Serious issue with wrist detection, stand time and unlock (not tattoo related)

My watch 1st series is doing it as well. However, prior to the issues beginning the back of the watch came off in the magnetic stand one morning. When I researched it, I found others reporting the same thing. People stating that between the wetting, sweating, and magnetic pull from the charging stand must be wearing down the glue or seal on the watch. It makes sense. When I called Apple they told me it would cost 150 dollars to repair this defect that is clearly in the watch itself. What a waste of a 300 dollar watch. I love Apple and have been an apple addict with my iPhone 7 plus, Mac mini, mini iPad, iPad 2, and watch gone bad. Needless to say I am very disappointed as Apple doesn't allow any other smart watches to function on the level of the Apple Watch, unlike android which gives you options to be other smart watches for your phone. Not sure what to do now.

i had exactly same problem with my 42SS apple watch, tried to restart both iphone and the watch, rematching the two devices, matching with another iPhone, matching with a new iPhone, nothing solved the problem, went to seek genius bar support, test showed that all sensors are "fine", if they do not even have this bug(no matter hardware or software) fixed, their diagnostic tools surely won't find the problem, i guess its a hardware issue, since it is already out of the warranty period, i decide not to return for a paid repair, i think i will disassemble it later on while i am free, just want to see what the problem it is, i am more curious to find out the root cause than the apple guys, isn't this too sad!

I Bought the Apple Watch 42mm a week and half ago. The first couple hours worked great. Since then I never really get any alerts or notifications. U spent over an hour at the AT&T where I bought it today after work. He did resets of my iPhone 7plus and Apple Watch. By the time I left he had my Watch working again. A half hour after leaving there, once again same problem, NOT WORKING right!! I have spent all my free time trying to figure out what is wrong with this Watch. Finally I just turned off wrist detection and my watch started working right. I am bringing my Watch back tomorrow and letting them know that I want a new one. I do have tattoo's on my arm, but have tried it on other people to see if that is the problem and it had no effect bcuz they didn't have tattoo's and I do. I am not letting them just send my Watch away to get fixed and then by the time my warranty is up it is not working again. I am going to demand a new watch. I am not wasting $400.00. I have always had an iPod/iPhone's since they came out. This is the first time ever that I have had an issue with Apple products. It seems like it is an issue a lot of people are having and it has been going on for a long time now. Why have u not already had this issue fixed Apple??? It is a big deal to a lot of us who want to get the full use/effect out of our Apple watches.

I have had this same problem on and off for 2 years. I am sure this is a software bug as watchOS 4.1 was released and in the release notes they said they fixed the issue. When I updated sure enough my wrist detection started working and my stand reminders started working too, but alas it did not last. 6 days after I updated my stand reminders stopped coming and wrist detection stopped working as well.

I think you are wasting your time for reports here I think your Watch has a hardware problem that no one here will be able to assist you with. Make a Genius Bar appointment at your nearest Apple Store and have it looked at. I have the SS and I'm not see any of those problems.

Not seeing it on mine, my friend is not experiencing it on her 38mm SS.

This is exactly the problem I have and I also agree Wrist Detection seems to be the problem.

I (fortunately for me) have not seen these issues. I did find that perhaps I had the Watch too tight and when loosening it one notch on the Sports Band I do seem to get more notifications - though never the locking/unlocking issue, and having the same stand up issues of a lot of people.

But I agree, that it seems your watch has an issue with the wrist sensor and should be brought back. Seems like you are having too many issues that all could be related to the sensor.

I had the same issue I went to Genius Bar and found I didn't have FaceTime and iMessage activated on my phone once these were activated it works like a dream also you can set the lock/unlock in my watch on app on you phone under passcode. Hope this helps.

I'm having exactly the same problem with my 42mm Stainless. Like you, it worked fine for the first several hours i had the watch, then suddenly, it started locking constantly. I too have had friends try on the watch (with different skin tones, etc) and we all experience the watch locking every time it goes dark. I went to the Genius bar and they ran diagnostics on the watch and phone and found no errors, though the guy suggested I send the watch in to have the sensor inspected/repaired (they don't have any on hand, so he couldn't replace it). Given I didn't want to send my watch away for 5 days (I had only had it one day) and there seems to be some speculation (at least from some of the threads I've read online) that this specific issue may be software related, i kept the watch and use it without wrist detection turned on (though, this ****** me off, as I love using apple pay and the stand functionality doesn't work now). I'm curious what you were told at your Genius appointment.

I am having a similar issue with Wrist Detect.

I've had my 42mm stainless steel Apple Watch since April 24th. For the first month, Wrist Detect worked perfectly with no issues. Then, randomly one night, it stopped working. No matter what I tried (restarting iPhone, restarting watch), nothing helped. I took it to the Apple Store and they couldn't figure it out either until the last thing we tried which was to restore and set up as new Apple Watch. That seemed to "fix" it...for several hours. I was installing all my watch apps back again, and then Wrist Detect stopped working again 😟

SO, I set up another appointment with the Apple Store. In the day I had to wait before my appointment, I tried everything but nothing worked restarting, cleaning, restoring as new Apple Watch (the same thing that appeared to work in the Apple Store a few days earlier) multiple times, but Wrist Detect continued to fail. When I finally arrived for my appointment, it randomly started working again when I tried to show them the issue! The guy was really nice and offered to log it as a hardware issue and send it away to have it checked even though all the evidence pointed to a software issue. I decided to keep the watch for now.

Now, here I am one week later, after installing all my apps and having everything working perfectly for a whole week, and Wrist Detect has once again stopped working as of this morning. It's quite a puzzling issue. I have no tattoos and several weeks history with Wrist Detect working fine. It does appear to be a software issue, but I can't find any commonalities between all three times it has stopped working. Heart rate sensors work fine when I pull it up in glances. I thought that was how they detected the wrist contact, but now I'm not so sure.

Please let me know if anyone figures this out!!

DO you have the wrist detect setting in your iPhone watch app general settings switched on? Wrist detection is done via the accelerometer detecting movement of your wrist rather than the blood flow sensors used for heart rate detection. You may well get successful heart rate readings and stil fail to register movement if the sensor is turned off .

Did you get anywhere with a Genius Bar appointment? I'm still getting told "I have reached out to engineering and they are still working on a fix for this issue." by the Apple Support guy I am talking to but I haven't been able to go to a store to try another Watch on yet and see if it's me or my watch causing the problem.

I was able to reach Apple technical support and they suggested that I try synching my watch with another device to see if it truly was a software problem. However, I was still having the same issue, which led them to believe it was a hardware issue. They sent me a new watch and I've not had any further issues, so it must have been an issue with the watch itself. Really enjoying the full functionality of the watch now.