Watch not connecting to wifi when bluetooth on iPhone is switched off

I'm a bit confused as to what's happening for you and what's not happening for you.

On the iPhone, we tap on a wifi network and get prompted for password. Once the network is connected, the iPhone remembers the password for future connections. I don't know if the passwords are stored in plaintext or hashed, but my guess is for security and safety it's probably not stored in plaintext.

Now comes the newly released Watch. Once paired with the phone, it has no wifi network passwords. My feeling is that the phone cannot transmit the pre-existing passwords and network info to the watch because the phone doesn't have plaintext password. So the Watch is stuck with no wifi access. If you "forget" the network on the phone, then re-enter the password for the network while the Watch is in range of the phone via bluetooth, then the Watch gets that password info and connects to the same wifi that you just connected to with the phone.

All I meant to say in the previous response is for those people whose watches can't connect to the wifi network that the phone has no trouble connecting to, even though they're supposed to. I had that problem and solved it by forgetting the network and re-entering the password.

Sorry for not being clear.

Once I paired my watch with my phone, it (the watch) automatically "inherited" any wifi network to which the phone connected. I tested this in a few locations by (a) switching off Bluetooth on the phone and (b) walking out of BT range of the phone. In each case, the watch retained wifi access as long as it was on the same wifi network. That's how Apple says it should work

Your experience seems to be that the watch will only "get" the wifi network if it's with the phone while the phone is establishing a connection for the first time. That's anomalous, and not as documented. If it works, then at least it enables you to use the ufcntionality and it's certainly something that people should try.

Clearly the phone must pass credentials to the watch, for the watch to have direct access to wifi (which it must for Siri, for example, to work without the watch). It makes sens that forgetting/reconnecting to a newtork would triugger the phone/watch to exchange the new credentials - it's just not supposed to be necessary.

I hope that makse more sense than my last effort

Just to add - I've come across two articles that explain (or try to) in more detail how the watch wifi works. Hoe they're useful:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2898892/apple-watch-and-its-wireless-tech.h tml?page=2

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/15/apple-watch-airdrop-ibeacon-continuity -coax-advanced-features-from-bluetooth-wifi

I agree that automatically inherit the network settings from the phone is what a user would expects, and from all that I read from Apple documentation that's what I thought it would do too. But it didn't do it for me. It is probably a bug. I just wanted to provide another workaround to this problem that seemingly quite a few users experience.

This finally worked for me. I would have no problem connecting to wi-fi on other networks, but for some reason on my home network, the watch would never connect to wi-fi. With the watch connected via bluetooth to the iPhone, I told the iPhone to forget my home network, and then I reconnected back to my home network on the iPhone and entered the password on the phone to connect to the network. Now my watch connects via Wi-Fi to the home network. Thanks for this solution.

Thank you so much! I've been searching high and low for a solution to this and your post got it for me! Finally! Thanks again!

It took a whole bunch of testing, but I found that mine wasn't connecting because I had separate 2ghz and 5ghz networks and I keep all 5ghz compatible devices on 5ghz only. For some odd reason the watch doesn't support 5ghz. I tried multiple times and every time I would forget my 2g network, fail over to wifi didn't work. I now have my phone paired to both the 5g and 2g networks. I keep it connected to the 5g, but when Bluetooth disconnects the watch connects to the 2g and all is good in the world...

What worked for me on two different WiFi networks where I had problems to be connected while iPhone is not in reach.:

"Forget this Network"

Switch iPhone on and off

Add network again.

Apple engineers working on my case have now categorically stated the watch will only connect to 2.4 GHz wifi. My solution was to ensure that my iPhone was connected to the 2.4 network, power down Apple Watch and then restart. Router then confirmed Watch was connected and stayed connected when Bluetooth was disabled on Watch.

However, the case is still being looked at because sometimes the router will not show the Apple Watch by name in the attached devices list, nor show the IP address, instead both showing 'unknown'. I can tell it is the watch from the MAC address though. This intermittent problem may highlight an issue with the signal strength/ interference or another issue, but the router is within 6 metres of the watch. The engineers are now going to do some live tests over the next few days.

Quick tip about something that was tripping me up as I was testing the issue:

For this problem do not use the red icon at the top of the watch indicating "lost connection to phone" in your testing... you have to actually attempt to send/receive a message on the watch. Even when the watch is properly connected on wifi, if bluetooth is off it will display the red phone icon. (I was able to test by sending to myself)

I too was interested in leaving my phone in my bag and still having watch functionality around the wifi network of my office, however take note that when out of bluetooth range ONLY messages and siri work since the watch is talking only to the wifi router and not to your phone... All of the "Apps" that are really just loading screens remotely from your phone won't work ... you won't get any new emails, no notifications per the phone's settings, or notified of incoming calls (and I assume incoming non-iMessage SMS) which makes this watch-only option around the office a lot less appealing.

The Calendar watch app does store local info, so I suppose you'll still be notified of meeting reminders if they've already loaded into the watch calendar. Note - I just tested and confirmed this is true, you'll get Calendar alerts without bluetooth connection.

Though I just walked around the office and tested - I figured they were further than class 2 bluetooth range limit of ~33' or ~10m, but somehow two of our three meeting rooms are apparently within bluetooth range of my own desk.

So if I basically configure my WIFI with Apple Watch paired by bluetooth to the phone. Then afterwards the watch will be able to access the wifi SANS watch. Correct?

Just like to add that forgetting network and rebooting iPhone worked for me. Now when I turn off the bluetooth on the phone no red 'loss signal' comes up on the watch however siri etc works.

Apple TV remote also works over wifi on the watch. That is a nice bonus indeed.

I can concur with 125AT.

Forgetting the wifi network on my iPhone and then reconnecting it again did the trick for me. My watch now shows on as one of the devices on my router's DHCP client list.

With the bluetooth off on my iPhone, I can still use Siri, send messages, and use the watch remote app to control iTunes on my iMac. very cool!

Do third party apps work also?