HR bluetooth strap will not connect

okay so i purchased an H10 strap. And i faced this issue today at my gym, Apple Watch (series 3) wouldn't hold the bluetooth connection with H10. It was really frustrating because i wanted to monitor my exercise.

Anyways, now that i came home and started playing a bit (after numerous restarts, installs, uninstalls, battery pullouts etc.) i figured that the only way the watch will stay paired with H10 is the following:

1. Pair it with Bluetooth via the bluetooth settings of your watch

2. Press the digital crown to return to all apps (DO NOT TAP ON BLUETOOTH ON THE UPPER LEFT CORNER; this will cause the watch to unpair with H10)

the above steps seem to hold the connection, at least for me. I must say that this is very frustrating and i hope that Apple and/or Polar (whoever's responsibility/fault this is) to fix it permanently.

P.S. one way to check whether your watch is reading the HR from its own sensor or the strap, is to lift the watch a bit from your hand and check whether the green light is on. if it is not on and you get an HR reading on your watch it means that it reads data from your external device. 🙂

I observed the exact same thing, but as or recently I am using the Scosche Rhythm+, which has a blinking LED that show if its connected, and even though the Bluetooth screen on the watch says, Not connected or Not paired, it still is connecte. Try working out without always switching screens on your watch and see if it keeps up with your heartrate.

I’ve been meaning to respond to this for some time but kept forgetting, but I’m proud to report that the P.S. from the above post has been a godsend: I check to see if the green light is on when in a workout, and 95% of the time it is not, which to me suggests the watch is still connected to the heartrate sensor EVEN if I still get “Not connected” on the bluetooth page on Apple Watch. Only once in the last few weeks have I seen the green light flashing on my wrist when the heartrate sensor was supposed to be connected to my watch. In that case I just went back into the Bluetooth settings on my watch and reconnected the heartrate monitor, and sure enough, the green light turned off almost immediately. However, I have to say I still get the “Not connected” message on the bluetooth page on my Apple Watch sporadically if I follow those two steps listed above (i.e. exiting bluetooth screen on watch by pressing the digital crown, NOT the back button on the top left of the screen). I feel like that’s how I generally exited that screen and still had the “Not connected” message show up later when I’d check to see if the heartrate sensor was still connected. But the green light on the wrist technique is pretty simple and absolute. If the green light is on, you know you’re not connected anymore, pus you’ll see it pretty quickly, even in a bright room, without having to thumb through settings on your phone in the middle of a workout. Thanks to everyone who had suggestions and feedback on how to fix/work around this problem.

I believe I’m experiencing a similar issue as you, navyrunner, with the HP7 Polar HR device (I’m on a series 2 Apple Watch using WatchOS4, but this issue also occurred in WatchOS3 as well). I have the HR sensor paired to my watch (I’ve made sure it is NOT connected to the Polar app on my iPhone 7 Plus), and generally before I start a workout the Apple Watch usually says in Bluetooth settings on the watch “Not connected” or sometimes “Not paired.” No problem, as I simply select the HR sensor listed under Health Devices and it connects. Great! Right? Not so much. I’ll start my workout and then I’ll check it a few minutes later, but now it says, “Not connected.” I re-select it and it re-connects immediately, and I resume my workout. I’ll repeat this process multiple times throughout my workout. In purely unoffical, anecdotal observations, it appears when I stay on the bluetooth settings screen on my watch it maintains the connection, but as soon as I move back to the Apple Watch workout app or turn off the screen for a few minutes it loses the connection again, but it defeats the purpose of the watch if I have to stay in the settings menu during workouts. I’ve tried changing batteries recently in the heartrate monitor and that didn’t solve the problem. I turned off bluetooth both in control center AND in the settings of my iPhone (running iOS 11) and that didn’t seem to solve the problem either. I’ll attempt turning off the phone entirely next time (as my phone is near me when I work out at the gym) and see how that works, but I’m fairly certain this won’t solve the problem. I agree this is a very frustrating issue, as Polar seems to be one of the best brands for heartrate sensors out there, so I was hoping it would work well with the Apple Watch. Perhaps there’s another brand out there someone is aware of that doesn’t lose its connection with the Apple Watch every few minutes? Very frustrating.

This is my first apple watch.

I used to have polar watches since then.

The first time I used the H7 heart rate sensor with my apple watch series 3 it worked wonderfully, trying to repeat that experience wasn't possible. The phone lost connection with the belt too many times! Even when showing that it's connected, I can see the green lights behind the watch! Why the hack everybody is having exactly the same experience? A first time working ok and the rest not...

I already tried all the tips in that forum and none of them worked properly. Even with the H7 connected, the watch is taking readings using their own sensor!

Thank you so much for your feedback, Oliver. You know, I was wondering if maybe the Watch was just ”confused” and the heartrate monitor really was still connected when it was saying it was not. I have noticed that my general calorie burns are higher even when I use my heartrate monitor and it says my heartrate is “not connected” versus wearing no heartrate monitor at all. So perhaps it really is still connected and the watch is just glitching out. I’m glad you responded so quickly, Oliver, as I was starting to research other heartrate monitors on the market, like the Wahoo TICKR, since Apple sells it in their own store. Clearly a product they sell would work perfectly with the Apple Watch, right 😉 ? Well, for now I’ll stick with my Polar heartrate monitor and just try to disregard the “Not connected” message and try not to worry about it. Thanks again.

