I had the animations the first few days after I had activated the watch, after that, gone. I tried everything that google told me, restart both devices, turn off notifications and back on, and I still don't get them.
Apple Watch SE 3, watchOS 26
If standard restarts and toggling notifications didn't bring your watch animations back, the issue is likely tied to a hidden battery saver, a software state glitch, or accessibility settings overriding the UI behavior.
Check Accessibility / Motion Settings: Look in your phone's companion app or watch settings for a Reduce Motion or Remove Animations toggle. If this was accidentally enabled or triggered by a battery profile update, animations will completely cease.
Disable Power Saving / Theater Modes: Ensure Theater Mode, Cinema Mode, or aggressive Battery Saver modes are completely turned off on both the phone app and the watch itself, as these routinely kill non-essential UI transitions to save power.
Unpair and Re-pair the Device: A simple restart leaves corrupted cache files intact. Unpairing the watch completely from your phone and setting it up fresh forces a clean sync of all UI packages and configuration states.
If standard restarts and toggling notifications didn't bring your watch animations back, the issue is likely tied to a hidden battery saver, a software state glitch, or accessibility settings overriding the UI behavior.
Check Accessibility / Motion Settings: Look in your phone's companion app or watch settings for a Reduce Motion or Remove Animations toggle. If this was accidentally enabled or triggered by a battery profile update, animations will completely cease.
Disable Power Saving / Theater Modes: Ensure Theater Mode, Cinema Mode, or aggressive Battery Saver modes are completely turned off on both the phone app and the watch itself, as these routinely kill non-essential UI transitions to save power.
Unpair and Re-pair the Device: A simple restart leaves corrupted cache files intact. Unpairing the watch completely from your phone and setting it up fresh forces a clean sync of all UI packages and configuration states.
Here's what helped me in the past, to bring back the animation:
Open the WatchApp on your iPhone -> Notifications -> make sure that -> "Tap to Show Full Notification" is not enabled.
I no longer get closed rings animations on my watch
