Watch complications disappear from watch face selection menu

mace48 wrote:

... I have unpaired and repaired and set up from backup AND set up as new. Even as a fresh watch with no backup, the issue persists ... I never thought this would be unique to me until I got minorly dogpiled here.

"Dogpiled?" Don't take it that way. We're trying to figure this out with you. I studied your screen shots, which are very helpful in fact, but I have been changing my watch faces around (I even added the heavily loaded Infograph one just now) and editing and removing and re-adding complications and I can't duplicate what you experienced. I haven't lost anything but can edit and change watch complications as much as I want. Mine is a new Series 11 watch (new as of December), came with OS 26 and now on 26.3. What is frustrating with the watches is that with a Mac, one can look at various software and extensions installed and often one can uninstall something to eliminate an anomaly, there are lots of knobs one can turn; but with the watch, there aren't many of those options, one can basically add/delete/edit watch faces, unpair, erase and reinstall and re-pair the entire watch. I guess one can also remove various apps from the watch but not sure why or how that would affect the behavior of the watch faces. Makes me wonder if a cosmic ray somehow flipped a bit inside your watch -- saying this half in a joking way, but seriously, we do see this on spacecraft flight computers and solid state memory (I work in the space program), but when we do, a clearing of the memory and registers typically restores normal function, and you have not seen that, your anomaly is persisting. So please continue to post updates ...

mace48 wrote:

Sorry, I was just feeling a bit frustrated and invalidated since it seemed no one believed me.

I do believe you after seeing those screen shots. In fact I was a bit afraid to try to reproduce your issue because I did not want to mess up my own watch faces but mine all seem rock solid and behave as one might expect.

I am speculating that you must have combination of family sharing and setup on multiple devices that somehow triggers a bug that might not occur expect for that unique combination. I have seen this sort of thing with spacecraft flight software and these can be very challenging to track down and fix. Often we cannot identify or fix the actual root cause but we do try to reduce the likelihood of occurrence to maybe less than 1% but when enough time goes by we see the anomaly again and for that we develop operational workarounds.

Your screenshots do show something very odd happening but in my simpler situation (one new solitary watch that was just set up several weeks ago and I have just 4 watch faces selected to choose from) everything seems to work as advertised. I also have very few watch apps installed; on Macs installing things can mess up other things, I don't believe the watch is sensitive to that but don't really know.

I would stay away from changing Apple IDs because I don't see how that could contribute.

I hope you will post updates as you hear back from Apple support (hopefully they will follow through).

Watch has behaved like that, eg 10:09 while seiected, as long as I have used them.

I can still see all complications on my Ultra 2 when selecting another Watch face. Even in the miniature preview the complications show the correct, actual data, only the time is 10:09 in the preview.

that cannot possibly cause you any inconvenience unless you want to use the face in the small format, which I doubt.

Even if you still think it behaved differently in older OS, it is not causing any inconvenience unless maybe viewed by some types of neuro divergent people who cannot accept change to status quo.

LD150 wrote:

... people who cannot accept change to status quo.

Then those people will then suffer a lot under Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, watchOS etc. where CONSTANT CHANGES are being made to the look and feel and "features." I can only imagine how people who cannot accept changes to the status quo are faring under liquid glass 26.x or any number of recent changes to Android devices.

It must be software related to the Apple Watch Series 11 and/or the iOS for the iPhone Air.

Check the Face Gallery screenshot in the Apple Watch User Guide for watchOS 11:

...

copied from: Explore the Face Gallery on Apple Watch - Apple Watch User Guide watchOS 11

mace48 wrote:

Not being able to see, change, or use complications, both new and old, is definitely an issue for a normal person. Although maybe you replied to the other person and not me because you can see that what's going on is definitely not right.

Sorry if it was not clear, I was talking to Ingo about yourself. You can see them, just not in the setting phase occasionally.

If the complications did not show after setting up that would be an issue, this is just inconvenient.