Watch won't ping phone

Try rebooting them both.

George

Same here, it worked great on Watch OS1 and iOS8; upgraded to Watch OS2, which required iOS9, and now it rarely works, not on bluetooth, not over wi-fi.

No other variables have changed except the two OS's.

Tried, with no success:

- Hard reboot of both devices
- Unpairing / re-pairing of devices
- Reset Network Settings on iPhone

- Toggling iPhone Bluetooth on/off

- Various changes of Watch setting in Watch app

Welcome to the world of 1.0 releases (the watch hardware), aka 'early adoption'. I'm generally a late adopter, issues like this one (there are others, notably the always-open question of whether Siri will respond quickly, or extremely slowly, or not at all.

First world problems!

Try this:

on iPhone Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

then Airplane Mode your watch for few seconds and Back.

Check if ping works.

I have the same problem I called it in and they said they will be working on a software fix. It works if you reboot your phone and sometimes just your watch but who wants to reboot their phone when they can not ping it and find it.

The reason could be because the volume has been turned down completely on the iPhone or there is a software issue.

Resetting Network Settings on the phone, then toggling Airplane mode on the watch, did not solve the issue for me.

The Ping alert is independent of the phone's volume and silent-mode setting and is always at max volume. If that weren't the case it'd be a dramatically less useful feature, as many of us are always in silent/vibrate mode.

There is not a volume problem. It will work for a dozen times in a row and you leave it sit for a few minutes and it will not work. There were no problems with the old software.

I have also experienced this issue after upgrading to iOS9 (and before WatchOS2). Still waiting for a fix.

- Dave

If I reset the network settings, they go back to factory settings. To what degree is this going to screw up what I already use on a daily basis? I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable about these things.

Thanks for the suggestion

Did as you said and now ping works for me.

I downloaded a second version of the new IOS and now it's working. Evidently there was a bug fix.

the volume does not affect the ping volume on the apple watch. It plays at full volume regardless

The reset network settings did work but required the extra step of rebooting the Watch.. I will see if that stays working. For a person who often wears dresses which do not have pockets the finding the watch with a PING is essential not just nice

My watch was also not pinging my iPhone.

Issue was resolved with 3 steps:

1) restart watch (by pressing both buttons)

2) restart iPhone (by pressing home and wake buttons)

3) in iPhone, launch Watch app. If it asks to connect to your watch, answer "yes".