Apple Watch Screen goes black when touched

That sounds like a software glitch where the "touch to wake" feature is just performing the opposite function and 'touching to sleep'. Hard reset should resolve it, and It'll probably be fixed in a future update.

The problem is that you have to use the touch-screen to turn the phone off ... and when you touch the screen it goes dark.

I tried a hard re-set (push and hold both buttons until the apple logo appears) and it seems to be working. Not exactly confidence-inspiring, however.

MacSanFran wrote:

Same problem here. Owned it since August. It's getting worse. Fully charged, try to open app, goes dark. Double-press restart doesn't work. If I put it back on to the charger it starts up with Power Cord Graphic.

Contact Apple Support:

https://www.apple.com/support/watch/contact/

Same thing here, but the problems for my watch are more funny. Other than goes dark when I try to touch it, the touch screen sometimes acting like someone is touching it! Here is the video I recorded. https://youtu.be/NATWgE0RaSM

Hi, that occasionally happens on iPhones and iPods too. It means that either the touch sensor software is crashing or the touch sensor hardware (the screen) is bad in some way. You should unpair your phone and restore the Watch to new settings and then repair, to fix it. If restoring it doesn't work, then you need to get a replacement from Apple.

It started happening on my wife's sport a few days ago,

and now on my sports.

You can turn you wrist and the screen will come on, and will remain on for the normal time,

but as soon as you touch the screen it turns off.

If I am at home and this happens charging for a minute fixes it, but not much good if I am away from the charger.

A hard reset also fixes the problem, will wait and see how long that lasts

my apple sport watch started doing that today too and I thought it was a low battery, but when I got home and put it on the charger it had 80% charge left. thanks for the info on how to perform a hard reset, I did it and it seems to have fixed it.

I've had this problem the past couple of weeks as well - touch screen is either unresponsive, or it dies when I touch it, or it reacts completely erratically. It's actually working more infrequently than not. So far, very disappointed. The Pebble was MUCH more reliable. Apple Watch is an expensive dud.

Thanks for this. I did a reset and it fixed the problem for me too. Please note, this is a soft reset. A hard reset would restore the watch to factory settings... Having read "hard reset" I was concerned that my watch would be wiped out when it rebooted but it wasn't. All is good, even today's Activity status... 🙂

Same thing happened to my watch, This is the first time. Did a hard reset. I wonder if it has something do with it being unable to connect to iphone for extended periods, that messes up the software. It started the 'turning off when touched thing' when I went walking without the phone. Hope this annoying bug gets fixed soon.... big show stopper😠

Exact same issue just happened to mine for the first time. I've had to restarted it a couple times before, but this time I had to look it up as I didn't know you could press and hold both buttons to reset it (should have thought of it, really, since it also works on iPhone and iPad). Extremely aggravating having the screen go dark as soon as I touch it.

Strange. I don't even remember the last time I restarted my watch, as it's been working perfectly for several weeks now.

Another way to get the watch out of this mode is to put it on the charger, touch the watch face, and then enter your watch password (4-digit PIN). Putting it on the charger seems to kick it out of this mode, at least for a short while. Once you've done this, then take it off the charger and do a graceful power off sequence (hold down side button and select power off).

My watch started doing this yesterday, after having it on the charger overnight. I originally just stuck it back onto the charger and was able to wake it up. But it started doing the same thing today (again, after being on the charger overnight). This time, I did a power reset after sticking it back on the charger.

Hi I'm from India and got the apple watch sport edition about end June and it has been working absolutely fine, until i woke up this morning. I usually put my watch on charge over night and get an entire day of use. Suddenly this morning, its been about a month and a half now, it started acting funny. I could touch to bring up the time and press the crown to bring up the applications home screen, but if i touched the screen it would turn off and sometimes the screen would go into a fit of activities (actually looks like a fit). I was not able to restart it normally as touching the screen was not an option.

Finally I held the crown and the favourite contacts button down until the apple logo appeared on the screen, basically this restarts the watch, and its working fine. Will keep you posted if this occurs again.

I thought I would just pile on in case it helps Apple develop a fix faster. I had the same problem today. I couldn't even turn it off because my attempt to slide the off slider made the screen go blank. I used the tip of putting it on the charger and that allowed me to reboot it and then all was well. If I have to do this again my interest in wearing this will go down exponentially.

A Hard Reset of the watch by holding the Digital Crown and the Side Button at the same time for 10-15 Seconds should take care of this issue.

If not, go ahead and try to unfair and re-pair your watch to your iPhone.

Best of luck