"I already tried all the tips in that forum and none of them worked properly. Even with the H7 connected, the watch is taking readings using their own sensor!" same here. using the Wahoo Tikr and the TIKR X. Both my straps work flawlessly with the iPhone but not with the watch. I'm going to return the watch tomorrow and rely on my Garmin. Too bad, Apple doesn't try to resolver any of these issues, this thread is 2 years old.

yup same boat. I really just noticed this when switching from the Wahoo chest strap to the

Scosche Rhythm+ Heart Rate Monitor Armband. Seemed like every 10 minutes i had to reconnect it to my AW 1. So I retuned it and went back to the Wahoo. For some reason the Wahoo has a more secure connection. Not 100% but better. Too bad because the Scosche is more comfortable.

I have the WAHOO Tickr, Polar H7, Under Armor 39 and the Scosche Rhythm, and they all behave the same.

I bought myself the Wahoo Tickr, it connects with my phone very nicely. My problem is to connect it to my Apple Nike+ Sport Watch. It pairs with my watch, but is never connects. Is the problem with my watch or the Wahoo Tickr?

I am having the exact same problem described with the Wahoo Tickr. It connects to the 6s in seconds. It connects to the Apple Watch once. Then I have to restart everything and pray. The Apple Watch can't even be a semi-serious exercise watch without it working flawlessly with an external HRM. I have a series 2 watch running the latest OS.

So disappointed there is no fix.

Turning off the iPhone Bluetooth still. Did not work until I powered down the watch. With the phone Bluetooth off I restarted the Watch and my TICKR strap paired with the Watch. Hopefully I won't have to do this every time!

I have had the same issue with my Polar H7 Bluetooth HRM Chest Strap. I've figured out that the Watch will connect to the chest strap if Bluetooth is switched off in settings on the iPhone. Of course I don't want to have to turn off bluetooth on the phone during a workout. I have been using my Polar H7 for about a year now with RunKeeper on my iPhone (and I've also used it with the Polar Beats app and all the treadmills, spinbikes, ellipticals and even the new Jacob's Ladder cardio machines in my gym) and it has worked seamlessly. I can even connect/record HR in multiple apps at the same time on my phone and still see my heart rate (from the chest strap, not the hand grips) on the cardio machines.

I had noted that the wrist based HRM on the Watch was not quick nor accurate enough for my interval runs or spinbike sessions where I am running or spinning for 2 minutes at 70-80% (130-140bpm) and then sprinting/grinding up to 90-100% (160+ bpm) for a short 30 seconds to a minute. So I wanted to connect my H7 to the Watch to take advantage of its accuracy. The first time I connected the H7 to the Watch, I was able to do so easily and had a great workout in the gym. It found the bluetooth chest strap and paired and connected without a problem. After that and for the next week, I was unable to get it to connect to the Watch although it still showed up in the list of Health Devices on the watch, just as "not connected" even though it was connected to my phone and it also connected to the cardio machines, just not the Watch. It was like the Watch couldn't see the H7 even though it was obviously working because all the other devices were still seeing it and reading the HR. Like you, I tried putting the Watch on the charger (wasn't sure if it did some kind of restart when charging) forgetting the H7 in the Watch's bluetooth settings and re-pairing it and I tried restarting the phone and eventually doing a reset on the Watch, all to no avail.

Finally today, I happened to try turning off Bluetooth in the settings on my phone and the Watch immediately connected to the H7. Thinking back, I believe I had also turned off Bluetooth on the phone that first day that I used the H7 with the Watch because I was trying to see if the Watch would use the gym's Wifi. I had just forgotten about that part of the equation.

I called Apple phone support to see if there was a work around, but the support person I got was not "up" on the whole idea of connecting Bluetooth HRM's to the Watch. At first she tried to make it sound like the Polar people needed to come up with an updated version of their device to work with Apple's new technology, but I told her that since that particular device seems to be the most universal one out there as far as working with most phones, apps, cardio machines, etc. and because the Apple Watch is obviously designed to be able to connect to such devices, given that it can connect to it, only under certain circumstances, it would seem to me that Apple is the one who needs to come up with an update. I understand that this is version 1.0 of the Watch and there are going to be bugs to work out. That's a given. I just wanted to make sure that the development team was aware of the issue. Hopefully they'll address it in one of the earliest updates.

There is an update available (1.0.1) try it and see if it fixes your problem.

I was happy to see yesterday morning when I woke up that there was an update, but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem. It will still only connect to the Polar H7 if bluetooth is turned off on the phone. I have the 38mm Apple Watch and iPhone 5 running latest iOS by the way.

After the the update I even tried resetting the watch again and forgetting and re-pairing the H7 with the watch as well. No joy.