I can send Digital Touch, but can't receive. Any ideas?

Removing my friend (who was trying to send me a sketch) from favorites on the phone's watch app resolved the issue for me. I hadn't noticed before the issue, but when looking at favorites on the watch, no pictures were displayed of the contacts. After removing from faves on phone's watch app then re-adding, their pictures also appeared and it resolved the digital touch/sketch issue.

Just followed instructions from Mase and ejbowes, works perfectly now!😁

In our case, we didn't need to delete the old messages, but toggling iMessage off/back on resolved the issue for us. Hooray for helpful forum users! :-)

Problem solved. Not sure exactly how though. What I did was adding the icloud.com account email address to the contacts list (both watches' related iphone), as well as toggling the iMessage on and off button in Settings a few times. Digital Touch then magically started working.

I got it, finally!

The issue was indeed with iMessage. I set up my iMessage to only use my custom email address as apple ID since I really don't like my @icloud / @me one. Here is what we did:

1. Go into iMessage settings
2. Make sure the @icloud and @me addresses are enabled. They don't have to be the primary ones you send messages with, but they have to be enabled.
3. Put these addresses in the contact on the other phone
4. Delete message history on the watch. You don't need to touch the stuff that's on your phone.
5. Send an initial message from the watch and use the @icloud address as target
6. Send the DT

We set the @icloud / @me addresses as primary as a test and once the initial DT arrived switched it back to what it was before. My theory is that it is because I disabled these in my iMessage settings.

I was able to send to my wife but not receive. I tried resetting my watch to no avail. However it seems the problem was on the send side. I removed myself from her friends list on her phone. I then sent a touch to her watch. On her watch it asked if I wanted to respond and I did and immediately received it back on mine. I sent another one to her watch and then it asked if I wanted to add a friend, I said yes and then everything is good.

I have tried every suggestion on this post, spend 6 hours on the phone with 2 different apple support folks, sent downloaded files to Apple engineer, as requested and spent almost 3 hours at the Genius Bar. All to absolutely NO avail!! Left the Bar with no answer and the suggestion to wit for a software update. I've owned a dozen or more Apple product and never experienced something so incredibly poorly handled by this company, in which I own stock. How can it be okay for their support folks to just throw up their hands and say "Sorry, we can't help you."?? I am $1,700 into these two watches and my wife can't receive anything from me via Digital Touch, although I can receive from her. I've tested with other Apple Watch owners and the problem is limited between the two of us, both watches work perfectly with other people. Help me Apple! I implore you.

Double check that your main apple ID is in your contact file on her phone and vice versa. Use these main apple ID as default address for sending iMessages.

AAre you both using the same iCloud account on the watches?

I Mean on the phones - settings iCloud (not in iMessages or anywhere else). I can tell you what's going on if you answer yes

Nope, I ruled that out a while ago. We have 2 separate icloud accounts and are using two separate icloud account email addresses. Ugh.

HHave you tried on LTE only? Meaning both phones are out of wifi.

Just did. Still a big nothing.

HI sholshey I assume that you checked on your message settings - i message check if enable then click on send and received ...you will see your number and I cloud account check on I cloud ( your email) to send and received. Then head to your contact list go to your wife contact in edit her info add her email address to that section. On your wife phone do the same add your email to her contact list. Hope that works because it worked for me. somehow the watch needs to be recognized by iCloud accounts on the contacts and not by cell info some sort of Apple glitch .. I too spent a day and half figuring this out by myself even the tech at Apple was clueless ... Please let me know how it went

FYI for everyone having this issue. I am an Apple Watch nerd and have been testing every little thing with another equally as big Apple Watch nerd. I could get her sketches and was notified of them - taps and heartbeat too - but when I sent her something she never saw it or knew about it.

Just as mentioned in here, the recipient's iCloud email was not in the contact card. As soon as I added it and she added mine, it worked fine between us with notifications and all.

So it's definitely the iCloud email address that does it. You might use the phone number to initiate the contact and that's fine, but you need that iCloud address in the card to match because that's clearly what's being used for the digital touch and not the phone number. And that makes perfect sense since digital touch isn't a text message.

Here is EXACTLY what I did to fix the problem.

1. Go to the contact card of the person you want to exchange Digital Touch with on your iPhone.

2. Click edit and add the person's iCloud email address as a new email address.

3. Make sure you hit save.

4. Make sure the other person you are trading with also adds your iCloud address.

4. Reset/reboot your watch by holding in the crown and the button below until the apple logo appears. (not 100 percent sure this step is needed, but it definitely can't hurt)

5. Go to the Watch app on your phone and click on friends. Verify that the new iCloud email is showing on the card when you click the little letter i next to the name.

6. Try again.

Hope that works. Worked like a charm for me. Thanks to the kind folks in this thread who started the ball rolling. Hopefully writing it out in step-by-step form will make the process smoother.