How do I remove an Apple Watch Source from Health App?

Same problem. Apple Care Tech Support, usually able to provide solutions, is so-far stumped. They are supposed to get back to me. The nearest Genius Bar is about an hour away from me, so might be awhile before I get there again. I suspect there is no easy way. The CS rep said that if there is no solution, the bug issue? feature? 😉 will be sent up the line. Hope there will be a resolution, maybe with 9.0.2.

Just out of curiosity, how is it known that the only way to remove the orphaned devices is by restoring a non-encrypted backup if all backups are encrypted? So bottom line is that the orphaned devices cannot be removed if they are listed as a source in the IOS "Health" app? But wouldn't any restoration result also in restoring the orphaned watch? Perhaps I should have gone into more detail regarding my situation, as your advice might change. I don't know if you are referring to multiple watches appearing as sources (NOT my situation), or to the same watch appearing multiple times (my situation).

Bought Apple Watch on Wednesday.

Paired with iPhone 5s on Wednesday.

Bought iPhone 6s Plus on Saturday.

Wiped and turned in 5s on Saturday.

Restored 5s backup to 6s Plus on Saturday.

Paired same watch (one I bought on Wednesday) with 6s Plus on Saturday.

Had one iteration of paired watch, and one of unpaired watch in the "Health" IOS app.

Monday called Apple Care. They had me do a Watch Restore (process automatically backs up the watch, they said). No data appears to have been lost.

Now have 3 iterations of the same watch under "Sources" in the "Health" IOS app - two are "no longer paired," the third is paired.

Still the same answer - the two unpaired iterations of the same watch cannot be deleted?

Thanks!

Michael.Zou wrote:

Go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap on Privacy and then Motion & Fitness and tap on Reset Calibration Data.

Ok... that suggestion didn't work for me. Was this a guess? Or, was this a solution that worked for you?

Michael.Zou wrote:

It worked for me before i reply your post.

First, thank-you for replying and sharing your solution. I just want to confirm that your solution removed the old unpaired - apple watch device - from the iPhone's apple health app under "sources" tab where there is a list of "devices".

For me personally your solution did not work for me - was there anything else that you did?

I have deleted old data from all the apple health categories, performed the calibration reset from the apple watch app under privacy -> motion & fitness and rebooted the iPhone and apple watch.

Thanks for your time 🙂

Your approach worked a treat, and what was even better, my iPhone remembered my watch so I didn't even have to pair it again.

I also noticed that my watch appeared properly under 'Source's' in the Health App, whereas before I had my iPhone and two old Apple Watch profiles.

2/10 in terms of pain to implement (YMMV)

9/10 quick fix to get the job done

J

Bumping this up.

I have the same problem now. Had to re-pair the watch because iMessage and Calender was not working right after I switched from two-step to two-factor authentication. On pairing I restored the Watch from backup, nevertheless i know got the same Apple Watch twice as data source.

Gang, this is confusing, but not incorrect. I show for instance, 5 Apple Watches as Sources. I only have one Apple Watch currently. I have had to restore a couple of times and replace the Watch Twice (different story). That said, only one is currently giving new data to the iPhone and Activity/Health Apps. THIS IS CORRECT. The OLD Apple Watches ARE STILL sources for some of the old data so it correctly shows them as well. Only if I delete all the past activity data will it get rid of the those previous sources. If you think about what it is saying, it IS correct. There are OTHER sources of the data, even if those other sources are different Apple Watches, OR even old back ups of the same watch. This could be presented better to avoid confusion, but that is the answer.

Understandable for you but I've never changed my watch, or my phone. Both the same ones I had when I first paired my watch. Yet I still have 3 watch sources, I can't even find where to delete the old data you speak of. I've had to restore the watch twice after failed firmware upgrades on the phone. That said I always restore a backup, so the watch "should" be identified as the same watch. Apple need to fix this, giving the watch an ID that changes every time you re-pair it it madness, use a hardware ID and the problem goes away.

Plasma

You are not wrong, but the three sources represent the two older versions that were since restored. Each restoration starts a new Source for data. You can delete the old data by going into the Health App and going to data sets and editing the data there. I would not bother though. It just means there is data in the Health App that is sourced from a different iteration of that Watch. Like I said, Apple could clean this up. If you want to have the sources correctly identified going forward, rename each one with a date and they will stand out based on when they were activatEd/restored. For Instance Joe's Apple Watch 1-1-16.

So continuing down your current train of thought, why do I not have multiple iPhones as data Sources? I had a 5S before I got my 6 and looking in the "All Recorded Data" section I can see data going back as far as 24th Oct 2014. This was a year before I had my watch and 5 months before I had my iPhone 6, so surely in the "sources" it should show a second iPhone for the data from the 5S? I'd say there is definitely some gremlins in this health app code.

The problem I have now is I don't know which of those Data Sets are from the other watches? I'd prefer not to have to remove all of them, but the OCD in me says I have to to get back down to just the one watch!

Plasma

Ah yes, that is a very important tidbit of information to have included. 😉
Apology happily accepted.

And now it's good to know that a proper solution is (finally) on the horizon, with the upcoming release of iOS 10. Thanks!

I Can confirm apple has finally allowed us the ever growing list of the same Apple Watch each time you restore/update your iPhone software, BUT if you do... you lose all your history of activity rings info! ***!? Why can't we merge into one entry??!!

This is the correct answer. I consider this a 'cosmetic' defect, meaning it's by-design and I completely agree that Apple should help some of us Type A, OCD types to hide or remove the 'old' watch instance, without removing the data.

Hey sdftrnv, what happened when you set it up as new watch? ie., what happened to the data stored in your activity app? Is it still there in the history?

I just noticed that I had two apple watches in my sources under the health app. One is current and the other one said this apple watch is not paired. I knew I had to unpair on January 9th and had only had the watch since Christmas so I said ah...what the heck, I am going to hit the delete all data button and see what happens. This is what happened:

- The unpaired apple watch source disappeared after I closed and reopened the health app

- when I opened the health app and went to sources and open your watch under devices, the data is gone from the time I got the watch until the 2nd pairing (which was 2 weeks of data for me)

- I opened the activity app and yes, in the history, all my data from Dec 25 to Jan 9 is gone. I am a little disappointed but in the grand scheme of things, this is not a disaster.

- all my health data however is still recorded in the health app since I got my iphone 6 in June of 2015.

What I find interesting, is that when I paired my phone to my watch at Christmas time, all my activity data from my heath app was paired with my activity app (all the old data since June of 2015). This was just steps, floors, distances. Now that I deleted that unpaired apple watch data, all the old health app data that was there since the first pairing is now gone.

So, for those of you that were afraid to delete the unpaired apple watch data, not knowing what exactly would happen, this is it folks. I too am a little OCD about my data for sure and I am disappointed about losing my data that I had been tracked since Christmas Day but it was only two weeks.

I think no matter what apple does for this, such as give a swipe/delete option, a person is still going to lose any activity data that was stored during the times of those watch pairings except for the basic activity data that the health app was saving. If you ever need to re-pair you will have to restore the watch from a backup (which are in there somewhere...don't worry) if you want to continue saving

I now lost 10 months of data in the Health app when I deleted the "unpaired" Apple Watch under Sources. Maybe this was a bad move, but how can I retrieve the data again? I would have wanted to merge the data, not delete the data.

When I did restore my iPhone and Apple Watch, I did it through iTunes with encrypted backup. Follow everything in detailed, but still I had two Apple Watch under SOURCE 😟

All help is highly appreciated 🙂