Verify Update' when updating Apple Watch - Apple Support
If you choose to set up the watch again as new, you can elect to keep your cellular number.
If verifying never finishes, the issue could be that the watch is running low on storage. First, use your iPhone to inspect the watch storage with the iPhone Watch app, General, Storage. Not only can you see how much storage is available, you should be able to find the watch OS update file in there and delete so you can try again.
vav203 wrote:
New Apple Watch SE 3 is stuck on verifying for hours while trying to restore back up and update to iOS 26.3. Phone is running iOS 26.3.
The watch is also cellular and we do not want to lose the phone number associated with it. We have restarted both devices multiple times . This has been going on for days.
While you did not receive this specific error message, this article may contain useful things for you to try:
If you see 'Unable to Verify Update' when updating Apple Watch - Apple Support
If you choose to set up the watch again as new, you can elect to keep your cellular number.
If verifying never finishes, the issue could be that the watch is running low on storage. First, use your iPhone to inspect the watch storage with the iPhone Watch app, General, Storage. Not only can you see how much storage is available, you should be able to find the watch OS update file in there and delete so you can try again.
Apple Watch SE3 iOS 26.3- stuck on verifying for hours
