My Apple watch does not connect to wifi when out of Bluetooth range

"Replylby dacheng81 on May 7, 2015 12:09 AM

For the wifi network that your watch can't connect to, go to the iPhone Wifi network page and "forget" that network. Then reconnect to it while the watch is connected to the iPhone via bluetooth. Once the iPhone re-establishes wifi, this password would be passed to the watch.

If you don't re-enter the password for the wifi network, the new Apple Watch won't connect to it."

==============

Thank you so much for your answer! This has been the only thing bugging me about my watch ... now it is perfect!! Thanks again!

Hi!

I had the same problem!

My watch was not connecting to my iphone over wifi. It turns out the watch could not connect to the wifi at all. I have sky broadband here in the uk. But i have turned off the wifi transmitter on the sky hub as I have an apple airport express cabled into the sky router and all my devices connect to the airport express.

A bit of googling implied that the people with similar setups to mine have issues with the wifi of their apple watch.

I decided to turn back on the wifi on my sky router (which is the dhcp server) entered the password and connected to the sky router on my iphone. Opened the apple watch app and waited for a few minutes and hey presto my watch connected to the wifi!

I can see the mac address of the watch on the dhcp table in my sky router, and switching bluetooth off on my iphone now still allows me to ping the phone from the watch!

Downside: I now have two wifi routers switched on and close to each other.

Un-pair and re-pair did not work for me.

For the wifi network that your watch can't connect to, go to the iPhone Wifi network page and "forget" that network. Then reconnect to it while the watch is connected to the iPhone via bluetooth. Once the iPhone re-establishes wifi, this password would be passed to the watch.

If you don't re-enter the password for the wifi network, the new Apple Watch won't connect to it.

Both my husband's and my watch were not connecting to wifi and we followed the advice in this thread

Re: Apple Watch is not using WiFi ?

which involved a process of forgetting the home network on the phone, turning off the watch, temporarily reconfiguring our home network to 2.4Ghz, reconnecting the phone to the network, and powering the watch back on and waiting for it to connect completely with the phone. Then testing, and when all was working, configuring the router back to 5Ghz.

This solved our problems, both our watches now are using wifi when bluetooth is off on the phones.

Rather than un-pair and re-pair I did what you said and forgot the network, then with the watch connected via bluetooth, I connected to the network with the password. I turned off BT on my phone and watched my phone attach to my wifi (saw it on my router). Thanks!!

Yes... thanks.. this helped me. Both the phone and watch need to be on 2.4 GHz to start with. Once the watch is up and running on that wifi, I switched the phone back to the 5 GHz and the watch remains happily connected to the wifi on the 2.4 GHz.

I could not get my WiFi on the watch to work at all. I contacted apple support and they had me unpair and re-pair my apple watch. I selected "restore from back-up" and now Wi-Fi is working.

Hope this works for others.

macfields wrote:

I could not get my WiFi on the watch to work at all. I contacted apple support and they had me unpair and re-pair my apple watch. I selected "restore from back-up" and now Wi-Fi is working.

Hope this works for others.

Thanks heaps! This worked like a charm (I set up as a new Apple Watch though – just to be sure).

You have to join the 2.4ghz b/g network. If you have both bands' SSIDs the same, temporarily or better yet- permanently change the 2.4ghz to "Wi-Fi 2.4" then join it from your iPhone, Turn off Bluetooth, Test your watch, rejoin the 5ghz SSID, turn on bluetooth on your phone. It worked for me. Good luck!

Trevor Nash wrote:

“Apple Watch uses Bluetooth® wireless technology to connect to its paired iPhone and uses the iPhone for many wireless functions. Apple Watch can’t configure new Wi-Fi networks on its own, but it can connect to Wi-Fi networks you’ve set up on the paired iPhone.

If your Apple Watch and iPhone are on the same network but aren’t connected by Bluetooth, you can also do the following on Apple Watch without iPhone:

Send and receive messages using iMessage

Send and receive Digital Touch messages

Use Siri

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. “Apple Watch User Guide.” Apple Inc., 2015. iBooks.

This material may be protected by copyright

You may have just explained something that I thought unexplainable. Earlier this week, I left my iPhone sitting on a desk at a nursing station at one of the hospitals where I see patients. I had to go home to pick up something and didn't realize until I arrived home and picked up what I needed, then reached for my iPhone to call someone about what I'd just retrieved that I discovered I didn't have the phone! (I cannot believe that Apple hasn't found a way to alert users to loss of the BT connection between the client watch and its server phone beyond that tiny "broken phone" icon at 12 o'clock on the watch face that you'll never see until it's too late!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)!

At any rate, thinking that perhaps I hadn't set my phone down until I'd arrived home, I used my home's landline phone to call my iPhone, hoping to hear it ringing. That didn't happen, but the following did:

1. My watch on my wrist began ringing!
2. Within one or two rings, on my landline phone, I heard the voice of a nurse in the hospital 2 miles away answer "Dr. Robertson's phone, Allen speaking."

Until I read your post, I thought there was some impossible way that my phone and watch were still connected by BT, whereas now it seems obvious that because my phone and watch were paired originally on my home WiFi network, my phone was logging on to my home WiFi network. Next step will be to find out if I could have answered the call on my watch. What would you predict?

Thanks so much,

Jim

What I found when my Watch is still connected to the phone via Bluetooth, if I just step out of range but still within the same WiFi network, it doesn't switch over to WiFi automatically. It will just show that the phone cannot be found.

But if, while connected via Bluetooth, I switch off the Bluetooth on my phone, my watch connects to WiFi and it works.

Strange? Anyone having the same issue?

To use wi-fi to pair to your iPhone, you need to do the following:

turn off bluetooth on your iPhone

be on the same wi-if network

The Apple Watch will automatically pair to your iPhone. The apps on your Apple Watch will work with Wi-Fi pairing to your iPhone. I did the above and was able to use my Apple Watch apps including 3rd party apps like CNN, Amazon, etc.

All,

Just in case you are still looking for another solution than the ones already provided; I managed to fix this issue by unhiding the SSID of my WiFi network.

After this, my Watch was able to connect without issues.

I just to Apple Support about this. If you have the latest WiFi - 802.11ac the watch will not connect to it. It will only work with the 802.11 b/g/n networks at 2.4Ghz. So my watch can't connect to my home network.

I have the Apple Watch 2 - Don't know why they did not design it to work with latest WiFi technologies.

Perhaps you airport express is broadcasting 5Ghz, I read that apple watch doesn't connect to 5GHz , try connecting your phone to 2.4gz and pair with your apple watch.